Search results for "empire"
showing 10 items of 165 documents
The Fall of Rome and the Decay of our Present Civilisation – A Repetitive Process? – The Decay of “Gods”
2014
Abstract Attacked and weakened, especially in the last three centuries, both from inside and outside, Rome and the Western Roman Empire will fall in 476 A.D. Actually, what were the causes? Hit and weakened by the present global economic-financial crises – and not only – our European civilisation faces some of the highest risks. Often, people say it is a real collapse. Are the causes of these falls – of the European-type civilisation – similar? And being familiar with Roman experience, how can we prevent such harmful processes? Further, we try to provide a few answers in this respect.
Constantine X Doukas (1059–1067) versus Uzes – about the Nomads on Boats on the Danube in 1064
2021
The reign of the Doukas dynasty in 1059–1078 was a time when new threats to the Byzantine Empire emerge in Europe and Asia. One of them was the increased activity of Turkmen who were penetrating the lands belonging to the Byzantines. A manifestation of these threats was visible during the rule of Constantine X Doukas (1059–1067) in 1064. We have there an invasion of the tribe of Uzes, who crossed the Danube. They ventured so far, as the vicinity of Thessalonica and the province of Hellas, plundering everything in their path. Their actions surprised the defense of the Byzantines. This attack on the empire was related to their crossing of the Danube, about which Michael Attaliates and Skylitz…
Fascism and empire: Fascist Italy against republican Spain
1998
From 1931 onward, Fascist Italy tried to influence Spanish politics through a combination of formal diplomatic action and clandestine support for monarchist conspirators. Spain did not, however, become an axis of Italy's foreign affairs until the outbreak of the Civil War in 1936. Supporting Franco was a way of helping to destroy international Communism and the democratic challenge and also served Mussolini's claims to Italian hegemony in the Mediterranean. From the point of view of domestic politics, helping Fascism in Spain would help to maintain the mobilization of the Italian people. In Italy's participation in the Spanish Civil War imperial Fascism, defined as foreign aggression, ideol…
Imperialists without an empire?
2015
This article discusses settler identity formation, in the colonial polity known as Rhodesia, using Finnish nationals as a case study. It studies the involvement of Finns in natural resource extraction in Rhodesia at a time when the colonial economy and settler domination were still in their infancy, and examines both Finnish participation in colonial practices and the limitations of Finns as colonialists. White settlers in Rhodesia have typically been categorised as ‘Europeans’ partly because of their sense of representing a generalised idea of Western civilisation and partly in order to underline contrasts between black and white experiences in the history of colonialism. By focusing on th…
Nikephoros Bryennios the Younger – the First One Not to Become a Blind Man? Political and Military History of the Bryennios Family in the 11th and Ea…
2020
Nikephoros Bryennios the Younger has a place in the history of Byzantium as the author of one of the works devoted to the Komnenos family coming to power. This outstanding observer and talented leader, who was fascinated by the person of his father-in-law Alexius I Komnenos, came from a family whose ambitions were no less than the those in the one into which Nikephoros himself married. His father and grandfather, also his namesake, were those who dreamed of an imperial crown for themselves and tried to reach for it armed. Apart from defeat, they both faced punishment which was blinding. One of those who captured and ordered the father of Nikephoros the Younger to be blinded was his future f…
Retóricas del momento: (per)versiones (mis)antropológicas
2018
Durante la organización del XIV Congreso de Antropología celebrado en Valencia en septiembre de 2017, bajo el lema Antropologías en transformación: sentidos, compromisos y utopías, los miembros del comité organizador dudábamos de cuál podría ser el tópico de la conferencia de clausura y qué insigne personalidad de nuestro campo podría ocupar ese lugar privilegiado. Como no teníamos a nadie en cartel ni tampoco osábamos importunar a algún/a colega con tamaña empresa emprendimos la tarea de crear un personaje ad hoc que reuniera el suficiente atractivo en una ocasión tan connotada. En seguida vimos que la idea ofrecía una oportunidad incomparable para reflexionar de forma crítica sobre la aca…
El lado oscuro de la nación. ¿Se puede descolonizar la identidad española?
2019
La identidad española no solo implica la definición de lo que somos, sino también de lo que nos falta, de todo aquello que sus narrativas autorizadas han obviado de forma recurrente. La finalidad de este deliberado ejercicio totalizador ha sido siempre la misma: reproducir la hegemonía de sus élites dirigentes. Así ha sucedido desde el inicio de la expansión atlántica protagonizada por el imperio colonial hispano, durante la articulación pionera del país conforme al programa liberal, con su primera gran crisis y resurrección nacionalista, y en el momento actual de normalización democrática neoliberal. En este artículo, voy a tratar de constatar la existencia de dicha exclusión en torno a es…
Learning to laugh: satire and political thought in the Latvian ‘National Age’
2018
ABSTRACTSatiric publications are often recognized as an important part of the political communication of the nineteenth century. Their role, however, in the national ‘awakenings’ in central eastern...
The Czech Case: From the Bohemian Slavophone Populus to Czech Nationalism and the Czechoslovak Nation
2009
Bohemia emerged as a separate polity after the Magyar conquest of Greater Moravia. The Frankish protection that extended to Bohemia attached this country to the empire, while Moravia became a province permanently linked to the Principality of Bohemia in the late 1020s. In 1079, Moravia was organized as a margraviate. Usually sons or younger brothers of the Bohemian princes reigned as margraves of Moravia, which emphasized the separateness of Moravia vis-a-vis Bohemia. A similar arrangement developed in Poland-Lithuania where sons or younger brothers of the King of Poland ruled in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Třestik 1999: 140).
Rūdolfs Blaumanis, the Dreyfus Affair and the Anglo-Boer War: Colonial difference and identity construction infin-de-siècleLatvian society
2017
This article offers an insight into the social and cultural scene in Latvia at the end of the nineteenth century. The territory of this Baltic state was then still part of the Russian Empire, divided among several of its provinces. However, this was also a period when the cultural aspirations of the rising Latvian middle class were represented by the gradual attempts to raise the self-esteem of the entire local population. The article focuses on the role that Latvian writer Rūdolfs Blaumanis (1863–1908) played in encouraging Latvians to understand themselves as a self-confident people during the fin-de-siècle period. The first part examines articles published by Blaumanis in the Latvian pre…