Walter Pohl, The Avars: A Steppe Empire in Central Europe, 567–822. Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 2018, xxiii, 636 pp., 4 maps.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 381-382
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
The West ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Cornell University ◽  
The North ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Nomadic People ◽  
Military Structure

Even though this is not a new publication, Pohl’s study on the Avars deserves particular attention, now in its first English translation. While not identified on the cover page, Pohl’s book was superbly translated into English by Will Sayers, who is briefly mentioned in the preface. Pohl had published his book originally in German in 1988, and it appeared in its third edition in 2015. Only in the last few decades has our awareness and understanding of the Avars grown and changed, particularly because intensive archaeological evidence has vastly changed our concept of that Steppe people who lived in the Carpathian Basin long before the Magyars settled there. Consequently, Pohl has made great efforts to reflect on the new insights and rewrote the respective sections of this book. In short, although here we hold in our hands ‘only’ the English translation of the third edition, The Avars represents, after all, a new approach and a thorough update of the current research on that people that had significant influence on the Byzantines, the Germanic peoples to the west and southwest, and to the north and east. They were the first to introduce into Europe the stirrup, but they left practically no written sources. They were Nomadic people, and yet not simply barbarians, as later chroniclers liked to call them. Hence, Pohl’s study on this early medieval people sheds important light on the political and military structure of early medieval Europe in an area where the Byzantine sphere of interest ended and where the Carolingians endeavored to place their stakes.

scholarly journals Grave Goods in Early Medieval Europe: regional variability and decline

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Brownlee
Keyword(s):  
Early Medieval ◽  
Regional Variability ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
The North ◽  
General Decline ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Grave Good ◽  
Gis Methods ◽  
Individual Choices ◽  
Grave Goods

This article analyses the use of grave goods in burials across early medieval Europe and how that use changed over the course of the 6th to 8th centuries CE with the widespread transition to unfurnished burial. It uses data gathered from published cemetery excavation reports from England, France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. The grave good use in these cemeteries was analysed using GIS methods to visualise regional differences, as well as statistical methods to analyse how grave good use evolved over time in those regions. This analysis revealed clear regional distinctions in grave good use, with England and Alamannia appearing similar, with relatively high levels of grave good use. Meanwhile, parts of Frankia and of Burgundy had considerably lower levels of grave good use. Distributions of individual artefact types tended to match those of overall numbers, but there were a few key exceptions, such as vessels, which followed a quite different pattern, being found in high numbers along the Frankish coast, but in much lower numbers elsewhere. Despite these overall trends, there was still considerable intra-regional and intra-cemetery variation that suggests communities and individuals had the ability to make highly individual choices about the way to bury their dead, along with the ability to subvert local norms. It also revealed that while there was a general decline in the use of grave goods across this period, and everywhere eventually reached the point of almost completely unfurnished burial, this decline occurred at different rates. In particular, there was a zone around the North Sea, including Kent, western Frankia, and the Low Countries, where there was little change in grave good use until it was suddenly abandoned in the early 8th century. Different types of objects declined at different rates across different regions, with few clear trends, suggesting that only personal accessories held a common significance across Europe; the meanings of all other object types were negotiated on a local basis.

The Second Crusade as Seen by Contemporaries

Traditio ◽  
1953 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 213-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giles Constable
Keyword(s):  
North Coast ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
The South ◽  
The West ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The North ◽  
River Elbe ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
South Shore ◽  
Naval Force

The years between 1146 and 1148 were signalized in the annals and chronicles of Medieval Europe by Christian campaigns on all fronts against the surrounding pagans and Moslems. The most important of these was directed towards the Holy Land, against the Moslems, who had recently seized Edessa. It consisted of no less than five expeditions. The two largest armies, commanded by the Emperor Conrad III and King Louis VII of France, followed the same route overland across the Balkans to Constantinople; both met with crushing defeats in Asia Minor and finally reached the Holy Land, as best they could, by land and sea. A third force, under Amadeus III of Savoy, moved down Italy, crossed from Brindisi to Durazzo, and joined the army of Louis at Constantinople late in 1147. In August of the same year a naval expedition led by Alfonso of Toulouse left the South of France and arrived in Palestine probably in the spring of 1148. At the same time, a joint Anglo-Flemish naval force sailed along the north coast of Europe, assisted the King of Portugal in the capture of Lisbon, proceeded around the peninsula early in 1148, attacked Faro, and presumably reached the Holy Land later that year. Meanwhile, in the northeast, four armies co-operated in a campaign against the pagan Wends across the river Elbe: a Danish army joined the Saxons under Henry the Lion and Archbishop Adalbero of Bremen in an attack on Dubin; another, larger, army led by Albert the Bear of Brandenburg and many other temporal and spiritual lords advanced against Demmin and Stettin; a fourth expedition, finally, under a brother of the Duke of Poland attacked from the southeast. In 1148, on the south shore of the Mediterranean, a powerful fleet under George of Antioch extended the control of Roger II of Sicily over the entire littoral from Tripoli to Tunis. In the West, four campaigns were directed against the crumbling power of the Almoravides. The Genoese in 1146 sacked Minorca and besieged Almeria. During the following year, the Emperor Alfonso VII of Castile advanced south through Andalusia and captured Almeria with the aid of a strong Genoese fleet, which in 1148 sailed north and joined the Count of Barcelona in his campaign against Tortosa. In the previous year, Alfonso Henriques of Portugal had captured Santarem and secured the assistance of the Anglo-Flemish fleet for an attack on Lisbon, which fell late in 1147.

Ritual under Change: Mongolian Influences on Horse Races and Mountain Divinity Worship in Tibet

Inner Asia ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 361-373
Author(s):  
Elke Studer
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Central Government ◽  
The Political ◽  
The South ◽  
The West ◽  
Horse Race ◽  
Autonomous Region ◽  
South Eastern ◽  
The North ◽  
History Of

AbstractThe article outlines the Mongolian influences on the biggest horse race festival in Nagchu prefecture in the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR).Since old times these horse races have been closely linked to the worship of the local mountain deity by the patrilineal nomadic clans of the South-Eastern Changthang, the North Tibetan plain. In the seventeenth century the West Mongol chieftain Güüshi Khan shaped the history of Tibet. To support his political claims, he enlarged the horse race festival's size and scale, and had his troops compete in the different horse race and archery competitions in Nagchu. Since then, the winners of the big race are celebrated side by side with the political achievements and claims of the central government in power.

The Xiongnu

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hyun Jin Kim
Keyword(s):  
Northern China ◽  
First Century ◽  
Aral Sea ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ruling Elite ◽  
The West ◽  
The North ◽  
First Empire ◽  
Western Eurasia ◽  
Asian People

The Xiongnu were an Inner Asian people who formed an empire, a state entity encompassing a multiethnic, multicultural, and polyglot population. The ruling elite of this empire were, for the most part, pastoralists. However, the empire also possessed a substantial agrarian base. In the late 3rd and early 2nd centuries bce, the Xiongnu created the first empire to unify much of Inner Asia. The Xiongnu Empire stretched from Manchuria in the east to the Aral Sea in the west, from the Baikal region in the north to the Ordos and Gansu regions of China in the south. In the 2nd century bce, the Xiongnu also subjected the Han Empire of China to tribute payments. However, late in that century, the Han broke the heqin policy of engagement with the Xiongnu and began a long struggle for supremacy with its northern foe. Political instability arising from protracted struggles over the imperial succession gradually undermined the Xiongnu Empire. In the middle of the first century ce, the state splintered into two halves: the Northern Xiongnu and the Southern Xiongnu. The Southern Xiongnu later conquered Northern China in the early 4th century ce, while the remnants of the Northern Xiongnu became the political and cultural forebears of the later Huns of western Eurasia.

Chinese People's Congresses and Legislative Embeddedness

1994 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
KEVIN J. O'BRIEN
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Development ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Interview Data ◽  
Modern China ◽  
The Political ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
Medieval Europe

Evidence from medieval Europe and modern China suggests that cooperation with strong executives plays a larger role in early legislative development than is generally acknowledged: that under conditions of absolutism (or near-absolutism), acceptance and exploitation of subordination may be a means to organizational development. In this article, the author relies primarily on interview data and Chinese field research to show that early legislative development can occur without significantly increasing conflict with established authorities and without winning autonomy. The author further argues that legislative embeddedness, as measured by clarified and expanded jurisdiction and increased capacity, is a product less of conflict than of executive support and attention, and that support and attention in the early stages of organizational development can be understood in terms of a legislature's presence, its reliability and usefulness, and the political standing of its leaders. The article's conclusion offers a new approach to early legislative development that shifts attention from conventional measures of institutionalization and hinges on understanding the process of embeddedness.

Romania since the Revolution

1990 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 484-496 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Almond
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
The West ◽  
Coup D'etat ◽  
The North ◽  
Communist Revolution ◽  
Party Members ◽  
National Salvation ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Revolution

THE VIOLENCE WHICH MARKED THE OVERTHROW OF Nicolae Ceaugescu's regime at Christmas 1989, and the recurrent disorders, especially in Bucharest, which have punctuated developments over the last nine months, have made Romania's experience of anti-Communist revolution strikingly different from that of its neighbours to the north and to the west. Whatever the political and social tensions emerging in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland (and whatever may be the GDR's legacy to a reunified Germany), it is unlikely that the charge of neo-communism will be central to their political debate. It is precisely that charge levelled against the government party (National Salvation Front/FSN) and against the person of Ion Ilescu by various opposition groups, and former prominent dissidents under Ceaugescu, which remains the most emotive issue in Romanian politics. The question of whether the revolution which overthrew Nicolae Ceauyescu and led to the dissolution of the Romanian Communist Party (RCP) was the result of a popular uprising or a coup d'état planned by Party members has haunted Romanian politics through the first nine months of the post-Ceauqescu period.

Civilization on a Crash Course? Imperialism, Subimperialism and the Political-Ecological Breaking Point of the Modern/Colonial World-System

2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 255-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonardo E. Figueroa-Helland ◽  
Tim Lindgren ◽  
Tori Pfaeffle
Keyword(s):  
Emerging Economies ◽  
Ecological Footprint ◽  
Breaking Point ◽  
The Political ◽  
Planetary Boundaries ◽  
Internal Colonialism ◽  
The West ◽  
The North ◽  
Catch Up ◽  
Urban Civilization

Modern/colonial civilization has already breached several planetary boundaries and its ecological footprint is overwhelming the Earth’s carrying capacity. The ecological space for the growth of modern urban civilization is at its breaking point. We conduct two case studies, of Russia and Brazil, to show that the aspirations of semi-peripheral “emerging economies” to catch-up, clone and compete with the West within the hegemonic terms of an ecologically unsustainable and socially stratifying civilizational model requires their systematic practice of internal colonialism and regional subimperialism. Playing catch-up with the North and its unsustainable mode of political economy demands the present-day rehearsal, in accelerated, compressed and subimperial modes of the structurally violent practices that have underpinned the North’s “rise” to planetary dominance. Yet in striving to catch-up and join in the overconsumptive and exploitative lifestyle of economic cores, large “emerging economies” like thebricsare in an economic, political and military crash course against the hegemonically-entrenched Northern core powers they aspire to emulate, in what looks like an increasingly volatile scramble to grab whatever dwindling ecological space is left in a rapidly degraded planet.

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