scholarly journals The Return of the Sacral King

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 51-65
Author(s):  
Paul R. DeHart ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Political Order ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
The World ◽  
Ancient Christianity ◽  
The City

In Pagans & Christians in the City, Steven D. Smith argues that in contrast to ancient Rome, ancient Christianity, following Judaism, located the sacred outside the world, desacralizing the cosmos and everything in it—including the political order. It thereby introduced a political dualism and potentially contending allegiances. Although Smith’s argument is right so far as it goes, it underplays the role of Christianity’s immanent dimension in subverting the Roman empire and the sacral pattern of antiquity. This division of authority not only undermined the Roman empire and antique sacral political order more generally—it also subverts the modern state, which, in the work of Hobbes and Rousseau, sought to remarry what Western Christianity divorced.

The Oxford Handbook of the Merovingian World

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Art History ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
The Political ◽  
Byzantine Empire ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
British Isles ◽  
European Culture ◽  
The World

The Merovingian era is one of the best studied yet least known periods of European history. From the fifth to the eighth centuries, the inhabitants of Gaul (what now comprises France, southern Belgium, Luxembourg, Rhineland Germany and part of modern Switzerland), a mix of Gallo-Romans and Germanic arrivals under the political control of the Merovingian dynasty, sought to preserve, use, and reimagine the political, cultural, and religious power of ancient Rome while simultaneously forging the beginnings of what would become medieval European culture and identity. As a result, the Merovingian era is at the heart of historical debates about what happened to western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. Yet in these centuries, the inhabitants of the Merovingian kingdoms created a culture that was the product of these traditions and achieved a balance between the world they inherited and the imaginative solutions that they bequeathed to Europe. Situated at the crossroads of Europe, connecting northern Europe with the Mediterranean and the British Isles with the Byzantine empire, Merovingian Gaul also benefitted from the global reach of the late Roman Empire. In this collection of 46 essays by scholars of Merovingian history, archaeology, and art history, we encounter the new perspectives and scientific approaches that shape our changing view of this extraordinary era.

Fighting for Virtue

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan McCargo
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
World View ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
The World

This book investigates how Thailand's judges were tasked by the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej (Rama IX) in 2006 with helping to solve the country's intractable political problems—and what happened next. Across the last decade of Rama IX's rule, the book examines the world of Thai judges: how they were recruited, trained, and promoted, and how they were socialized into a conservative world view that emphasized the proximity between the judiciary and the monarchy. The book delves into three pivotal freedom of expression cases that illuminate Thai legal and cultural understandings of sedition and treason, before examining the ways in which accusations of disloyalty made against controversial former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra came to occupy a central place in the political life of a deeply polarized nation. The book navigates the highly contentious role of the Constitutional Court as a key player in overseeing and regulating Thailand's political order before concluding with reflections on the significance of the Bhumibol era of “judicialization” in Thailand. In the end, under a new king, who appears far less reluctant to assert his own power and authority, the Thai courts may now assume somewhat less significance as a tool of the monarchical network.

Shape of the Roman Order

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel J. Gargola
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Spatial Orientation ◽  
Systematic Approach ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Modern State ◽  
The World ◽  
The City ◽  
The Way

In recent years, a long-established view of the Roman Empire during its great age of expansion has been called into question by scholars who contend that this model has made Rome appear too much like a modern state. This is especially true in terms of understanding how the Roman government ordered the city––and the world around it––geographically. In this innovative, systematic approach, Daniel J. Gargola demonstrates how important the concept of space was to the governance of Rome. He explains how Roman rulers, without the means for making detailed maps, conceptualized the territories under Rome’s power as a set of concentric zones surrounding the city. In exploring these geographic zones and analyzing how their magistrates performed their duties, Gargola examines the idiosyncratic way the elite made sense of the world around them and how it fundamentally informed the way they ruled over their dominion. From what geometrical patterns Roman elites preferred to how they constructed their hierarchies in space, Gargola considers a wide body of disparate materials to demonstrate how spatial orientation dictated action, shedding new light on the complex peculiarities of Roman political organization.

"Once Mistress of the World :" Rome, St. Peter, and female devotion in the early Middle Ages

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Autumn Dolan
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Social Rank ◽  
The Political ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
The West ◽  
The World ◽  
Papal Authority ◽  
The City

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] I reassess the reception of Rome in the early medieval west from the historiographical background of women's history. Women's conception of Rome as a cult center, an intervening ally, and a devotional adviser between 300-900 CE proved crucial in a coming-of-age period for the papacy, whose spiritual authority had begun to resonate from the Mediterranean northward as the vicar of St. Peter. My consideration of women through the lens of Petrine devotion and Roman networks stands out from previous studies that cite papal legitimacy and Roman influence in the political and rhetorical debates among the pope, bishops, and rulers. Through examinations of women's devotional practices involving Rome, it is possible to see the significance of the city and its representatives in the devotional lives of western Christians along with women's vital part in maintaining and extending papal authority and Roman cults in the first millennium. This study draws from hagiographical, epistolary, and literary sources in addition to the use of material evidence such as inscriptions, devotional objects, and architecture. None of these sources are new to early medievalists, but when read for the Roman affiliations within female devotion, they bring us to expand our impressions of Rome's reception in the west and redefine our expectations of women's religious practices. In order to capture the breadth of early medieval women's associations with Rome, this study takes a broad geographic and social approach. The geographic focus for this study spans from Rome to include Francia and Anglo-Saxon England in order to emphasize the extent of Rome's appeal, and also to demonstrate women's involvement in the widespread travel networks that culminated at the city. Although elite women dominate sources for early medieval women, it is nevertheless possible to tease out from evaluations of cult worship the devotional trends of popular religion, and with them the deeds of the poor or middling ranks in society. This broad examination of devotion in terms of geography and social rank contributes to a dynamic image of the late antique and early medieval worlds, providing further caution against assumptions that the local predominated in the worldview of those living in the centuries following the political fall of Rome. As we continue to gradually reinsert Rome into the narrative of the early medieval west, women should figure in our discussions of the developments in papal authority, the success of the cults of Roman saints, and the facilitation of pilgrimage and exchange routes that extended from Rome through Francia and across the English Channel. The continuity of women's roles in domestic devotion between late antique and early medieval culture grounds the survey of Rome and its reception in the west, even as we struggle with the real changes in its political and economic structures. Although early medieval men and women witnessed a localization of thought and exchange following the withdrawal of the Roman Empire, they were no less aware of the enduring ties between their region and that of Rome, the city that was once “Mistress of the World.

COOPERATION BETWEEN UZBEKISTAN AND AFGHANISTAN

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (10) ◽  
pp. 46-52
Author(s):  
Umidjon Sh. Boymurodov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Diplomatic Relations ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
World Community ◽  
The World ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Economic Ties

The study analyzesthe establishment of diplomatic relations with the Republic of Uzbekistan after independence, the analysis of cooperation in the political, economic, social and cultural spheres, the role of Uzbekistan in the establishment of peace in Afghanistan. Conclusions are given on the actions of 'y. The escalation of the political situation in Afghanistan in the last decade of the twentieth century, the rise to power of the Taliban, the threat posed by countries in the region, Uzbekistan's proposals to the world community for peace in Afghanistan are widely covered. After the formation of a modern state in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan's political and economic ties have expanded. The presidents of the two countries have met several times and signed cooperation agreements, and Uzbekistan's efforts to develop industry, transport and agriculture in Afghanistan have been widely covered and analyzed

On Metaphysics and the Political: A Polemics of Reading Baudelaire in the 1930s

2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-259
Author(s):  
Joseph Acquisto
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern Poetry ◽  
Progressive Politics ◽  
The World ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

This essay examines a polemic between two Baudelaire critics of the 1930s, Jean Cassou and Benjamin Fondane, which centered on the relationship of poetry to progressive politics and metaphysics. I argue that a return to Baudelaire's poetry can yield insight into what seems like an impasse in Cassou and Fondane. Baudelaire provides the possibility of realigning metaphysics and politics so that poetry has the potential to become the space in which we can begin to think the two of them together, as opposed to seeing them in unresolvable tension. Or rather, the tension that Baudelaire animates between the two allows us a new way of thinking about the role of esthetics in moments of political crisis. We can in some ways see Baudelaire as responding, avant la lettre, to two of his early twentieth-century readers who correctly perceived his work as the space that breathes a new urgency into the questions of how modern poetry relates to the world from which it springs and in which it intervenes.

“There is such a situation that Comrade Svoboda is under pressure”. The Soviet leadership and the settlement of relations with Czechoslovakia. May 1969

2019 ◽  
pp. 512-519
Author(s):  
Teymur Dzhalilov ◽  
Nikita Pivovarov
Keyword(s):  
Central Committee ◽  
Secretary General ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Political ◽  
Soviet Government ◽  
Soviet Leadership ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
The World ◽  
The Common

The published document is a part of the working record of The Secretariat of the CPSU Central Committee on May 5, 1969. The employees of The Common Department of the CPSU Central Committee started writing such working records from the end of 1965. In contrast to the protocols, the working notes include speeches of the secretaries of the Central Committee, that allow to deeper analyze the reactions of the top party leadership, to understand their position regarding the political agenda. The peculiarity of the published document is that the Secretariat of the Central Committee did not deal with the most important foreign policy issues. It was the responsibility of the Politburo. However, it was at a meeting of the Secretariat of the Central Committee when Brezhnev raised the question of inviting G. Husák to Moscow. The latter replaced A. Dubček as the first Secretary of the Communist party of Czechoslovakia in April 1969. As follows from the document, Leonid Brezhnev tried to solve this issue at a meeting of the Politburo, but failed. However, even at the Secretariat of the Central Committee the Leonid Brezhnev’s initiative at the invitation of G. Husák was not supported. The published document reveals to us not only new facets in the mechanisms of decision-making in the CPSU Central Committee, the role of the Secretary General in this process, but also reflects the acute discussions within the Soviet government about the future of the world socialist systems.

Comedy and the Athenian Ideal

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Konstan
Keyword(s):  
American Democracy ◽  
Intended Audience ◽  
The World ◽  
Hollywood Movies ◽  
Hellenistic World ◽  
City State ◽  
The City ◽  
New Comedy ◽  
A Performance

New Comedy was a Panhellenic phenomenon. It may be that a performance in Athens was still the acme of a comic playwright’s career, but Athens was no longer the exclusive venue of the genre. Yet Athens, or an idealized version of Athens, remained the setting or backdrop for New Comedy, whatever its provenance or intended audience. New Comedy was thus an important vehicle for the dissemination of the Athenian polis model throughout the Hellenistic world, and it was a factor in what has been termed ‘the great convergence’. The role of New Comedy in projecting an idealized image of the city-state may be compared to that of Hollywood movies in conveying a similarly romanticized, but not altogether false, conception of American democracy to populations around the world.

Trade, Commerce, and the State in the Roman World

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
The State ◽  
Market Regulation ◽  
External Trade ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Legal Structures ◽  
The City ◽  
Political Character ◽  
Different Sources

This interdisciplinary volume presents nineteen chapters by Roman historians and archaeologists, discussing trade in the Roman Empire in the period c.100 BC to AD 350, and in particular the role of the Roman state, in shaping the institutional framework for trade within and outside the Empire, in taxing that trade, and in intervening in the markets to ensure the supply of particular commodities, especially for the city of Rome and for the army. The chapters in this volume address facets of the subject on the basis of widely different sources of evidence—historical, papyrological, and archaeological—and are grouped in three sections: institutional factors (taxation, legal structures, market regulation, financial institutions); evidence for long-distance trade within the Empire, in wood, stone, glass, and pottery; and trade beyond the frontiers, with the East (as far as China), India, Arabia, and the Red Sea, and the Sahara. Rome’s external trade with realms to the east emerges as being of particular significance to the fisc. But in the eastern part of the Empire at least, the state appears, in collaboration with the elite holders of wealth, to have adapted the mechanisms of taxation, both direct and indirect, to support its need for revenue. On the other hand, the price of that collaboration, which was in effect a fiscal partnership, in slightly different forms in East and West, in the longer term fundamentally changed the political character of the Empire.

Populism as a Political Strategy: An Approach’s Enduring — and Increasing — Advantages

2021 ◽  
pp. 003232172110026
Author(s):  
Kurt Weyland
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
Political Strategies ◽  
Chief Executives ◽  
Strategic Approach ◽  
Urgent Task ◽  
The World

Responding to Rueda’s questions, this essay explains the political-strategic approach (PSA) to populism and highlights its analytical strengths, which have become even more important with the emergence of populist governments across the world. PSA identifies populism’s core by emphasizing the central role of personalistic leaders who tend to operate in opportunistic ways, rather than consistently pursuing programmatic or ideological orientations. PSA is especially useful nowadays, when scholars’ most urgent task is to elucidate the political strategies of populist chief executives and their problematic repercussions, especially populism’s threat to democracy.

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