Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 267-272
Author(s):  
Fanny Bessard
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
Economic Change ◽  
Institutional Innovation ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Integration ◽  
Urban Economic ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Early Islamic ◽  
Late Roman

The conclusion summarizes the findings of the volume as a whole. Recent scholarship has been preoccupied with tracing continuities. Rather than putting the emphasis on late Roman and Iranian inheritances, this book has argued that the institutional innovation undertaken by early Muslim caliphs from 700 resulted in the urban economic successes, which recent archaeological endeavours have unveiled. Rather than viewing the early Islamic economy as the almost serendipitous upshot of the political integration of the Near East, this book locates the engine of economic change squarely within the early Islamic political elite, whose commercial practices, subjectivities, and theories brought about a thoroughgoing restructuring of trade and production, with a clear rupture with tradition occurring after 800.

Homo novus/New man

Classics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henriette van der Blom
Keyword(s):  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Marcus Tullius Cicero ◽  
New Man ◽  
Imperial Period ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Politically Active ◽  
Late Roman

The concept homo novus (literally “new man”) and its derivative novitas (“newness” or “the quality of being a new man”) were used by politicians and authors writing about political life in the late Roman republic (c. 133–131 bce). There is no ancient definition of the term, and modern scholars disagree on the precise meaning. However, ancient usage suggests that homo novus was a political term used to describe a politician from outside the senatorial elite in Rome, who was successfully elected to a political magistracy, especially the higher magistracies of praetor and consul. The existence of the term indicates an attempt to maintain exclusivity in the political elite of senatorial families and that this attempt was directed not at the lower classes but mainly at members of the equestrian class, who were their equals in socioeconomic terms. The term was used pejoratively by elite Roman politicians to scorn newcomers competing for the limited number of magistracies; in response some homines novi tried to present their background as advantageous: their lack of politically active ancestors made their own candidacy for office untainted by established networks and corruption. The term and its underlying political and social dynamics is crucial for understanding the rhetoric of the politician and author Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 bce) in particular, but also the historical monographs of his near-contemporary Gaius Sallustius Crispus (86–c. 35 bce), and the works of biographers and historians writing about the late republic. Cicero is the largest exponent of the term, but his speeches suggests that other new men dipped into the rhetoric of novitas. Understanding the political and social dynamics behind this concept is also important for any study of late Roman republican politics and the major sociopolitical changes taking place during the civil war and triumviral period (c. 49–31 bce) and the early imperial period (c. 31 bce–100 ce).

Private Yugoslavism and Serbian Public Opinion, 1890–1914

2015 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-28
Author(s):  
Dubravka Stojanović
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
The South ◽  
Future State ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Public Demonstrations

This article addresses manifestations of Yugoslavism in the pre-1914 period that have been neglected by recent scholarship. Its focus on everyday life reveals that since the mid-1890s there were constant contacts between the major ethnic groups that would constitute Yugoslavia after 1918. These contacts were not initiated by the political elite or by official activities. They were instead the reactions of ordinary residents of Belgrade who “discovered” peoples speaking the same language and having similar problems, “as we do.” There were many visits from Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia to Belgrade in the period 1890–1914 organized by different associations or individuals. Some of them organized public gatherings in the center of Belgrade that allowed residents to show “their love” to “our compatriots” from the South Slav lands of Austria-Hungary. Some of these events turned into real public demonstrations even before 1903, under the Obrenović dynasty and government, which was not Yugoslav oriented. And under the succeeding Karađorđević dynasty, even its leading Radical politicians favored the Yugoslav idea for a future state, although withholding public support until after the Serbian victory in the First Balkan War in 1912.

The Political Integration of British Women: The Response of a Traditional System to a Newly Emergent Group

1983 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorgen S. Rasmussen
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Integration ◽  
Traditional System ◽  
Intractable Problems ◽  
The Common ◽  
Irish Question ◽  
Governmental System

Britain has been a model of political stability for so long that thinking of it as anything but that is difficult. The familiar image of Edwardian England is that of an Indian summer spent with a jovial uncle. This was a system, however, that was in crisis and was recognized by its contemporaries as being so. Regardless of whether the challenges of the Irish question, labor unrest, and suffragette militancy were connected or merely coincidential (see Pelling, 1968: 147-164), all three shared the common characteristic of extra-parliamentary activism and of violent—either actual or anticipated—methods. Furthermore, the system also was burdened with other contentious issues, as “politics after 1901 were increasingly dominated by controversies about matters which most Victorians had regarded as settled and closed to discussion” (Read, 1972: 16-17). If ever a governmental system suffered from an overload of simultaneous demands from a multiplicity of pressing and intractable problems, this was it. Contrary to what sometimes has been supposed, Britain’s political elite did not regard the approaching international hostilities as providing a means of alleviating these burdens by welding the country together with patriotic fervor. Instead they feared that war would be the final blow undermining the governments’s authority and, perhaps, producing civil war (French, 1982: 85-95).

Religion and the Construction of a Christian Roman Polity

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-113
Author(s):  
Francesco Rotiroti
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Dimension ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Theories Of Religion ◽  
Ancient Christianity

This article seeks to define a theoretical framework for the study of the relation between religion and the political community in the Roman world and to analyze a particular case in point. The first part reviews two prominent theories of religion developed in the last fifty years through the combined efforts of anthropologists and classicists, arguing for their complementary contribution to the understanding of religion's political dimension. It also provides an overview of the approaches of recent scholarship to the relation between religion and the Roman polity, contextualizing the efforts of this article toward a theoretical reframing of the political and institutional elements of ancient Christianity. The second part focuses on the religious legislation of the Theodosian Code, with particular emphasis on the laws against the heretics and their performance in the construction of the political community. With their characteristic language of exclusion, these laws signal the persisting overlap between the borders of the political community and the borders of religion, in a manner that one would expect from pre-Christian civic religions. Nevertheless, the political essence of religion did also adapt to the ecumenical dimension of the empire. Indeed, the religious norms of the Code appear to structure a community whose borders tend to be identical to the borders of the whole inhabited world, within which there is no longer room for alternative affiliations; the only possible identity outside this community is that of the insane, not belonging to any political entity and thus unable to possess any right.

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