scholarly journals The Power-Transition Crisis of the 160s–130s BCE and the Formation of the Parthian Empire

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-155
Author(s):  
Nikolaus Leo Overtoom
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Power Transition ◽  
International Environment ◽  
Military Conflicts ◽  
A Minor ◽  
Rapid Transformation

Abstract Alexander the Great’s conquests ushered in the Hellenistic era throughout the ancient Mediterranean and Middle East. In this period, the Seleucids, one of most successful of the Successor dynasties, ruled over most of the Middle East at the height of their power. Yet two rising powers in the ancient world, Rome and Parthia, played a crucial role in the decline and eventual fall of the Seleucids. In a prior article, I argued that geopolitical developments around the Eastern Mediterranean in the middle third century BCE were indirectly responsible for the emergence of the Parthian state in Iran. Disastrous military conflicts at home and abroad in the west caused a sudden decline of Seleucid power in the 240s–230s, triggering what political scientists call a power-transition crisis. This article utilizes similar approaches to historical analysis and International Relations theory to contend that, after a period of recovery, a further sudden decline of Seleucid power in the 160s–130s triggered another power-transition crisis that brought an end to Seleucid hegemony over the Middle East permanently. The crisis facilitated the rapid transformation of the Parthian state from a minor kingdom to a major empire, drastically changing the international environment of the ancient world.

Reign of Arrows

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikolaus Leo Overtoom
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
World State ◽  
State Security ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
International Environment ◽  
Hellenistic World ◽  
Material Evidence ◽  
Comprehensive Study

From minor nomadic tribe to major world empire, the story of the Parthians’ success in the ancient world is nothing short of remarkable. In their early history, the Parthians benefited from strong leadership, a flexible and accommodating cultural identity, and innovative military characteristics that allowed them to compete against and indeed eventually overcome Greek, Persian, Central Asian, and eventually Roman rivals who were often more powerful. Reign of Arrows provides the first comprehensive study dedicated entirely to early Parthian history within the Hellenistic world prior to contact with Rome and the first comprehensive effort since 1938 to evaluate early Parthian political history. It is a major effort to synthesize a wide array of especially recent scholarship across numerous fields of study in order to present the reader with the most cogent, well-rounded, and up-to-date account of the intersections of Hellenistic and Parthian history possible. It draws on a wide variety of sources to explain the political and military encounters that shaped the international environment of the Hellenistic Middle East from the middle third to the early first centuries BCE. This study treats broader issues of international relations in the ancient world, state decision-making, royal identity and ideology, evolving spatial perspectives and power relations, and state security concerns. It combines traditional historical approaches, such as source criticism and the integration of material evidence, with the incorporation of modern international relations theory to better examine the rise of the Parthians to dominance over the ancient Middle East.

From Migrants to Masters of the Middle East

2020 ◽  
pp. 27-64
Author(s):  
Nikolaus Leo Overtoom
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Cultural Factors ◽  
The State ◽  
International Environment ◽  
A Minor ◽  
Power And Influence

This chapter considers the reasons for the success of the Parthians in their rise from a minor nomadic group to a dominant imperial force. It analyzes the most important cultural factors of the early Parthian state, namely the versatility of Parthian society, the innovations of the Parthian military, and the early Arsacids’ ability to manage and exploit these qualities to the benefit of the state through their capable leadership and dynastic stability. These important qualities of the Parthian state established the exceptional advantages the Parthians needed to create, maintain, and expand their power and influence within the hotly contested and dangerously competitive international environment of the Hellenistic Middle East.

Greek Slave Systems in their Eastern Mediterranean Context, c.800-146 BC

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Demographic Variables ◽  
Archaic Period ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Complex Interplay ◽  
Cultural Economic ◽  
Early Archaic ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
Orthodox View

The orthodox view of ancient Mediterranean slavery holds that Greece and Rome were the only ‘genuine slave societies’ of the ancient world, that is, societies in which slave labour contributed significantly to the economy and underpinned the wealth of elites. Other societies, labelled as ‘societies with slaves’, apparently made little use of slave labour, and have therefore been largely ignored in recent work. Greek Slave Systems in their Eastern Mediterranean Context, c.800–146 BC presents a radically different view. Slavery was indeed particularly highly developed in Greece and Rome; but it was also highly developed in Carthage and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean, and played a not insignificant role in the affairs of elites in Assyria, Babylonia, and Persia. This new study portrays the Eastern Mediterranean world as a patchwork of regional slave systems. In Greece, diversity was the rule: from the early archaic period onwards, differing historical trajectories in various regions shaped the institution of slavery in manifold ways, producing very different slave systems in regions such as Sparta, Crete, and Attica. In the wider Eastern Mediterranean world, we find a similar level of diversity. Slavery was exploited to different degrees across all of these regions, and was the outcome of a complex interplay between cultural, economic, political, geographic, and demographic variables.

Historicising the Left in the Middle East: On Agency, Archives and Anti-capitalism

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 230-240
Author(s):  
Sara Salem
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
Valuable Contribution ◽  
Nationalist Movements ◽  
Critical Questions ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis article is a review of Ilham Khuri-Makdisi’s bookThe Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Capitalism, 1860–1914. I argue that this book is a valuable contribution to historiographies of the Left in the Middle East, a field that remains under-represented given the importance of labour to the nationalist movements as well as broader worker-activism in the region throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. I review the main debates of the book, and raise critical questions about aspects that could have been probed further, among them the questions of imperialism and race in contexts such as Egypt and Lebanon, and the relationship(s) between workers and the radical intellectuals discussed throughout the book.

Empire, Mission, Ecumenism, and Human Rights: “Religious Liberty” in Egypt, 1919–1956

2014 ◽  
Vol 83 (1) ◽  
pp. 110-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Stuart
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Middle East ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Religious Liberty ◽  
Complex Interplay ◽  
American Protestantism ◽  
Informal Empire ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Egyptian Government

Historians identify many connections between human rights and religion, including the influence of religious organizations on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Protestant ecumenical movement and American Protestantism played important roles in this regard. Historical analysis has so far taken insufficient account of another contemporaneous phenomenon important in terms both of religion and of rights—the British Empire. Its authorities typically offered a “fair field” to Christian missionaries irrespective of their nationality or denomination. They might also offer protection to religious minorities. In Egypt the situation was complicated. An Islamic country and a vital part of Britain's “informal” empire in the Middle East, Egypt was also an important area of missionary activity. To Egyptian government and British imperial representatives alike missionaries asserted their right and that of Christian converts to “religious liberty.” Focusing in part on Anglican mission in Egypt, this article examines the complex interplay of empire and Anglo-American ecumenism in missionary assertion of religious freedom. It also shows how imperialism and debates about “religious liberty” in Egypt and the Middle East influenced both “universal” and Egyptian national ideas about freedom of religion up to 1956.

scholarly journals The beginning of spreading of technology of manufacturing of Geometric Microlites with dorsal flat retouch

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 136-143
Author(s):  
Valery Aleksandrovich Manko
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
New Technology

The author analyzes the emergence and spread of geometric microliths with flat pressing dorsal retouch in the Near and Middle East, in the basin of the Eastern Mediterranean and in Eastern Europe. We consider the typology of these products and their role in the Neolithic complexes of Eastern Europe. Author makes analysis of the typology and technology of geometrics and detected primary and secondary centers of dissemination of new technology.

Rethinking of Turkey’s Geopolitics together with Eastern Mediterranean. Turkish Perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 705 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-66
Author(s):  
Arıboğan Deniz Ülke ◽  
Ibrahim Arslan
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
International System ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Past ◽  
Humanitarian Interventions ◽  
The Us ◽  
Transportation Accessibility ◽  
The Eu

In the studies carried out within the scope of geopolitical discipline, the expression "geography is destiny" is frequently used and it is claimed that geography has unchangeable, irreversible qualities and the policies implemented are shaped through this assumption. This assumption ignores the humanitarian interventions over the geography and makes it difficult to understand the results produced by these interventions at both regional and global level. Similarly, the dynamic nature of international relations reveals new actors in the international system in times of bounce and collapse, and the borders that expand or narrow with each transformation can differentiate the geopolitical view with new sovereign countries. In the historical process, transportation accessibility, trade, search for raw materials, security and alliance relations have caused the same geography to be interpreted differently in different periods. This situation also applies to the geography of Turkey had been the homeland of empires. The developments in the Middle East over the past two decades has created a sensitivity in the relations between Turkey and the West, especially the United States. Competing interests with the EU and the US in the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean, has necessitated a reassessment of Turkey's geography.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Laura Robson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
State Building ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Main Question ◽  
Mass Violence ◽  
Primary Mode

This chapter introduces the main question of the book: how did mass violence come to be a primary—perhaps the primary—mode of making political claims in the twentieth and twenty-first century Middle East? It asks when mass violence became a constitutive aspect of the political landscape of the region, why it took precedence over other strategies of state building and establishing political authority, and how governments, armies, and civilians alike came to think of mass violence as a viable and legitimate mode of claiming political space and national rights. Drawing on several different and largely separate historiographies, this introduction argues, makes it possible to produce a synthetic account of violence in the twentieth century Eastern Mediterranean that takes account of regional developments as much as individual national histories.

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