Global Romans (1). The classical world through post-colonial eyes (original) (raw)

mikoflohr.org, 2020

Abstract

Place matters, and it is kind of ironical how we, in the Netherlands, and in larger parts of North-Western Europe (never mind North-America), have somehow decided, long ago, that our collective historical narratives start from Greece and Rome, far away in the Mediterranean. In a way, we have artificially appropriated a past that is wholly or partially unrelated to the land where our families come from and we have made it our own. Additionally, we have asked people arriving in our country from elsewhere (like my father’s family) to buy into this narrative even if it essentially excludes the places where they (also) come from. It is surely a tempting narrative – I am certainly not the only European with roots in the Far East to study Greco-Roman ‘classics’. But it is also a bit odd, if you think about it – it is strange to spend your professional life within a historical tradition that has nothing to say about the land where part of your family comes from. Personally, I only gradually came to be bothered by the geographical boundaries of ‘our’ ancient world. Of course, I learned about Rome’s intensive trade with India in the first and second centuries CE, and I read stuff about China under the Qin and Han emperors, but the actual position of Rome, and its empire, in the wider world of the early first millennium CE is something that only came onto my radar over the course of the last two years or so; perhaps, this is due to the increasingly heated debates about the extent to which European perceptions of the past are still firmly rooted in ideas defined in the era of European colonial empires. Should not a post-colonial view on the history of the world also have implications for the way in which we approach the Ancient Mediterranean, and if so, which?

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