1033537853     

Romanland : ethnicity and empire in Byzantium / Anthony Kaldellis

Kaldellēs, Antōnios Emm., 1971- [Verfasserin/Verfasser]

Cambridge, Massachusetts ; London, England : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019

xv, 373 Seiten : Karten

Englisch

Includes bibliographical references and index

1904

978-0-674-98651-0 ( : alk. paper)

2018038001

9780674986510

OCoLC: 1098182645     

NH 9150      Ähnliche Literatur

DF553

305.8009495/0902

Basisklassifikation: 15.08 (Sozialgeschichte) ; 15.29 (Byzantinisches Reich) ; 73.96 (Ethnische Identität) <Volkskunde>

*Byzantinisches Reich ; Ethnizität ; Römer ; Geschichte 300-1100     Zum Register

LOC-SH: Romans -- Byzantine Empire ; Romans -- Ethnic identity ; National characteristics, Roman ; Cultural pluralism -- Byzantine Empire ; Byzantine Empire -- Ethnic relations ; Byzantine Empire -- Civilization -- Roman influences ; Byzantine Empire -- History

Was there ever such a thing as the Byzantine Empire and who were those self-professed Romans we choose to call "Byzantine" today? At the heart of these two interlinked questions is Anthony Kaldellis's assertion that empires are, by definition, multiethnic. If there was indeed such a thing as the Byzantine Empire, which rules bounded majority and minority ethnic groups? The labels for the minority groups in Byzantium are clear - Slavs, Bulgarians, Armenians, Jews, Muslims. What was the ethnicity of the majority group? Historical evidence tells us unequivocally that no card-carrying Byzantine ever called himself "Byzantine." He would identify as Roman. This line of identification was so strong in the eastern empire that even the conquering Ottomans saw themselves as inheritors of the Roman Empire. In Western scholarship, however, there has been a long tradition of denying Romanness to Byzantium. In the Middle Ages, people of the eastern empire were made "Greeks," and by the nineteenth century they were shorn of their distorted Greekness and turned "Byzantine." In Romanland, Kaldellis argues that it is time for historians to take the Romanness of Byzantines seriously so that we can better understand the relations between Romans and non-Romans, as well as the processes of assimilation that led to the absorption of foreign groups into the Roman genos.

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Part I. Romans: A history of denial -- Roman ethnicity -- Romanland -- Part II. Others: Ethnic assimilation -- The Armenian fallacy -- Was Byzantium an empire in the tenth century? -- The apogee of empire in the eleventh century