Periodization of Antiquity’s History in Studies of I. M. Grevs and N. I. Kareev in Late XIX — Early XX Centuries

The periodization of history and the definition of the framework of Antiquity and the Middle Ages were questions open for scientific discussion at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, when the Russian school of ancient and medieval studies was actively developing in Russia and especially in St. Petersburg. The concept of I. M. Grevs was that the Roman Empire marked the beginning of Late Antiquity with its special economic structure in the form of large land ownership, but this period ended with the onset of the era of barbarian kingdoms. I. M. Grevs separated the Roman Empire from the period of classical Antiquity and at the same time showed its difference from the way of the early Middle Ages. In his courses on general history, read after I. M. Grevs, N. I. Kareev described the ancient universal monarchies, which sought to extend their power to the limits of the ecumene and unite the various traditions of organizing power. It should be concluded that N. I. Kareev supplemented the periodization proposed by I. M. Grevs, finding in the Ancient world the same turning point in the form of the Hellenistic monarchy, similar to that found in Late Antiquity by I. M. Grevs.

Feeling Bad about Emotional History

This article presents a critical review of The Feeling of History, a recent work by the American anthropologist Charles Hirschkind. In this book, the author treats Andalucismo, a political movement that arose in modern Andalusia early in the twentieth century and was chiefly characterized by an extremely positive view of the Islamic Iberian past (al-Andalus)—a tendency that is certainly unusual in Spain and goes against the prevalent Spanish nationalism. In his book, Hirschkind not only develops an uncritical view of Andalucismo and its intrinsically emotional reading of the past but also legitimizes a rather farfetched conflation of modern Andalusia and al-Andalus. Moreover, he offers an extremely shallow and unnuanced reading of current Spanish scholarship on the Middle Ages, branding it wholesale as an heir to Francoism. He also lends legitimacy to those who call into question the origin of al-Andalus in the Islamic conquest of 711 CE—representatives of an unscholarly approach that has been largely dismissed by academic outlets since the 1970s. Burdened by heavy ideological prejudices and hampered by the author’s limited knowledge of the most recent academic historiographic debates in the field of Iberian medieval studies, the book represents a failed attempt to present the Anglophone readership with a consistent introduction to Andalusian nationalism together with a critical appraisal of the Andalusian nationalist interpretation of the medieval Iberian past.