Download or read book Social Change in Town and Country in Eleventh Century Byzantium written by James Howard-Johnston and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-10 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of Byzantium pivots around the eleventh century, during which it reached its apogee in terms of power, prestige, and territorial extension, only then to plunge into steep political decline following serious military defeats and extensive territorial losses. The political, economic, and intellectual history of the period is reasonably well understood, but not so what was happening in that crucial intermediary sphere, the social order, which both shaped and was shaped by contemporary ideas and brute economic developments. This volume aims to deepen understanding of Byzantine society by examining material evidence for settlements and production in different regions and by sifting through the far from plentiful literary and documentary sources in order to track what was happening in town and country. There is evidence of significant change: the pattern of landownership continued to shift in favour of those with power and wealth, but there was sustained and effective resistance from peasant villages. Provincial towns prospered in what was an era of sustained economic growth, and, through newly emboldened local elites, took a more active part in public affairs. In the capital the middling classes, comprising much of officialdom and leading traders, gained in importance, while the twin military and civilian elites were merging to form a single governing class. However, despite this social upheaval, careful analysis of these various factors by a range of leading Byzantine historians and archaeologists leads to the overarching conclusion that it was not so much internal structural changes which contributed to the vertiginous decline suffered by Byzantium in the late eleventh century, as the unprecedented combination of dangerous adversaries on different fronts, in the east, north, and west.
Download or read book Social Change in Town and Country in Eleventh century Byzantium written by James Howard-Johnston and published by Oxford University Press (UK). This book was released on 2020 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The eleventh century saw both the heyday of Byzantium and its almost immediate subsequent decline following serious military defeats and heavy territorial losses. The papers in this volume view the social order as a prime determinant of change, tracking it through archaeological and documentary evidence to deepen our understanding of the period.
Download or read book Byzantium in the Eleventh Century written by Marc D. Lauxtermann and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-10-18 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The eleventh century in Byzantium is all about being in between, whether this is between Basil II and Alexios Komnenos, between the forces of the Normans, the Pechenegs and the Turks, or between different social groupings, cultural identities and religious persuasions. It is a period of fundamental changes and transformations, both internal and external, but also a period rife with clichés and dominated by the towering presence of Michael Psellos whose usually self-contradictory accounts continue to loom large in the field of Byzantine studies. The essays collected here, which were delivered at the 45th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, explore new avenues of research and offer new perspectives on this transitional period. The book is divided into four thematic clusters: 'The age of Psellos' studies this crucial figure and seeks to situate him in his time; 'Social structures' is concerned with the ways in which the deep structures of Byzantine society and economy responded to change; 'State and Church' offers a set of studies of various political developments in eleventh-century Byzantium; and 'The age of spirituality' offers the voices of those for whom Psellos had little time and little use: monks, religious thinkers and pious laymen.
Download or read book Byzantium written by James Howard-Johnston and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-07-15 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Byzantium was a strange entity--a relic of classical antiquity which survived deep into the Middle Ages. Drawing on a lifetime's work in the field of Byzantine studies, James Howard-Johnston aims to explain Byzantium's longevity, first as a state geared to fighting a two-centuries long guerrilla war of defence, then as an increasingly confident regional power. It is only by analysing its economic, social, and institutional structures that this strange medieval afterlife of the rump of the Roman empire can be understood. This collection of linked essays outlines the fundamental features of Byzantium, with a focus on the seventh to eleventh centuries. The essays delve below the agitated surface of political, religious, and intellectual history to home in on (1) alterations in economic conditions; and (2) structural change in the social order and apparatus of government. The economic foundations of society and state are examined over the long term, with emphasis placed on mercantile enterprise throughout. Howard-Johnston identifies warfare as the prime driver of social and institutional change in a first phase (seventh to eighth centuries), when the peasant villager rose to a dominant position in the collective mindset and the administration was centralised and militarised as never before. A second phase of change is then highlighted, after the mid-ninth century when Byzantium's security was assured. Military and administrative arrangements were adapted as the empire expanded. The service aristocracy which had developed in the dark centuries began to assert itself to the detriment of the peasantry, but was, Howard-Johnston argues, countered reasonably effectively by new legislation. There was a renaissance in cultural life, most marked in the intellectual sphere in the eleventh century. Finally, the sharp decline in Byzantium's military fortunes from the mid-eleventh century is attributed to external factors rather than internal weakness.
Download or read book The Last Great War of Antiquity written by James Howard-Johnston and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 495 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The last great war of antiquity was fought on an unprecedented scale along the full length of the Persian-Roman frontier. James Howard-Johnston pieces together the fragmentary evidence of this period to form, for the first time, a coherent story of the dramatic events, key players, and vast lands over which the conflict spread.
Download or read book The Social History of Byzantium written by John Haldon and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-07-29 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With original essays by leading scholars, this book explores the social history of the medieval eastern Roman Empire and offers illuminating new insights into our knowledge of Byzantine society. Provides interconnected essays of original scholarship relating to the social history of the Byzantine empire Offers groundbreaking theoretical and empirical research in the study of Byzantine society Includes helpful glossaries of sociological/theoretical terms and Byzantine/medieval terms
Download or read book The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire c 500 1492 written by Jonathan Shepard and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-06-30 with total page 1228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Byzantium lasted a thousand years, ruled to the end by self-styled 'emperors of the Romans'. It underwent kaleidoscopic territorial and structural changes, yet recovered repeatedly from disaster: even after the near-impregnable Constantinople fell in 1204, variant forms of the empire reconstituted themselves. The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire c.500-1492 tells the story, tracing political and military events, religious controversies and economic change. It offers clear, authoritative chapters on the main events and periods, with more detailed chapters on outlying regions and neighbouring societies and powers of Byzantium. With aids such as maps, a glossary, an alternative place-name table and references to English translations of sources, it will be valuable as an introduction. However, it also offers stimulating new approaches and important findings, making it essential reading for postgraduates and for specialists. The revised paperback edition contains a new preface by the editor and will offer an invaluable companion to survey courses in Byzantine history.
Download or read book Witnesses to a World Crisis written by James Howard-Johnston and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-06-10 with total page 610 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: annual pagan pilgrimage with all its traditional rites into the new religion, is identified as a key moment in world history, in that it released the new faith from confinement in Medina and allowed it to spread within Arabia and beyond. --
Download or read book Economic Expansion in the Byzantine Empire 900 1200 written by Alan Harvey and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-10-30 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book Dr Harvey shows that, if we broaden our comprehension of feudalism, the economic developments of the Byzantine Empire and of the medieval west were far more comparable than Byzantine historians have been prepared to admit. Previous interpretations have linked economic trends too closely to the political fortunes of the state, and have consequently regarded the twelfth century as a period of economic stagnation. Yet there is considerable evidence that the empire's population expanded steadily during the period covered by this book, and that agricultural production was intensified. A wealth of evidence serves to reinforce the point that the disintegration of the empire in the late twelfth century should no longer be associated with economic decline. Dr Harvey's conclusions, in particular that there is no incompatibility between the development of the landed wealth of a feudalising aristocracy and the growth of commerce and urbanisation, will affect all future interpretations of Byzantine history.
Download or read book Change in Byzantine Culture in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries written by A. P. Kazhdan and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1990-02 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Byzantium, that dark sphere on the periphery of medieval Europe, is commonly regarded as the immutable residue of Rome's decline. In this highly original and provocative work, Alexander Kazhdan and Ann Wharton Epstein revise this traditional image by documenting the dynamic social changes that occurred during the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
Download or read book Transmitting and Circulating the Late Antique and Byzantine Worlds written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-10-29 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Transmitting and Circulating the Late Antique and Byzantine Worlds seeks to be a crucial contribution to the history of medieval connectedness. Using one of the methodological tools associated with the global history movement, this volume aims to use connectedness to revitalise local and regional networks of exchange and movement. Its case studies collectively point caution toward assuming or asserting global-scale transmission of meaning or items unchanged, and show instead how meaning is locally produced and regionally formulated, and how this is no less dynamic than any global-level connectedness. These case studies by early career scholars range from the movement of cotton growing practices to the transmission of information within individual texts. Their wide scope, however, is nonetheless united by their preoccupation with transmission and circulation as categories of analysing or explaining movement and change in history. This volume hopes to be, therefore, a useful contribution to the growing field of a history of connectivity and connectedness. Contributors are Jovana Anđelković, Petér Bara, Mathew Barber, Julia Burdajewicz, Adele Curness, Carl Dixon, Alex MacFarlane, Anna Kelley, Matteo G. Randazzo, Katinka Sewing and Grace Stafford. See inside the book.
Download or read book Islam Authoritarianism and Underdevelopment written by Ahmet T. Kuru and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-08 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analyzes Muslim countries' contemporary problems, particularly violence, authoritarianism, and underdevelopment, comparing their historical levels of development with Western Europe.
Download or read book A Companion to Byzantine Italy written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-02-01 with total page 847 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a collection of essays on Byzantine Italy which provides a fresh synthesis of current research as well as new insights on various aspects of its local societies from the 6th to the 11th century.
Download or read book Authority and Control in the Countryside written by Alain Delattre and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-11-26 with total page 612 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Authority and Control in the Countryside looks at the economic, religious, political and cultural instruments that local and regional powers in the late antique to early medieval Mediterranean and Near East used to manage their rural hinterlands.
Download or read book Caliphs and Merchants written by Fanny Bessard and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-09 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Caliphs and Merchants: Cities and Economies of Power in the Near East (700-950) offers fresh perspectives on the origins of the economic success of the early Islamic Caliphate, identifying a number of previously unnoticed or underplayed yet crucial developments, such as the changing conditions of labour, attitudes towards professional associations, and the interplay between the state, Islamic religious institutions, and the economy. Moving beyond the well-studied transition between the death of Justinian in 565 and the Arab-Muslim conquests in the seventh century, the volume focuses on the period between 700 and 950 during which the Islamic world asserted its identity and authority. Whilst the extraordinary prosperity of Near Eastern cities and economies during this time was not unprecedented when one considers the early Imperial Roman world, the aftermath of the Arab-Muslim conquests saw a deep transformation of urban retail and craft which marked a distinct break from the past. It explores the mechanisms effecting these changes, from the increasing involvement of caliphs and their governors in the patronage of urban economies, to the empowerment of enriched entrepreneurial tāğir from the ninth century. Combining detailed analysis of a large corpus of literary sources in Arabic with presentation of new physical and epigraphic evidence, and utilizing an innovative approach which is both comparative and global, the discussion lucidly locates the Middle East within the contemporary Eurasian context and draws instructive parallels between the Islamic world and Western Christendom, Byzantium, South-East Asia, and China.
Download or read book The Cambridge History of Medieval Monasticism in the Latin West written by Alison I. Beach and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-09 with total page 1244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Monasticism, in all of its variations, was a feature of almost every landscape in the medieval West. So ubiquitous were religious women and men throughout the Middle Ages that all medievalists encounter monasticism in their intellectual worlds. While there is enormous interest in medieval monasticism among Anglophone scholars, language is often a barrier to accessing some of the most important and groundbreaking research emerging from Europe. The Cambridge History of Medieval Monasticism in the Latin West offers a comprehensive treatment of medieval monasticism, from Late Antiquity to the end of the Middle Ages. The essays, specially commissioned for this volume and written by an international team of scholars, with contributors from Australia, Belgium, Canada, England, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States, cover a range of topics and themes and represent the most up-to-date discoveries on this topic.
Download or read book Letters of the Great Kings of the Ancient Near East written by Trevor Bryce and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-03 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offering fascinating insights into the people and politics of the ancient near Eastern kingdoms, Trevor Bryce uses the letters of the five Great Kings as the focus of a fresh look at this turbulent and volatile region in the late Bronze Age.
