New issue of JEEH!

John Haldon’s The Empire That Would Not Die: A Symposium, Journal of European Economic History 2 (2017)

Editors’ Introductory Note

John Haldon, who teaches history at Princeton University, has produced an accomplished and admirable book. Not only has The Empire That Would Not Die: The Paradox of Eastern Roman Survival, 640-740 (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. - London, 2016) attracted the attention of the community of specialists in the field of Late Antiquity, but it has also gained a wider audience among historians and social scientists with their own distinct ‘take’ on key issues that have engaged scholars for decades. Haldon’s analysis proves particularly engaging as it employs concepts of resiliency, survival, and reproduction that challenge the current approach to such questions as imperial collapse, systems collapse, and failure. The editors have accordingly invited four eminent scholars – Yannis Stouraitis (University of Vienna), Michele Campopiano (University of York), Salvatore Cosentino (University of Bologna) and Federico Montinaro (University of Tübingen) – to offer their reflections on the book. Their assessments are preceded by a cogent introductory note by Paolo Tedesco, editor of the Symposium and tireless collaborator of the JEEH.

One preliminary remark: This Symposium should not be read as a review of Haldon’s book, but, rather, as a series of connected studies that use Haldon’s historical analysis as a jumping-off point for further consideration of key issues at the heart of the current historiographical debate. It is the fruit of cooperation between the editors of The Journal of European Economic History and the Centre for Advanced Studies “Migration and Mobility in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages” based at the University of Tübingen. Under the aegis of Mischa Meier, Stefan Patzold and Sebastian Schmidt-Hofner, the Centre explores new approaches to migration and mobility in the period in question, with a view to setting scholarly debate on a new footing. The contributors and editors hope to advance our understanding of social and economic relations in an important and fascinating period of history, and also to set out theoretical and methodological issues for the study of the contemporary world.

The Political Economy of Survival: The Eastern Roman Empire’s Transition to the Early Middle Ages – Paolo Tedesco

Identity as Ideology in the Empire that Would Not Die – Yannis Stouraitis

The End of an Era? The Impact of Early Islamic Expansion on Economic and Social Structures in the Byzantine East – Michele Campopiano

The “Empire That Would Not Die” Looks West – Salvatore Cosentino

Killing “Empire”: Goldilocks and the Three Byzantine Kommerkiarioi – Federico Montinaro

Bibliography of the Symposium

Book tip!

Helmut Reimitz, History,Frankish Identity and the Framing of Western Ethnicity, 550–850, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press 2015, 513pp.

CONTENTS

This pioneering study explores early medieval Frankish identity as a window into the formation of a distinct Western conception of ethnicity. Focusing on the turbulent and varied history of Frankish identity in Merovingian and Carolingian historiography, it offers a new basis for comparing the history of collective and ethnic identity in the Christian West with other contexts, especially the Islamic and Byzantine worlds. The tremendous political success of the Frankish kingdoms provided the medieval West with fundamental political, religious and social structures, including a change from the Roman perspective on ethnicity as the quality of the 'Other' to the Carolingian perception that a variety of Christian peoples were chosen by God to reign over the former Roman provinces. Interpreting identity as an open-ended process, Helmut Reimitz explores the role of Frankish identity in the multiple efforts through which societies tried to find order in the rapidly changing post-Roman world.

Book tip!

Peter N. Bell, Social Conflict in the Age of Justinian: Its Nature, Management, and Mediation, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2013, 416pp.

CONTENTS

Our understanding of Late Antiquity can be transformed by the non-dogmatic application of social theory to more traditional evidence when studying major social conflicts in the Eastern Roman Empire, not least under the Emperor Justinian (527-565). Social Conflict in the Age of Justinian explores a range of often violent conflicts across the whole empire - on the land, in religion, and in sport - during this pivotal period in European history. Drawing on both sociology and social psychology, and on his experience as a senior British Civil Servant dealing with violent political conflicts in Northern Ireland and elsewhere, Bell shows that such conflicts were a basic feature of the overwhelmingly agricultural political economy of the empire.

These conflicts were reflected at the ideological level and lead to intense persecution of intellectuals and Pagans as an ever more robust Christian ideological hegemony was established. In challenging the loyalties of all social classes, they also increased the vulnerability of an emperor and his allies. The need to legitimise the emperor, through an increasingly sacralised monarchy, and to build a loyal constituency, consequently remained a top priority for Justinian, even if his repeated efforts to unite the churches failed.