Reinventing the Capital: The Ideological Use of Monumental Architecture in Michael VIII Palaiologos’ Constantinople (1261–1282)

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-177
Author(s):  
Jessica Varsallona

Abstract After the recapture of Constantinople (1261), Michael VIII Palaiologos (1259–82) re-shaped the city through extensive building activities. Though scholars have previously considered the involvement of Emperor Michael in the urban restoration of the capital, no attention has been devoted to the links between the different aspects of this programme of renewal. This paper advocates for the presence of an ambitious and systematic urban plan behind Michael VIII’s commissions focussed on the restoration of the southern shore of Constantinople and related to the political, religious, ideological, and aesthetic policies of this emperor.

Antiquity ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 91 (358) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Brysbaert

Mycenaean monumental architecture has been well studied. Yet the extent to which large-scale building programmes may have contributed to change and crises in Late Bronze Age Greece (c. 1600–1100/1070 BC) has never been investigated using actual field data. The aim of the SETinSTONE project is to assess if and how monumental building activities in Late Bronze Age Greece affected the political and socio-economic structures of Mycenaean polities, and how people may have responded to these changes (Brysbaert 2013).


Author(s):  
Edmund Thomas

We have seen how the forms of individual buildings under the Antonines reflected the desires of patrons or architects to achieve what we might call ‘monumentality’, often at the expense of other, less imposing buildings around them. But as these were public buildings they also reflected on the dignity of the city. Every town in the Roman Empire was an amalgam of many different single constructions that each represented the aspirations of their builders. So how far did entire Roman cities possess ‘monumentality’ in their own right, and how much did individual monumental buildings contribute to it? Did the monumentality of the city amount to more than the sum of its parts? And to what extent did monumental architecture, which for individual patrons and architects involved self-assertion and rivalry with others, express a spirit of inter-city rivalry that threatened the unity of Empire? Buildings have political meaning in many ways. Various facets of the political aspect of architecture in the ancient world have been set out by Wolfgang Sonne. First, the erection of a public building is itself a political and public activity, because it is a highly visible process and involves large numbers of workmen. The impact of this factor on popular awareness of architecture is often neglected, but the monuments of contractors employed during the building boom in Flavian and Trajanic Rome suggest that the physical aspects of construction, such as huge cranes and scaffolding structures, had themselves a certain monumentality. Second, the visual layout of public architecture can have political implications, especially the relative amounts of space given to public and private buildings and their distribution and size. In this way architecture shows how power is shared in a community. Third, some buildings are political in function, not only assemblybuildings like the Roman Curia Julia, but also audience-halls, public precincts, temples, theatres, and amphitheatres housing imperial rituals. Finally, architecture can be used as a medium of political propaganda: for example, public spaces like the Fora of Augustus and Trajan, adorned with deliberately chosen political statuary, or the imperial palaces of Augustus or Domitian.


2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-145
Author(s):  
İsmail Güllü

Yarım aşırı aşan bir geçmişe sahip Almanya’ya göç olgusu beraberinde önemli bir edebi birikimi (Migrantenliteratur) de getirmiştir. Farklı adlandırmalar ile anılan bu edebi birikim, kendi içinde de farklı renkleri de barındıran bir özelliğe sahiptir. Edebi yazını besleyen en önemli kaynaklardan biri toplumdur. Yazarın içinde yaşadığı toplumsal yapı ve problemler üstü kapalı veya açık bir şekilde onun yazılarına yansımaktadır. Bu bağlamda araştırma, 50’li yaşlarında Almanya’ya giden ve ömrünün sonuna kadar orada yaşayan, birçok edebi ve düşünsel çalışması ile Türk edebiyatında önemli bir isim olan Fakir Baykurt’un “Koca Ren” ve Yüksek Fırınlar” adlı romanları ile birlikte Duisburg Üçlemesi’nin son kitabı olan “Yarım Ekmek” romanında ele aldığı konu ve roman kahramanları üzerinden din ve gelenek olgusu sosyolojik bir yaklaşımla ele alınmaktadır. Toplumcu-gerçekçi çizgide yer alan yazarın, uzun yıllar yaşadığı Türkiye’deki siyasi ve ideolojik geçmişi bu romanda kullandığı dil ve kurguladığı kahramanlarda kendini göstermektedir. Romanda Almanya’nın Duisburg şehrinde yaşayan Türklerin yeni kültürel ortamda yaşadıkları çatışma, kültürel şok, arada kalmışlık, iki kültürlülük temaları ön plandadır. Yazar romanda sadece Almanya’daki Türkleri ele almamakta, aynı zamanda Türkiye ile hatta başka ülkeler ile de ilişkilendirmeler yaparak bireysel ve toplumsal konuları ele almaktadır. Araştırmada, romanda yer alan dini ve geleneksel unsurlar sosyolojik olarak analiz edilmiştir. Genel anlamda bir göç romanı olma özelliği yanında Yarım Ekmek romanında dini, siyasi ve ideolojik birçok yorum ve tartışma söz konusudur. Romandaki bu veriler, inanç, ritüel, siyaset ve toplumsal boyutlarda kategorize edilerek ele alınmıştır.  ENGLISH ABSTRACTReligion and identity reflections in literature of immigrant: Religion and Tradition in Fakir Baykurt’s novel Yarım EkmekThe immigration fact which has nearly half century in Germany have brought a significant literal accumulation (Migrantenliteratur) in its wake. This literal accumulation, which is named as several denominations, has a feature including different colours in itself. One of the most important source snourishing literature is society. Societal structure and problems that the writer lives inside, directly or indirectly reflect on his/her compositions. In this context, the matter of religion and tradition by way of the issue and fictious characters in the novel of Fakir Baykurt who went to Germany in her 50’s and lived in there till his death and who is a considerable name in Turkish literature with his several literal and intellectual workings; “Yarım Ekmek” which is the third novel of Duisburg Trilogy with “Koca Ren” and “Yüksek Fırınlar” are discussed sociologically in the study. The political and ideological past of the socialist realist lined writer in Turkey where he spent his life for a long time, manifest itself on the speech and fictious characters of novel. In the novel, themes of new Turks’ conflict, cultural shock, being in the middle, bi culturalism in their new cultural nature in Duisburg which is the city they live in. The writer not only deals with Turks in Germany but also personal and social subjects via comparing them to Turkey and even other countries. In the study, religious and traditional elements analyzed sociologically. Besides the speciality of being a migration novel in general, there are a lot of religious, political and ideological interpretations and discussions in the novel. These datum in the novel are examinated in the context of belief, ritual, politics and social categorisation. 


Author(s):  
Aled Davies

This book is a study of the political economy of Britain’s chief financial centre, the City of London, in the two decades prior to the election of Margaret Thatcher’s first Conservative government in 1979. The primary purpose of the book is to evaluate the relationship between the financial sector based in the City, and the economic strategy of social democracy in post-war Britain. In particular, it focuses on how the financial system related to the social democratic pursuit of national industrial development and modernization, and on how the norms of social democratic economic policy were challenged by a variety of fundamental changes to the City that took place during the period....


1998 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan Dambruyne

This article investigates the relationship between social mobility and status in guilds and the political situation in sixteenth-century Ghent. First, it argues that Ghent guilds showed neither a static picture of upward mobility nor a rectilinear and one-way evolution. It demonstrates that the opportunities for social promotion within the guild system were, to a great extent, determined by the successive political regimes of the city. Second, the article proves that the guild boards in the sixteenth century had neither a typically oligarchic nor a typically democratic character. Third, the investigation of the houses in which master craftsmen lived shows that guild masters should not be depicted as a monolithic social bloc, but that significant differences in status and wealth existed. The article concludes that there was no linear positive connection between the duration of a master craftsman's career and his wealth and social position.


Urban History ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark McCarthy

This article investigates the socio-economic and morphological aspects of how the city of Cork, having lost the salient elements of its medieval character in the early 1600s, transformed into a prosperous Atlantic port city during the period of renaissance it experienced between 1660–1700. Despite the political upheavals caused by the expulsions of the Catholics in the 1640s and 1650s, the city increased in size and population from the early 1660s onwards as it began to thrive on the provisions trade to the colonial plantations of British America. In the process, Cork assumed a higher rank in the general European urban hierarchy.


1985 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toyin Falola

The view that Ibadan society in the nineteenth century did not discriminate against strangers, irrespective of their origins in Yorubaland, is now firmly entrenched in the literature. To be sure, Ibadan, a new nineteenth-century Yoruba city-state, founded as a consequence of the political crises of the early decades of the century, did maintain an ‘open door’ policy to strangers, many of whom went there as adventurers, craftsmen and traders, hoping to acquire wealth and fame. This article, however, controverts the view that Ibadan society gave the strangers and the indigenes equal opportunities to wealth and power. It argues that all the key political offices went only to the Oyo-Ibadan group which dominated the city-state. Strangers were also not allowed to participate fully in the leading heights of the economy, with the result that most of the wealthy citizens were also of Oyo-Yoruba origin.In the 1890s discrimination against strangers was such that a number of moves were made to expel them. However, the British, who imposed colonial rule on Ibadan in 1893, were against the expulsion of strangers.


2009 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 426-459 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krisztina Fehérváry

In the two decades since the fall of state socialism, the widespread phenomenon ofnostalgiein the former Soviet satellites has made clear that the everyday life of state socialism, contrary to stereotype, was experienced and is remembered in color. Nonetheless, popular accounts continue to depict the Soviet bloc as gray and colorless. As Paul Manning (2007) has argued, color becomes a powerful tool for legitimating not only capitalism, but democratic governance as well. An American journalist, for example, recently reflected on her own experience in the region over a number of decades:It's hard to communicate how colorless and shockingly gray it was behind the Iron Curtain … the only color was the red of Communist banners. Stores had nothing to sell. There wasn't enough food… . Lines formed whenever something, anything, was for sale. The fatigue of daily life was all over their faces. Now… fur-clad women confidently stride across the winter ice in stiletto heels. Stores have sales… upscale cafés cater to cosmopolitan clients, and magazine stands, once so strictly controlled, rival those in the West. … Life before was so drab. Now the city seems loaded with possibilities (Freeman 2008).


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