144 réponses à ce sujet

[Clover Rider]

Dave of Canada wrote...

The Secret Canadian Empire.

Sorry dude but Canada is not that cool to have a secret empire.

[Ironsandshrew]

The ones I've studied the most is The Roman and Byzantine Empires, I find them very interesting..I also like the Assyrian Empire and the Galactic Empire too.

[Kaiser Arian XVII]

JeffZero wrote...

KnightofPhoenix wrote...

Addai67 wrote...

Major League wrote...
i've always wondered though, how come the mongols didn't just finish off a declining Byzantium? if you look at a map of the mongol empire, they went around them. Was i9t because the Mongols were allies with the christians?

They were allied with the Armenians, yes- against an alliance of Mamluks and Latin Christians.

Wasn't that much of an alliance. If IIRC correctly, Tyre just gave Mamluks passage and supplies. They didn't commit troops.

Hulagu's wife was of course a Nestorian Christian (as was the majority of the mongol army, they were Kipchak Turks), and that probably affected his policies. 

I believe that is accurate, yeah.

And Hulaku had a Shia adviser ... It doesn't matter. It was the second phase of mongol invasion after Genghis Khan. Their new religion was superficial ...
When mongols embraced Islam, they became mostly civilized and less cruel. like:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilkhanate

But Timur the lame was a mass murderer. He destroyed many cities (like 1/3 of current Afghanistan) and killed many people for the excuse of rebelling.

Modifié par Jedi Sentinel Arian, 27 février 2012 - 04:59 .

[JeffZero]

CDRSkyShepard wrote...

Dang, I was all excited to come in here and blurt out "THE ROMULAN STAR EMPIRE."

...

[CDRSkyShepard]

JeffZero wrote...

CDRSkyShepard wrote...

Dang, I was all excited to come in here and blurt out "THE ROMULAN STAR EMPIRE."

...

Glad you approve. 

[jcainhaze]

Willy Wonka's Empire

[Kaiser Arian XVII]

I forgot to say, you can't be an important historian without being biased and I'm pro-civilization and anti-barbarians.

Just like true philosophers who are not ass-kissers of science. (Thanks to Plato and Schopenhauer who saved me from drowning into the materialism)

[goofyomnivore]

Incan Empire
Mayan Empire
Han, Qin and Tang Dynasties (China)
Roman Republic/Empire
British Empire

Would be my top five-ish.

[Addai]

Jedi Sentinel Arian wrote...

I forgot to say, you can't be an important historian without being biased and I'm pro-civilization and anti-barbarians.

Oh, "important."  Well we wouldn't want to not be important.

[Major League]

Barbarians destroyed the old world and created the new. you cant speak for everyone. Studying barbarians is one of my past times lol

[Major League]

bumping this thread

[Aimi]

For me, having a historical interest in a topic is not the same as condoning it. Obviously I wouldn't much like to have lived under the rule of Roman Emperors or the Qing Sons of Heaven.

With that preface...

1. The Western Roman Empire. It's hard to avoid looking at the whole Roman edifice in the fourth and fifth centuries without thinking about how it eventually came crashing down, but it must be done - not merely because I think Grand Narratives are generally crap, but because viewing a situation on the terms of the past is the only way to pay full respect to the people who lived in it. Nobody thought the Roman Empire in the West was doomed until maybe about five years before it actually happened. That's kind of tremendous. A lot of my interest has to do with the personalities of the era, too - women like Galla Placidia and Eudocia, men like Sarus, Constantius III, and Anthemius.

2. The German Kaiserreich. I've said this elsewhere, but the Kaiserreich had one of the most objectively bad governments in the history of the world. But in terms of high politics, diplomacy, and warfare, the events that took place around it were just so damn interesting that it's hard to avoid. Somehow, I've managed to stay interested in this period despite the fact that I've been working on my thesis about it. My interest in the Kaiserreich generally ties into my interest in the First World War, with everything that entails.

3. The Empire of the Great Qing. It's always been fascinating to me how a decidedly non-Han people - the Manju - defined most people's perceptions of what modern China actually is. China's immense population, many of its political structures, and even its borders date to the Qing period. The Ming-Qing transition period contained some of the most objectively interesting military operations and cultural life of any period of Chinese history, and when the whole edifice came crumbling down in the first few decades of the twentieth century the bits and pieces stuck around for a very long time.

4. The Byzantine Empire. Not really as a continuator of Rome - that nonsense, especially Ioustinianos, gets old fast. But Herakleios conducted some of the most remarkable campaigns in the history of warfare. Eirene Sarantapechaina was one of the most brilliant politicians of all time, and arguably a theological luminary as well. The whole story of the tenth-century military renaissance, especially the startling conquests of Basileios II Boulgaroktonos, involves some of the most interesting characters of all Byzantine history, and is one of the more interesting institutional debates currently going. I have little truck with some other parts of Byzantine history; the Komnenoi, generally speaking, sucked, and the Palaiologoi managed to be vicious and uninteresting at the same time. But the middle parts were pretty spectacular.

5. The Yuezhi/Kushan Empire. One of my enduring interests is Central Asian history, and the Yuezhi are probably my favorite participant in it. They are less interesting for their characters - most of them, like Vima Kadphises and Kanishka, are too shadowy to know well - but for their art, their economic power, the sheer size of their territory, and the basic story of the Tocharians. Pretty awesome.

Honorable mention: the United States of America (esp. in the 1860s), Sweden during the Stormaktstiden, late tsarist Russia, Baktria and the Indohellenic states, the late Ottoman Empire, the Seleukid Empire, Imperial Japan, China under the Northern and Southern Dynasties.

[Addai]

Daqs, can you recommend any books on the Yuezhi/ Kushan empire?

[Nattfare]

Barbarians? That's just a term the Romans and the Greek used for those who weren't Roman or Greek...
There seems to be a lot of love for those empires who warred and conquered a lot.

[Aimi]

Addai67 wrote...

Daqs, can you recommend any books on the Yuezhi/ Kushan empire?

These recommendations should probably be taken with something of a grain of salt, because I'm a nineteenth and twentieth century specialist, and haven't taken any classes on Central Asia since undergrad; I'm working off of personal opinions as a relative amateur here, unfortunately. That said, I think I'm reasonably well-read outside of the journals.

On the Yuezhi migration specifically, the best monograph is Craig G. R. Benjamin's The Yuezhi: Origin, Migration, and the Conquest of Northern Bactria.

Thematically organized details about the Kushan Empire in general can be easily found in the UNESCO History of Central Asia, Volume 2 (ed. the late Janos Harmatta). I believe that it is available for free in PDF form from the UNESCO website. The UNESCO treatment is probably the best topical, modern work on the subject, but it suffers from a purposefully limited focus and, at this point, is nearly twenty years old. Therefore, it would be wise to supplement the UNESCO volume with information gleaned from other modern books, e.g. Christopher Beckwith's Empires of the Silk Road.

Whatever you do do, I would advise that you avoid works by earlier historians, e.g. Sten Konow, W. W. Tarn, Rapson, and Cunningham, until you have the more modern interpretations of Kushan history well in hand.

I do not believe that an English-language, reasonably recent, at least moderately scholarly, single-volume history of the Kushan Empire exists. The market is simply too small. It's a shame, but hard to avoid.

[Aimi]

Nattfare wrote...

Barbarians? That's just a term the Romans and the Greek used for those who weren't Roman or Greek...
There seems to be a lot of love for those empires who warred and conquered a lot.

Rather like basically every empire in history.

One of the things I did like about the Byzantine Empire was that, while war was an omnipresent feature of life, one of the periods in which I am most interested - the so-called "Revival", as periodized by Warren Treadgold, from 780 to 842 - was one in which the Empire was not particularly successful in military terms. While some key reforms were undertaken that eventually laid the groundwork for the tenth century military renaissance (namely, under Theophilos), in terms of actual campaigning, the Empire barely kept its head above water. Victories in Thrace and Greece were followed up by defeats at the hands of the Bulgars, and several caliphal raids in Anatolia did considerable damage. What made that period interesting, in addition to the military reforms, was the political and theological machinations and maneuvers, "the battle for the soul of the Byzantine Empire", as it were.

[Kaiser Arian XVII]

Barbarians destroyed the ancient and medieval knowledge (History, Literature, Philosophy and Science) and massacred people. Like Arabs in 7th century who destroyed Persia and Egypt Libraries before becoming civilized. ... Mongols in 13th century who completely annihilated more than 30 cities in middle east (also china and Russia) and killed millions. Huns killed hundreds of thousands ...
Not all barbarians were as savage as mentioned ones, but their primitive lifestyle has no merit.

Defending barbarians is so pathetic. Croce was civilizationist, so am I.

[Aimi]

Jedi Sentinel Arian wrote...

Huns killed hundreds of thousands ...

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Where are you getting that from? Hypatius?

Because Hypatius' casualty-count for the Battle of the Campus Mauriacus (three hundred thousand dead in one (!) day) is horribly inaccurate. We're talking orders of magnitude, here. The battle was a cataclysmic, bloody event, but the Huns in the totality of their existence were not responsible for "hundreds of thousands" of deaths, let alone at this one battle.

And while I agree with you that this fetishization of "barbarians" is ridiculous, the opposite reaction (yours) is equally based on inaccuracy and, in some cases, prejudice. Atrocities are hardly the province of "barbarians". And technological "progress" did not stop with the destruction of the Roman Empire, nor was the loss of historical and technological knowledge part of some sort of barbaric Luddite plot. I don't have any time for the people who think that the fall of the Roman Empire was an opportunity for the glorious and manly Germanic peoples to create a new civilization on the wreckage of the old, but I similarly have little time for the people who treat the "barbarians" as the ancient Greeks and Romans did, as unlettered idiotic savages capable of little other than disorganized slaughter.

[KnightofPhoenix]

Jedi Sentinel Arian wrote...
Like Arabs in 7th century who destroyed Persia and Egypt Libraries before becoming civilized. ... .

No such thing happened.
There has been no recorded burning of libraries by the Arabs at that time. The library in Alexandria for instance was already sacked due internal strife in Egypt decades before the Arabs came.

Modifié par KnightofPhoenix, 28 février 2012 - 06:20 .

[Kaiser Arian XVII]

Being a historian, philosopher and political theorist at the same time has its own disadvantages, and I'm two years away from university and history books ...
still Huns massacred more than one hundred thousands of Germans, Slavs and Romans. So how could they form a large country for themselves between them, unlike the Bulgars who became Slavic in middle ages and didn't keep their Altaic language even at small scale?

Some Muslims burned 'unnecessary' books during the conquests as they believed that Quran is the ultimate knowledge. Later they appreciated philosophy and science books (specially in the early Abbasid dynasty).

And as my study is focused on Persians and related folks and countries, I know what Mongols did.

[KnightofPhoenix]

Jedi Sentinel Arian wrote...
Some Muslims burned 'unnecessary' books during the conquests as they believed that Quran is the ultimate knowledge. Later they appreciated philosophy and science books (specially in the early Abbasid dynasty).

No such thing happened.
Some claimed that they did this, even came up with a quote from Caliph Umar (the same quote they used for both Persia and Egypt), but no serious historian has validated this claim, as no evidence exist to corroborate it. Muslim / Arabic sources also make absolutely no mention of it.

[Alpha-Centuri]

Just saw this thread in my feed and saw that post.

Muslims were actually very "tolerant" in their conquest of Constantinople and other cities. It was one mad ruler that chose to burn down the Church of the Holy Sepulchre that sparked the panic. This was like 50 years after they had the city and like 3 rulers down the line. He was basically the Nero of the Muslim world.

Saladin when he conquered Jerusalem didn't massacre the Christians (too bad we didn't show the same respect when we conquered it). He allowed safe-passage to anyone who wanted to leave.

I'm in a survey of Medieval Europe course right now (That i'm literally headed to right now).

Modifié par Alpha-Centuri, 28 février 2012 - 07:00 .

[Major League]

Jedi Sentinel Arian wrote...

Barbarians destroyed the ancient and medieval knowledge (History, Literature, Philosophy and Science) and massacred people. Like Arabs in 7th century who destroyed Persia and Egypt Libraries before becoming civilized. ... Mongols in 13th century who completely annihilated more than 30 cities in middle east (also china and Russia) and killed millions. Huns killed hundreds of thousands ...
Not all barbarians were as savage as mentioned ones, but their primitive lifestyle has no merit.

Defending barbarians is so pathetic. Croce was civilizationist, so am I.

When I think of Barbarians, I think of how Rome treated the Goths.  The Goths wanted peaceful place to settle, and the Romans threw them all in concentration camps.  At time, Rome acted more barbaric then the barbarians they fought.

[Aimi]

Alpha-Centuri wrote...

Just saw this thread in my feed and saw that post.

Muslims were actually very "tolerant" in their conquest of Constantinople and other cities. It was one mad ruler that chose to burn down the Church of the Holy Sepulchre that sparked the panic. This was like 50 years after they had the city and like 3 rulers down the line. He was basically the Nero of the Muslim world.

Saladin when he conquered Jerusalem didn't massacre the Christians (too bad we didn't show the same respect when we conquered it). He allowed safe-passage to anyone who wanted to leave.

I'm in a survey of Medieval Europe course right now (That i'm literally headed to right now).

Meh. Muslim tolerance on a macro level - or anybody's tolerance, really - is generally overstated by people trying to make a point about how nasty some other religion was by comparison. Everybody committed atrocities against everybody else. The Crusaders sacked Jerusalem (and intelligently seem to have ransomed away most of the people with moneyed relatives); Imad ad-Din Zanki's troops slaughtered the people of Edessa. Salah ad-Din may have allowed safe-passages to Christians from Jerusalem when he captured it; he certainly did not offer such things to the prisoners from the military orders after his victory at the horns of Hattin, nor was he so clement to his political opponents, Christian and Muslim, when he conquered Egypt in the 1170s. Both Greek civilians and Turkish civilians died by the thousands in the Peloponnese during the Greek war of independence.

I would hesitate to make any hard claims about how brutal or not-brutal the Muslim conquest of the Levant, Egypt, and Mesopotamia was, simply because the sources are so bad. For instance, the narrative of the Battle of Yarmouk that we have is almost certainly tosh. Early Muslim history in general is practically mythical, on the same order as the history of archaic Greece or of the early Roman republic. 

[Major League]

Alpha-Centuri wrote...

Just saw this thread in my feed and saw that post.

Muslims were actually very "tolerant" in their conquest of Constantinople and other cities. It was one mad ruler that chose to burn down the Church of the Holy Sepulchre that sparked the panic. This was like 50 years after they had the city and like 3 rulers down the line. He was basically the Nero of the Muslim world.

Saladin when he conquered Jerusalem didn't massacre the Christians (too bad we didn't show the same respect when we conquered it). He allowed safe-passage to anyone who wanted to leave.

I'm in a survey of Medieval Europe course right now (That i'm literally headed to right now).

really depends on the ruler.  both christians and muslims were tolerant of each other.  yes, crusaders did sack Jerusalem and put alot of people to the sword.

A interesting fact is that the Franks that settled in the Middle East, were relatively tolerant of muslims and picked up some of their customs.  It wasn't uncommon for a Knight Templar to lay down a rug, and allow his muslim friend to pray.

Alot of the violence toward muslims came from Crusaders that just arrived from Europe.