This book compares the ways in which new powers arose in the shadows of the Roman Empire and its Byzantine and Carolingian successors, of Iran, the Caliphate and China in the first millennium CE. These new powers were often established by external military elites who had served the empire. They remained in an uneasy balance with the remaining empire, could eventually replace it, or be drawn into the imperial sphere again. Some relied on dynastic legitimacy, others on ethnic identification, while most of them sought imperial legitimation. Across Eurasia, their dynamic was similar in many respects; why were the outcomes so different?
Contributors are Alexander Beihammer, Maaike van Berkel, Francesco Borri, Andrew Chittick, Michael R. Drompp, Stefan Esders, Ildar Garipzanov, Jürgen Paul, Walter Pohl, Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Helmut Reimitz, Jonathan Shepard, Q. Edward Wang, Veronika Wieser, and Ian N. Wood.

Table des matières

Front Matter
Preliminary Material

Editors: Walter Pohl and Veronika Wieser
Download PDF
Copyright page

Editors: Walter Pohl and Veronika Wieser
Preface

Editors: Walter Pohl and Veronika Wieser
Pages: IX–X
List of Figures

Editors: Walter Pohl and Veronika Wieser
Pages: XI–XII
Contributors

Editors: Walter Pohl and Veronika Wieser
Restricted Access
Introduction: The Emergence of New Polities in the Shadows of Empire

Authors: Walter Pohl and Veronika Wieser
Pages: 1–49
Restricted Access
Part 1 The Later Roman Empire and the Post-Roman Kingdoms in the West

Editors: Walter Pohl and Veronika Wieser
Pages: 51
Chapter 1 When Did the West Roman Empire Fall?

Author: Ian N. Wood
Pages: 55–77
Chapter 2 The Role of Peoples in the Emergence of the Post-Roman Kingdoms

Author: Walter Pohl
Pages: 78–110
Chapter 3 In the Shadow of the Roman Empire: Layers of Legitimacy and Strategies of Legitimization in the Regna of the Early Medieval West

Author: Stefan Esders
Pages: 111–133
Restricted Access
Part 2 The Carolingian Empire and the Emerging Polities in Its Northern and Eastern Periphery

Editors: Walter Pohl and Veronika Wieser
Pages: 135
Chapter 4 When the Bavarians Became Bavarian

The Politicization of Ethnicity and Crystallization of Ethnic Identities in the Shadow of Carolingian Rule (8th to 9th Century)

Author: Helmut Reimitz
Pages: 137–178
Chapter 5 Peripheral Polities North of the Carolingian Realm: The Regnum Danorum

Author: Ildar Garipzanov
Pages: 179–194
Restricted Access
Part 3 Byzantium and Its Peripheral Powers

Editors: Walter Pohl and Veronika Wieser
Pages: 195
Chapter 6 The Lagoons as a Distant Mirror: Constantinople, Venice and the Italian Romania

Author: Francesco Borri
Pages: 197–219
Chapter 7 Countering Byzantium’s Shadow: Contrarianism among the Bulgars, Rus and Germans

Author: Jonathan Shepard
Pages: 220–260
Restricted Access
Part 4 Between Byzantium and the Islamic World

Editors: Walter Pohl and Veronika Wieser
Pages: 261
Chapter 8 Early Medieval Armenia between Empires (Fourth–Eleventh Century CE): Dynamics and Continuities

Author: Johannes Preiser-Kapeller
Pages: 263–288
Chapter 9 Strategies of Legitimation in the Shadow of Empires: Byzantine‒Turkish Contact Zones in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Asia Minor

Author: Alexander Beihammer
Pages: 289–314
Restricted Access
Part 5 The Abbasid Caliphate and the Formation of New Dynasties

Editors: Walter Pohl and Veronika Wieser
Pages: 315
Chapter 10 Communication between Centre and Periphery in the Early Fourth-/Tenth-Century Abbasid Empire

Author: Maaike van Berkel
Pages: 317–328
Chapter 11 Local and Imperial Rule: Examples from Fārs (9th–10th Centuries)

Author: Jürgen Paul
Pages: 329–352
Restricted Access
Part 6 Medieval China and the Foreign Dynasties

Editors: Walter Pohl and Veronika Wieser
Pages: 353
Chapter 12 The Huai Frontier and the Ethnicization of Difference in Early Medieval China

Author: Andrew Chittick
Pages: 355–375
Chapter 13 ‘Cultural China’ from the Eleventh Century: Legitimacy, Metanarrative and Historiography

Author: Q. Edward Wang
Pages: 376–398
Chapter 14 In the Shadows of Empires: The Tuyuhun and Khitans in Late Antiquity

Author: Michael R. Drompp
Pages: 399–424
Chapter 15 Post-imperial Polities: Concluding Observations

Author: Walter Pohl
Pages: 425–437
Back Matter
Index

Editors: Walter Pohl and Veronika Wieser

Walter Pohl, Dr. phil. (1984), was formerly Professor of Medieval History at the University of Vienna and director of the Institute for Medieval Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He has published on the transformation of the Roman World, on the migration period, on problems of identity, on comparative history and on the world of the steppe, including his monograph The Avars (2018).
Veronika Wieser, Dr. phil. (2015), is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute for Medieval Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Her research covers eschatology and apocalyptic thought as well as ascetic communities and historiography in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. She has published Historiography and Identity: Ancient and Christian Narratives (with Walter Pohl, 2019) and Cultures of Eschatology (with Vincent Eltschinger and Johann Heiss, 2020).