Haldon Historicizing Resilience. The Paradox of the Medieval East Roman State. Collapse, Adaptation and Survival (original) (raw)
Related papers
Review of John Haldon, The Empire That Would Not Die: The Paradox of Eastern Roman Survival, 640-740
H-Net, 2019
Students of the military, political, and social history of late antiquity and early Byzantium will all undoubtedly welcome the latest by John Haldon. An expansion of the four Carl Newell Jackson lectures he gave at Harvard in 2014, this book takes on the obvious, but problematic, question of how exactly the eastern Roman Empire weathered the crises brought on by Arab expansion in the seventh and eighth centuries. Traditional military historians may be disappointed by his eschewing operational military history for broader structural explanations. Likewise, his erudite style and approach, with talk of a "cognitive anthropological analysis of texts and cultural production" and the "ideational framework" of the empire's political theology, may be disconcerting to lay readers and less advanced undergraduates (pp. 15, 122). Readers who persevere, however, will be repaid.
Maintaining an Uneasy Equilibrium: Western Decline and Eastern Development in the Late Roman World
"" Maintaining an Uneasy Equilibrium: Western Decline and Eastern Development in the Late Roman World Abstract: This paper discusses the various attempts tomitigate the unequal balance between anumber factors in the Late Roman world, in particular threshold effects in contrast toactual sustainability. Dichotomies rangingfrom the macro-level to the micro-levelinclude: The Roman Empire against the barbarian periphery; the city of Romeagainst the city of Constantinople; the cityof Rome against the administrative centersof Ravenna, Arles and Milan; the southeastScandinavian “solidus central places” onGotland, Bornholm, Öland, and Helgöagainst the southwest Scandinavian “D- bracteate region”. It will be argued thatRoman ideology and personal contacts between Roman and barbarianadministrators carried great weight in theinitial phases of maintaining equilibrium in theearly 5 th century. Yet other independent factors,notably climate aberrations and strategies for urban resilience and demographic growth,eventually caused the western decline andgeneral transformation of the Late Roman world by the early to mid-6 th century. This alsoaffected the barbarian kleptocracies in theScandinavian periphery with a distinct regionaldifference between the southwestern regionfacing the North Sea and the southeastern regionof the Baltic. Here, the decline andtransformation is illustrated by the shift from theMigration Period of Salin’s Animal Style I (c.380–540 AD) to the Vendel Period of Salin’sAnimal Style II (c. 540–730 AD).""
The Byzantinist, 2015
Much recent scholarship on the fall of the Western Roman Empire has argued that the empire collapsed in a largely peaceful manner as provincial Romans sought to accommodate themselves to new barbarian rulers who were more immigrants than invaders. This short paper debunks this notion through subjecting some examples of men taken as proving the 'accommodationist tendency' to rigorous analysis. It demonstrates that not all is as a superficial reading of their careers would seem, and that their choices were often underscored not by freewill, but by coercion.
New Perspectives on Late Antiquity in the Eastern Roman Empire
2014
The present volume presents some of the latest research trends in the study of Late Antiquity in the Eastern Roman Empire from a multi-disciplinary perspective, encompassing not only social, economic and political history, but also philology, philosophy and legal history. The volume focuses on the interaction between the periphery and the core of the Eastern Empire and the relations between Eastern Romans and Barbarians in different geographical areas, during the approximate millennium that elapsed between the Fall of Rome and the Fall of Constantinople, with special attention paid to the earlier period. By introducing the reader to some innovative and ground-breaking new theories, the contributors to the present volume, an attractive combination of leading scholars in their respective fields and young researchers with innovative ideas, offer a fresh and thought-provoking examination of Byzantium during Late Antiquity and beyond.
Later Roman Empire (Undergraduate course handbook)
Undergraduate option (2nd/ 3rd year) at UCL Institute of Archaeology. This module examines the fate of the later Roman empire from the fall of Rome through the establishment of the barbarian kingdoms in the west and the rise of Constantinople in the East to the eve of the Arab conquests (AD400-700), interrogating models of decline, catastrophe and transformation through the most recent archaeology. There is, however, much more to the study of the late antique world than the problem of how and why the Roman empire collapsed. We will explore key themes such as decline and fall, barbarians and ethnicity, urbanism, rural settlement, Christianisation, the army and the economy and compare the different trajectories of Europe, Northern Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean in this period.