African dominion: A new history of empire in early and medieval west Africa; African kings and black slaves: sovereignty and dispossession in the early modern Atlantic; Caravans of gold, fragments in time: art, culture, and exchange across medieval Saharan Africa

2020 ◽  
Vol 96 (2) ◽  
pp. 549-551
Author(s):  
Herman T Salton
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Empire

Michael A. Gomez, African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa. Princeton, NJ, and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2017, viii, 505 pp., 8 maps.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 270-271
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
Global History ◽  
Global Context ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
Linguistic Barriers ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Empire

To do justice to history in the global context would require to pursue global history, which is not just a chiasmic play on words. No major country, no people, no great civilization, and no significant culture has really existed in total isolation, with just a few exceptions. But most scholars are simply not able to cover everything, and it would <?page nr="271"?>be hubris even to aim for that goal. Traditionally, medievalists have mostly focused on western, central, southern, and somewhat also northern Europe, for instance, but then this comes to a limit very quickly since linguistic barriers and also difficulties gaining access to the relevant sources and archives make this all very difficult. Recent years have also seen efforts to open the perspective toward the Arabic, Indian, and Asian world, whereas the American cultures remain mostly ignored in the medieval context. The opposite side probably faces the same difficulties, since Chinese or Japanese medievalists have to cope with a very long and expansive history as well, or the Indian or Indonesian historians, for example, which leaves no room or time to explore the connections, if there have ever been any, to other cultures.

The Innocence of Pontius Pilate

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Lloyd Dusenbury
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
First Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
History Of Empire

The gospels and ancient historians agree: Jesus was sentenced to death by Pontius Pilate, the Roman imperial prefect in Jerusalem. To this day, Christians of all churches confess that Jesus died 'under Pontius Pilate'. But what exactly does that mean? Within decades of Jesus' death, Christians began suggesting that it was the Judaean authorities who had crucified Jesus—a notion later echoed in the Qur'an. In the third century, one philosopher raised the notion that, although Pilate had condemned Jesus, he'd done so justly; this idea survives in one of the main strands of modern New Testament criticism. So what is the truth of the matter? And what is the history of that truth? David Lloyd Dusenbury reveals Pilate's 'innocence' as not only a neglected theological question, but a recurring theme in the history of European political thought. He argues that Jesus' interrogation by Pilate, and Augustine of Hippo's African sermon on that trial, led to the concept of secularity and the logic of tolerance emerging in early modern Europe. Without the Roman trial of Jesus, and the arguments over Pilate's innocence, the history of empire—from the first century to the twenty-first—would have been radically different.

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