• Title/Summary/Keyword: empires

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Shmuel N. Eisenstadt and the Comparative Political History of Pre-Eighteenth-Century Empires

  • De WEERDT, Hilde
    • Asian review of World Histories
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    • v.4 no.1
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    • pp.133-163
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    • 2016
  • This essay critically analyses the legacy of Eisenstadt's The Political Systems of Empires for the comparative political history of pre-industrial empires. It argues that Eisenstadt has given us a rich toolkit to conceptualize the formation, maintenance, and dissolution of empires by theorizing the structural relationships between social groups in large-scale polities and among such polities, and by analysing global patterns of development in the distribution of the sources of social power. The Political Systems of Empires provides an inventory of key questions and dynamics that a comparative history of power relationships in empires cannot ignore. This essay, furthermore, discusses three methodological problems in Eisenstadt's work which have had a significant impact on comparative empire studies between the 1980s and the 2000s. The essay argues that certain shared features of comparative studies of pre-industrial empires help perpetuate Eurocentric analyses: the foregrounding of select empires and periods as ideal types (typicality), the focus on macro-historical structures and dynamics without the integration of social relationships and actions in historical conjunctures (the lack of scalability), and the search for convergence and divergence. These features need to be overcome to make Eisenstadt's legacy viable for comparative political history.

A Study on Formal Process of Military Costume - Especially on Ancient Empires - (밀리터리 커스튬(Military Costume)의 형성과정에 대한 고찰 -고대 국가를 중심으로-)

  • 김난희
    • Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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    • v.21 no.1
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    • pp.217-227
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    • 1997
  • Costume of each age reflects its own history. Military costume is an reflections of war, social and geometrical background. Soldiers on their uniforms were at the battlefields with their lives and country on their shoulders. The main purpose of this writing is to study military costume of ancient empires in historical Point of view including especially those of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Crete, Greece, Etruria, Rome. As we will see, ancient military costume developed from earlier stages of uniforms into military costume in various ways. The types of military costume formed itself gradually but rapidly into sophisticated, useful, and excellent quality clothes. Military costume of early ancient empires signified its strength and were actual and symbolic costume that determined life and death, glory and disgrace.

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Local Rule of Đại Việt under the Lý Dynasty: Evolution of a Charter Polity after the Tang-Song Transition in East Asia

  • Momoki, Shiro
    • Asian review of World Histories
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    • v.1 no.1
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    • pp.45-84
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    • 2013
  • Empirical research into Đại Việt before the $14^{th}$ century has made little progress since the 1990s. To improve this situation, I here examine how the L$\acute{y}$ dynasty (1009-1226), the first long-lasting dynasty of Đại Việt, established stable local ruleafter the "Tang-Song Transition" in China that changed the entire picture of East Asia (including both Southeast and Northeast Asia). This paper focuses on two issues. First are the local administrative units and their governors. The nature of both higher units like lộ(circuits), phủ and ch$\hat{a}$u (provinces), and basic units like hươg and gi$\acute{a}$p (districts?) will be examined. Second, I examine non-institutional channels of local rule by the imperial family. By combining such administrative and non-administrative means, the L$\acute{y}$ central court enforced a considerably stable local rule for two centuries. Finally, I attempt some preliminary comparisons with the local rule of Goryeo (918-1392) in the Korean peninsula, a polity that shared many features with Đại Việt in the process of localization of the Tang and Song models. I hope this approach of viewing small empires from the standpoint not of their "goal" (modern states) but of their "start" (charter polities), will enrich the discussion of East Asian small empires.

Ecology of the Lowland: The Representation of the Invisible Slow Violence of Empire (저지대의 생태학: 제국의 비가시적 느린 폭력의 재현)

  • Kim, Heesun
    • English & American cultural studies
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    • v.16 no.2
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    • pp.47-70
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    • 2016
  • Under the inhumane oppression of imperialism, the Third World's political violence has been often represented as an immediate and explosive one with an instant, concentrated visibility. Yet the ecological and psychological exploitation of the Third-World countries by empires, as Rob Nixon insists, shows the relative invisibility of slow violence. This paper is to reveal this slow violence of the marginalized areas symbolized as the lowland. Although Arne Naess' deep ecology promotes the inherent worth of living beings regardless of their instrumental utility to human needs. this paper deals with three postcolonial ecological textbooks which criticize the white-centered deep ecology: Amitav Ghosh's The Glass Palace, Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland, and Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible. Through postcolonial critical study, this paper finds out that all these three works have some themes in common. First, these postcolonial works assume a shape of family saga which is parallel to the slow violence of ecological and psychological plundering of empires in the postcolonial countries. Second, like the mangroves which have a tenacious hold on life, these postcolonial people rather overcome the heterogenic challenge with the sturdy and tough mind than defeated. Third, the native people's ethics of earth functions as the stronghold for their respectable lifestyle in their indigenous historicity. Finally, as a big fat brother, the Americanized globalization or neoliberalism is warned as the neocolonialism which is often shown as the disguised pattern of greenwashing. Namely, the people's self-enhancement is always prior to the imperialistic development or neoliberalism in the postcolonial ecological texts which sharply contrast the native's life consciousness and the empire's development theory.

Burqanism from the Origin of the Pastoral Nomadic Koryo Region and the Vision of Korean Livestock Farming (고려의 원시영역 유목초지, 그 부르칸(불함)이즘과 한국축산의 비전)

  • Chu Chae Hyok
    • Journal of The Korean Society of Grassland and Forage Science
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    • v.25 no.1
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    • pp.71-82
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    • 2005
  • Khori(高麗) refers to the Chaabog(reindeer) that live on lichens(蘚) on Mt. Soyon(鮮) in which pastures are the cold and dry plateau of North Eurasia. Thus, the origin region of the Khori or Koguryo that are the ancestors of the reindeer-herding pastoral nomads(馴鹿 遊牧民) can be said to be the Steppe-Taiga-Tundra pastoral areas of North Eurasia and North America. When the pastoral nomads moved on to the great mountain(大山) zone of the Jangbaek(長白) to the Baekdu(白頭) Mountains, they could have been in contact with pastoral farmers or agricultural farmers living there and they became the farmers remaining on agricultural farms. They were the Koryo people, the ancestors of Korea. Staying in one place, they gradually forgot the origin of their reindeer-herding pastoral nomadic history in the Northwest area of Mt. Soyon, the small mountain(小山) zone of the Steppe-Taiga-Tundra pastoral areas. In other words, they lost their identity as reindeer-herding pastoral nomads when they entered the agricultural area after leaving the pastoral area. However, since their basic genes had already formed when they lived on the cold and dry plateau of North Eurasia, it is possible to study their pastoral nomadic history focusing on 'the minority living in the broad area(廣域少數)', by utilizing highly advanced biotechnological science and focusing on genes and information technology innovation, and removing various past hindrances in research. Therefore, it is not so difficult to restore the reindeerherding pastoral nomadic history of the Koguryo(高句麗) people and secure their pastoral nomadic identity, of which the first steps have already been taken into their historical stages. The Eurasian continent and the Korean peninsula, especially the cold and dry plateau of North Eurasia and the Korean peninsula have been closely related to each other ecologically and historically. They can never be a separate space at all. The Eurasian continent lies horizontally east to west and thus, the continent forms an isothermal zone. Also, since the time of producing their own foods, it was relatively easy for people with their technology to move to other places owing to the pastoral nomadic characteristic of mobility. Unlike the Chungyen(中原) region, western Asia and the regions covering the Siberia-Manchu-Korean peninsula where food production revolution was first made were connected to the Mongolian lichens route(蘚苔之路: Ni, ukinii jam) and steppe roads. Although the ecological conditions of nature have changed a bit throughout a long history, it was natural for the many tribes in North Asia living on the largest Steppe-Taiga-Tundra area in the world to have believed 'the legends related to animals in relation to their founders and ancestors(獸祖傳說)'. Assuming that Siberian tigers and the tigers living on Mt. Baekdu were connected ecologically and genetically because of the ecological characteristics of the animals, and their migration from plateau to plateau, we would suspect that the Chosun(朝鮮) tribe living on Mt. Baekdu were ethnically and culturally more closely connected to the farther removed Ural-Altai tribes that lived on the cold and dry plateau region than to the Han(i14;) tribe who lived in Chungyen(中原) that was close to Mt. Baekdu. More evidence is the structure of the Korean language which has the form of 'Subject + Object + Verb', which is assumed to have originated from the speedy lifestyle of the reindeer-herding pastoral nomads. The structure is quite different from that of the Han(漢) language, which is based on agricultural life. Also, it is natural for reindeer riding reindeerherding pastoral nomads or horse-riding sheep-herding pastoral nomads(騎馬, 羊遊牧民) to have held military and political power over the region and eventually to have established an ancient pastoral nomadic empire in the process of their conquest of agricultural regions. The stages for founding global empires in the history of mankind maybe largely divided into two, in terms of ecological conditions and occupations. They are the steppes and the oceans. Of course, the steppe-based empires were established based on the skills to deal with horses and the ability to shoot arrows while riding horses, along with the use of iron ware in the 8th century BC. The steppe-based empires became the foundation for an oceanic empire, which could have been established by the use of warships and warship guns since the 15th Century. Based on those facts, we know that Chosun, Puyo(夫餘), and Koguryo are the products of a developmental process of pastoral nomadic empires on the steppes. Maybe we can easily find the pastoral nomadic identity of the Koguryo more than we expected when we trace the origins and history of the Korean tribe living in the pastures located in the northwest area of Mt. Jangbaek by focusing on pastoral nomadic mobility and organization just as we have investigated the historic origins of Anglo-Saxons in America by focusing on the times before the 15th Century. In the process, we should keep in mind that English culture originated from the Industrial Revolution and was directly delivered to the American continent, although America was far from England and was not an intermediate point on long sojourns either. Further, American culture came back to England in a more advanced form later. The most important thing currently to be resolved is to cause Koreans to look back on their own history in a freer way of thinking and with diverse, profound, and sharp insight, taking away the old and existing conventional recognition that is entangled with complicated interests with Korean people and other countries. The meanings of Chosun, Khori, and Solongos have been interpreted arbitrarily without any historic evidence by the scholars who followed conventional tradition of fixed-minded aristocrats in an agricultural society. If the Siberian cultural properties of the stone age, the earthenware age, the bronze age, and the iron age are analyzed in such a way, archaeological discovery will never be able to contribute to the restoration of the Koguryo's pastoral nomadic identity. One should transcend the errors that tend to interpret the cultural properties discovered in the pastoral nomadic regions as not being differentiated from those of agricultural regions and just interpret them altogether from the agricultural point of view. A more careful intention is required in the interpretation of cultural properties of ancient Korean empires that seem to have been formed due to mutual interactions of pastoral nomadic and agricultural cultures. Also, it is required that the conventional recognition chain of 'reverse-genes' be severed, which has placed more weight on agricultural properties than pastoral nomadic ones, since their settlement on agricultural farms was made after the establishment of their ancient pastoral nomadic empires. There is no reason at all to place priority on stoneware, earthenware, bronze ware, and iron ware than on wooden ware(木器) and other ware which were made of animal skins(皮器), bones and horns(骨角器), in analyzing the history in the regions of reindeer or sheep pastures. Reading ancient Korean history from the perspective of pastoral nomadic history, one feels strongly the instinctive emotions to return to the natural 'mother place'. The reindeer-herding pastoral nomadic identity of the Koguryo people that has been accumulated in volumes in their genes and hidden deep inside and have interacted organically could be reborn with Burqanism(Burqan refers to 不咸 in Chinese), which was their religion by birth and symbolized as the red willow(紅柳=不咸). The mother place of the Koguryo's people is the endless vast green pastures of North Eurasia and North America, where we anticipated the development of Korean livestock farming following the inherent properties in the genes of the reindeer-herding pastoral nomads with Korean ancestors. We anticipate that the place would be the core resource that could contribute to the development of life of living creatures following the inherent properties of their genes and biotechnological factors. In other words, biotechnology used for a search for clues on the well-being of humans could be the fruit brought by Burqanism of the Koguryo people and the fruit of the globalization of Korean livestock farming. It is the Chosun farmer in China come from the vast nomadic reindeer pastures of North Eurasia that resolved the food problem of a billion Chinese people with lowland paddy rice seeds (水稻) by transforming Heilongjiang Province(黑龍江省) into an oceanic lowland paddy rice field(水田). Even Mao Tse-tung(毛擇東) could not resolve the food problem by his revolution campaigns for tens of years. Today is the very time that requires the development of special livestock farming following the inherent properties of the ancient Korean reindeer-herding pastoral nomads that respected the dignity of life on the cold and dry plateau of North Eurasia and the America continent. I suggest that research should be started from the pastures of the Dariganga Steppe in East Mongolia that was the homeland of Hanwoo(韓牛) and the central horse-herding steppe place(牧馬場) of Chingis Khan's Mongolia. The Dariganga Steppe is awash with an affluent natural environment for pastoral nomadic living however, the quality of life of the pastoral nomads there is still low. I suggest we Koreans, the descendents of the Koguryo, should take our first steps for our livestock farming business project and develop the Northern nomadic pastures, here at the pastures of the Dariganga Steppe, which is the Mongolian core place of state-of-the-art technology for military weapons.

Power Pursuits: Interstate Systems in Asia

  • Palat, Ravi Arvind
    • Asian review of World Histories
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    • v.1 no.2
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    • pp.227-263
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    • 2013
  • Examining the patterns of evolution of interstate systems in Asia, this article argues that the relationship of state-builders to nomads stood in much of continental Asia stood in sharp contrast to the relationships between rulers and mercantile-financial elites in Europe. Due to the productivity of wet-rice economies, continental Asian rulers were not dependent on merchants and bankers to raise armies to wage war or suppress rebellions unlike their European counterparts. Hence they had no need to grant bankers and merchants concessions, especially monopolies which is how large volumes of capital are accumulated. Geographic conditions however meant that while the lack of internal frontiers meant that large continental-sized states could be created in China, this was not possible in the Indian subcontinent where a more chequered equilibrium where nomads enjoyed a military advantage in arid and semi-arid tracts meant that trans-subcontinental polities enjoyed only a fleeting existence. In mainland southeast Asia, where dense forests and a difficult terrain insulated the region from nomadic conquests, a third variant of interstate relations emerged.

Comparison between the Korean and Japanese Costume Systems since Port Opening Treaties in Nineteenth Century (19세기 개항이후 한.일 복식제도 비교)

  • 이경미;이순원
    • Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
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    • v.50 no.8
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    • pp.149-163
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    • 2000
  • The purpose of this study is to research the Korean and Japanese costume systems and to compare both of them on the process of adopting the western-originated costumes. The consequences of this study are as follows. Chosen and Japan started simplifying the traditional clothings, Introducing the western clothings and executed the ordinance prohibitory topknots through reforming costume systems since Port Opening Treaties in 19th centra. Japan performed the reformation of costume system effectively through the grand campaign of social reforming enlightment by Meiji Government. Meanwhile in Korea, there were a continual repetition of adoption and rejection in the reformation of costume systems because of strong cultural self-esteem and competition of foreign Empires. However, western-originated cultural perspectives brought the strong self-devaluated view on their own cultures to both countries. And that's the first cause of substitution of western clothings for ordinary ones in both nations.

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Social Farming as a Praxis to Deterritorialize Agriculture and Rural Communities: Case of Janggok-myeon, Hongseong-gun (사회적 농업, 농업과 농촌의 탈영토화 - 홍성군 장곡면 사례 -)

  • Kim, Jeongseop
    • Journal of Agricultural Extension & Community Development
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    • v.25 no.3
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    • pp.121-133
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    • 2018
  • In South Korea, a few kinds of social farming practice are identified: care farming, labour integration, and training in farming sector. Although social farming is not a prevailing activity in rural communities, it attracts much attention from a range of actors in society. In Hongseong-gun, from a few years ago, two farms began to care and employ the mentally disabled and to train young new comers who want to grow crops in the way of organic farming. Both of them are cooperatives, which were established by the residents want to participate in. These movement has made some changes in the community. And now, it became the well-known cases of social farming as well as multi-functional agriculture. Social farming can be described as a praxis to deterritorialize the units of agricultural production and the rural community, where food empires imposed their ordering principle upon units of agricultural production in order to appropriate the value added by farming.

The Split of Power in the Khwārazmshāh Dynasty on the Eve of the Mongol Conquests

  • KAMALI, Maryam
    • Acta Via Serica
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    • v.7 no.1
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    • pp.29-52
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    • 2022
  • This study investigates why Khwārazmshāh's rulers abandoned Khwārazm, their capital before the Mongols invaded this city. From a local dynasty in Khwārazm under the Saljuqs, the Khwārazmshāh dynasty (ca.469-628/1077-1231) rapidly expanded in the region. After conquering the Saljuqs (ca.429-590/1037-1194), they extended their territory from Hamedān in western Iran to Samarqand in Transoxiana and beyond that to Otrār to become one of the world's great medieval empires. During this critical time, Khwārazm remained their central hub of power. However, the split in the power of the Khwārazmshāh dynasty under Sultan Muhammad (ca.596-617/1200-1220) contributed to their failure to recognize the strategic role of Khwārazm in retaining and reconstructing their power. In essence, the Khwārazmshāh state was divided before the Mongol Invasion.

The Wandering of Classic Manuscripts and Their Return to the Library (고전 필사본 유랑과 도서관으로의 귀환)

  • Hee-Yoon Yoon
    • Journal of Korean Library and Information Science Society
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    • v.53 no.4
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    • pp.1-23
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    • 2022
  • The record is both an palmistry and a fingerprint for human life and world of knowledge. Books, which are synonymous with records, are a channel through which history is traced and a window to savor. And the most primitive form of the book is the classics of ancient Greece and Rome, and the best part is the manuscript. It refers to the original recorded on papyrus, parchment, paper, etc. and the translated and translated copies of them. If we reflect on the long history of knowledge and culture, the classic manuscripts have continued to scatter and collect like a river flowing through time and space due to not only natural disasters, but also artificial cultural vandalism and the bibliocaust. Therefore, this study traced and linked the wandering and library return of classic manuscripts from ancient Greece to the medieval Renaissance period. As a result, dynasties and empires, monarchs and prime ministers, generals and conquerors, nobles and wealthy, clergy and scholars concentrated on collecting and translating classical manuscripts. If the ancient Greek and Roman scholars did not record knowledge and wisdom in papyrus and parchment, the medieval Byzantine and Islamic Empires did not collect, translate and reproduce classics, the book hunters didn't keep track of the classics, the Renaissance humanists did not restore and reinterpret the classics through intellectual exodus, and the historical library did not collect and preserve the classics and their translations, modern people would not have access to classical knowledge. Nevertheless, the tracing of classical manuscripts is an aporia in which many difficulties and contradictions overlap in the tracing of classic manuscripts due to historical flow, geographical wandering, and linguistic transformation. When a new manuscript is discovered and interpreted, correction and supplementation are inevitable, so the pursuit of the wandering and return of the classic manuscripts through follow-up research must be continued.