Greek History: Hellenistic

Classics ◽  
2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angelos Chaniotis
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Mutual Influence ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Federal States ◽  
Greek Culture ◽  
Western Border ◽  
Hellenistic World ◽  
Political Economic

The Hellenistic period, from the conquests of Alexander the Great (334 bce) to the conquest of the Ptolemaic kingdom by Rome (30 bce), marks the greatest expansion of Greek culture but also the beginning of a transformation of Greek political institutions, society, religion, and culture. Politically, this period saw the creation, conflicts, and decline of new kingdoms (Ptolemaic, Seleucid, Attalid, minor kingdoms in Asia Minor and the East), the domination of mainland Greece and the Aegean by the Antigonids of Macedonia and the federal states of the Aetolians and the Achaeans, and the expansion of Rome. Although the role of the poleis (Greek plural of “polis”) in “international” politics declined, the polis remained the predominant form of political organization, and many new poleis were founded. Major phenomena in social history are the preponderance of elites and benefactors, a stronger presence of women in public life, increased social complexity, and mobility. The incorporation of Egypt and of large areas in the East (up to the western border of India) into a political, economic, and social network resulted in an intensive exchange of ideas and mutual influence between the Greek and non-Greek cultures and in the development of new centers of culture. Because of the continual discovery of new texts (inscriptions and papyri), our understanding of this period changes faster and more substantially than that of earlier periods. For this reason, this bibliography lays emphasis on recent studies, in which one can find further bibliography and references to new source materials. English is not the lingua franca and not even the most important language for the study of Hellenistic history, and no profound study of the Hellenistic world should be attempted without reading knowledge of French, German, and Italian.

The Role of Politics in the Historical Transport Networks of the Iberian Peninsula and the Pyrenees from Roman Times to the Nineteenth Century

2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-260
Author(s):  
Pau de Soto ◽  
Cèsar Carreras
Keyword(s):  
Iberian Peninsula ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Transport Network ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Transport Systems ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Transport Networks ◽  
Political Economic

AbstractTransport routes are basic elements that are inextricably linked to diverse political, economic, and social factors. Transport networks may be the cause or result of complex historical conjunctions that reflect to some extent a structural conception of the political systems that govern each territory. It is for this reason that analyzing the evolution of the transport routes layout in a wide territory allows us to recognize the role of the political organization and its economic influence in territorial design. In this article, the evolution of the transport network in the Iberian Peninsula has been studied in a broad chronological framework to observe how the different political systems of each period understood and modified the transport systems. Subsequently, a second analysis of the evolution of transport networks in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula is included in this article. This more detailed and geographically restricted study allows us to visualize in a different way the evolution and impact of changes in transport networks. This article focuses on the calculation of the connectivity to analyze the intermodal transport systems. The use of network science analyses to study historical roads has resulted in a great tool to visualize and understand the connectivity of the territories of each studied period and compare the evolution, changes, and continuities of the transport network.

Capitalist Futures and Socialist Legacies: Urban Development in East Germany Since 1990

1998 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 87-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hartmut Häußermann
Keyword(s):  
Urban Development ◽  
Socialist Country ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
The Political ◽  
Federal States ◽  
Institutional Conditions ◽  
Western Model ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
German Model ◽  
Political Economic

Since unification, the political, economic, and institutional structuresin the new federal states have been patterned in accordance with theWest German model. This is due in part to the extension of theWestern legal framework to the eastern Länder. The fact that thepolitical and economic actors of the once-socialist country are nowsubject to the institutional conditions of the West encourages convergencetowards the western model. But questions have been raised asto whether the cities in the new federal states are also adaptingrapidly to the western model of urban development. Their layoutand architecture resulted, after all, from the investment decisionsmade by several generations and cannot be shifted or transformed asrapidly as legal or institutional frameworks.

scholarly journals State and Nation Building Policies and the New Trends in Migration in the Former Soviet Union

2003 ◽  
pp. 78
Author(s):  
Andrei Korobkov
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Former Soviet Union ◽  
The Political ◽  
Democratic Transitions ◽  
Federal States ◽  
Cultural Heterogeneity ◽  
Market Economic ◽  
Independent States ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Newly Independent States

Democratic transitions are especially complex in federal states and countries with multinational populations and compact, ethnic minority settlements; the increasing ethnic, linguistic, religious, and cultural heterogeneity of a society complicates the achievement of political compromises. In this sense, the post-Soviet newly independent states (NIS) face an especially complex transition pattern. Roman Szporluk, for example, enumerates three different transformations: the dissolution of the imperial structure and the resulting formation of independent states, the transition from a centralized to a market economic system, and the transition from authoritarianism to (at least ideally) a political democracy, with all three "combined or fused in the chaotic and extremely difficult process of formation and transformation of states and nations. " Thus the transition in the NIS is marked by simultaneous developments in the political, economic, social, religious, ideological, and cultural spheres, including the creation or re-creation of ethnic and other identities.

scholarly journals THE CONCEPTS «CHIEFDOM» AND «STATE» IN THE EVALUATION OF THE POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS IN THE EARLY MEDIEVAL EMPIRES OF CENTRAL ASIA

2016 ◽  
pp. 22-27
Author(s):  
S. A. Vasyutin
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Complexity Level ◽  
Total Compliance

The article deals with the evaluation of the political institutions in early medievalCentral Asia. The existing approaches to defining the governing systems of the imperial nomad unions focus on the concepts "chiefdom" and "state", but in both cases researchers have to state an absence of total compliance of the nomadic empires' governing structures to the classical attributes of chiefdom and state, thus constantly making reservations, which blur these concepts. The purpose of the work is to consider the possibility of solving this problem by using a broader "net" of terms determining different political systems and stages in their development in relation to early medieval nomadic empires. The methodological base of the article is the modern conceptions of multilinearity and diversity of the political genesis. The research has resulted in determination of a range of concepts which could better reflect the specificity of political institutions of different nomadic empires or make this evaluation more neutral but providing a clearer understanding of the complexity level of the political organization. 

Classics and Citizenship

1920 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 78-81
Author(s):  
E. V. Arnold
Keyword(s):  
Classical Tradition ◽  
New World ◽  
Julius Caesar ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Imperial Rome ◽  
The Past ◽  
New Foundations ◽  
Hellenistic World ◽  
The Cost ◽  
New Education

As the black clouds of war lift from the surface of the Continents of Europe and Nearer Asia, the eye looks round upon a shattered civilization. The once busy tide of labour on the field and in the factory, beneath the soil and within dock, ebbs slowly away; the accustomed rewards of toil, food, warmth and clothing, become daily more difficult of attainment. Authority trembles in its seat, and money loses its once all-powerful attraction. Inevitably the scholar recalls the tale of the Decline and Fall of the Roman-Hellenistic world, and calculates the prospect of a second millennium of darkness and suffering. And he is not unconscious that he stands himself accused of having brought about, or at least failed to avert, the doom of the nations. For, he is told, the governing classes of all the nations that clashed in mutual destructiveness were constituted of men brought up in the classical tradition, whose minds in their fresh boyhood were fed on the so-called glories of Alexander the Great and of Julius Caesar, and who sought in rivalry to win, each for his nation, the haughty supremacy of imperial Rome. And he hears the clamour of those who demand a clean sweep of the false ideals and selfish ambitions of the past, and the building upon new foundations of a world of contentment and peace, inspired by the basic conception of a citizenship in which no man shall seek his own gain at the cost of another's loss. Towards the building up of this new world, it is claimed, the study of the past can do nothing to help; by effacing itself it will cease to be a hindrance. And in response to this accusation there arise in all directions schemes for a reconstructed world, a reconstituted nation, and a new education, which shall be alike in this one point—that they take for granted the elimination of the study of antiquity and the disappearance of the atmosphere of the Humanities.

Nations, Nationalism, National Identity: New Dimensions in Academic Discourse

2015 ◽  
Vol 59 (11) ◽  
pp. 91-102
Author(s):  
I. Semenenko
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Academic Discourse ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Russian Science ◽  
Interethnic Relations ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Nation States

Analyzing discourses on interethnic relations can contribute to a clearer understanding of the focal points of tensions in contemporary political communities sharing a common territory and common political institutions. These discourses represent the complex of problems related to nation-building and are generated both in the public sphere and in academic discussion. As such, they often develop separately one from the other. Assessing the current academic discourse on nations and nationalism, on nation-building and the nation-state, on citizenship, cultural diversity and interethnic conflict can contribute to the formation of the agenda of a politics of identity aimed at building a civic nation. Memory politics deserve special attention in this context, as the interpretation of historic memory has today become a powerful instrument that political elites can use to consolidate the nation and, in different contexts, to politicize ethnicity and deepen cleavages in existing nation-states. The affirmation of a positive civic (national) identity is a reference framework for modern democratic societies, and it is in meeting the challenges of politicizing ethnicity that political priorities and academic interests meet. However, the current domination of politics over academia in this conflict prone sphere contributes to its radicalization and to the formation of negative and exclusive identities that can be manipulated to pursue elitist group interests. Evaluating models of political organization alternative to the ones known today (such as “the nation-state”) does not aspire to “write off” the nation, but this can help to come up with visions and ideas politics can take up to overcome the conflict potential that contemporary societies generate over ethnic issues. Acknowledgements. This article was prepared with financial support provided by the Russian Science Foundation [research grant № 15-18-00021, “Regulating interethnic relations and managing ethnic and social conflicts in the contemporary world: the resource potential of civic identity (a comparative political analysis)”]. The research was conducted at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO), RAS.

The Coca Leaf in Bolivian History

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Brewer-Osorio
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Inca Empire ◽  
History Of ◽  
Potent Drug ◽  
Formed Part ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Peasant Farmers ◽  
Leaf P

Coca is deeply interwoven into the political, economic, and social history of Bolivia from the Inca Empire to the 21st-century rise of President Evo Morales Ayma. As such, generations of Bolivians, from powerful hacendados to peasant farmers, have resisted efforts to destroy the coca leaf. Coca is a mild herbal stimulant cultivated and consumed by indigenous Andeans for centuries, and the primary material for making the potent drug cocaine. During the 16th and 17th centuries, Spanish colonizers promoted coca production on large haciendas to supply mining towns, giving rise to a powerful class of coca hacendados that formed part of Bolivia’s ruling oligarchy after independence. In the early 20th century, the coca hacendados shielded coca from international drug control. Following the 1952 Revolution, agrarian unions replaced hacendados as guardians of the coca leaf. The unions formed a powerful social movement led by Evo Morales Ayma, an indigenous leader and coca farmer, against US-led efforts to forcibly eradicate coca. During the 1990s, Morales and his allies created a political party called the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS). In late 2005, Morales was elected president of Bolivia and his new government deployed state power to protect the coca leaf.

The Founder

2020 ◽  
pp. 25-39
Author(s):  
Duane W. Roller
Keyword(s):  
Black Sea ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
The Black Sea ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Northern Asia ◽  
Black Sea Coast ◽  
New States ◽  
Hellenistic World ◽  
Sea Coast

The Pontic state began with the ambitions of Mithridates I, known as “the Founder,” a refugee from the unforgiving politics of the generation after Alexander the Great. He sought refuge in the rugged country of northern Asia Minor and declared himself king in the early third century BC, establishing what came to be called the kingdom of Pontos, creating its first capital, the fortress city of Amaseia on the Iris River. He also established a foothold on the Black Sea coast at Amastris. By the time of his death in 266 BC, Pontos had begun to emerge as one of the new states of the Hellenistic world.

scholarly journals The Ancient Samaritans and Greek Culture

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 290
Author(s):  
Pieter W. van der Horst
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Greek Culture ◽  
Gradual Process

After the conquest of the Near East by Alexander the Great in 332 BCE, the Samaritans, like all other peoples in the region, fell under the influence of Greek culture. In a gradual process of Hellenization, the Samaritans developed their own variant of Hellenism. The extant fragments of Samaritan literature in Greek, as well as quite a number of Greco-Samaritan inscriptions (both in Palestine and the diaspora) testify to the existence of a variegated Samaritan Hellenism.

Development and Political Theory in Classical Athens

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Federica Carugati ◽  
Josiah Ober ◽  
Barry R. Weingast
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Natural State ◽  
Considerable Part ◽  
Form Of Government ◽  
New Form ◽  
Political Economic

The birth of political thought has long been associated with the development of either the polis as a new form of political organization in Greece, or of democracy as a new form of government in Athens. This article suggests that this view ought to be expanded. Between the late 6th and 4th centuries bc, the Greek polis of Athens established large, participatory democratic institutions. But the transformation that the polis underwent did not merely affect political structures: in this period, Athens transitioned from an undeveloped, limited access, ‘natural state’ toward a developed open access society – a society characterized by impersonal, perpetual, and inclusive political, economic, legal and, social institutions. Those who witnessed this transformation first-hand attempted to grapple, often critically, with its implications. We show that Thucydides, Plato, and other Greek political thinkers devoted a considerable part of their work to analyzing the polis’ tendency toward not only political, but also economic, social, and legal inclusion. Without understanding this larger picture, we cannot adequately explain the development of Greek political thought.

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