HIS 123
ENCOUNTERS
IN WORLD HISTORY
http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/naomi.standen/encounters/encountersfpg.htm
Semester One, 2004
Lecturers
Mr. Jim Crow
Dr. Jan Oosthoek
Mr. Jerry Paterson
Dr. Naomi Standen (module leader)
University of Newcastle
School of Historical Studies
A FEW KEY DATES
Years ago
13 billion
4.6 billion
3.9 billion
1.8 billion
530 million
400 million
100 million
65 million
5 million
2.5 million
100 thousand
10 thousand
5 thousand
3 1/2 thousand
2 hundred
Now
Years ahead 10 billion
Big Bang
Earth
First single-celled organisms (in the sea)
First single-celled organisms with nuclei (also in the sea:
algae)
Oxygen in the atmosphere reaches present level of 21%;
first multi-celled organisms in the sea (Cambrian
Explosion)
First life on land
Continents reach something like the position they are in
today
Fifth great species extinction, end of dinosaurs, mammals
become dominant
First hominids (Africa)
Hunter-gatherers, domestication of fire
First of the last hominids (Homo sapiens)
End of latest Ice Age, near-completion of human
occupation of the globe, first farmers
Writing
Monotheism
Factories
Sixth great species extinction
Sun hots up, end of life on earth
2
Contents
Aims................................................................... 3
Lecturers ........................................................... 4
Module timetable ............................................. 5
Notes on books.................................................. 6
Reading and bibliographical skills............... 7
Study and assessment....................................... 9
Notes on gobbets.......................................... 10
Lecture synopses .............................................. 12
Gobbets ............................................................. 18
Term paper ....................................................... 23
Expectations................................................. 24
Questions and reading lists .......................... 25
Dissertation materials...................................... 39
Module Outline Form ...................................... 42
All the information for this module can also be found on the module website at:
http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/naomi.standen/encounters/encountersfpg.htm
Aims
Wherever you were before you came here, you probably studied the history of rather small
geographical areas over smallish periods of time; typically, a hundred years or so of the history
of Britain and a handful of mainland Western European countries.
The map on the cover of the printed handbook and the brief list of dates are designed to show
that the lecturers on this module will be trying to avoid narrow geographical and chronological
approaches to the study of the past. Geography and chronology matter, of course, but your
lecturers will not be bounded by them and do not intend to put them centre-stage. Their
approach will be thematic. They are trying to convey a large picture. To do that, it is necessary
to stand far enough away to let the contours show through the mass of detail. Nevertheless, we
often understand most readily when presented with a specific example, and the lecturers will use
the specific to illustrate their general points. In your written work, you too should be considering
the general by way of specific examples.
Apart from seeking to get you out of the habit of thinking of history in terms of bite-sized
chunks, the module has the aim of encouraging lateral thinking, imaginative interpretations of
questions and the shrewd deployment of material. You will get some sense of how the lecturers
propose to encourage the pursuit of this objective in their reading lists.
In short, the module has the following aims (see also Module Outline Form):
• to persuade you to think about history in different ways from the ways in which you
thought about it before you came here;
• to achieve this objective by taking as its unit of enquiry a very large entity (the world)
over a very long period of time (from the Big Bang to the present day);
• to encourage you to pursue the study of this very large entity with the minimum of
direction and the maximum of independent discovery.
3
Lecturers
You are encouraged to direct questions, comments, and complaints to
Naomi Standen (the module leader), but the other lecturers on the module
are also available to help you. Please see them during their office hours
wherever possible, and be sure not to disturb them on their research day.
Jim Crow teaches Roman and Byzantine archaeology; his main areas of research are Hadrian’s
Wall and the archaeology of the Byzantine world. He is currently directing a major project on
the water supply and defences of Constantinople and its hinterland.
Research day:
E-mail: [email protected]
Dr. Jan Oosthoek works on environmental history and is particularly interested in the regions
around the North Sea. His office hour is on Wednesday, 15.00-16.30.
Research day: FRIDAY
Jerry Paterson has wide interests in the economic and social history of the Greek and Roman
world. He is an expert on the ancient wine trade, has just finished jointly editing a book on
Cicero, and is researching the evidence for economic growth in the ancient world.
Research day: MONDAY
E-mail: [email protected]
Dr. Naomi Standen (module leader) works on the socio-political history of medieval China and
has a strong interest in comparative frontier history.
Research day: FRIDAY
E-mail: [email protected]
Homepage: http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/naomi.standen
The specialisations of the four lecturers cover a wide range of times and places, but what they
have in common is their interest in trying to increase their comparative-historical awareness.
They believe that you too will benefit if you try to maximize your ability to compare and
contrast historical phenomena across time and space.
4
Module timetable
Week
Tuesday, 2 pm
Curtis Auditorium, Herschel Building
Thursday, 12 noon
Curtis Auditorium, Herschel Building
FRIDAY 17 Sept, 2-3 pm
Introductory meeting (providing
VITAL INFORMATION)
1
(13 Sept)
2
(20 Sept)
Why World History?
Why “Encounters” in World History?
3
(27 Sept)
Boundaries
Frontiers
4
(4 Oct)
Borderlands
Constructing the frontier
5
(11 Oct)
Border Encounters
WORKSHOP (with gobbet)
Out of Eden: the origins and spread of
agriculture and its environmental
impact
6
(18 Oct)
Journey across the void: the
colonisation of the Pacific and its
environmental impact
Migration patterns of disease: the
Plague
7
(25 Oct)
The Columbian Exchange:
environmental impact of European
expansion
Environmental Encounters
WORKSHOP (with gobbet)
8
(1 Nov)
“Power to all our friends” (Cliff
Richard)
“If I ruled the world” (Lionel Bart)
9
(8 Nov)
“Power to the people” (John Lennon)
“Sisters are doin' it for themselves”
(Annie Lennox/Aretha Franklin)
10
(15 Nov)
Ruling Encounters
WORKSHOP (with gobbet)
From the walls of Jericho to the M25
11
(22 Nov)
Warfare and the city: the city under
siege
Walling Rome: the end of the pax
Romana
12
(29 Nov)
The city as battlefield and victim
Urban Encounters
WORKSHOP (with gobbet)
13
(6 Dec)
Contrasts, comparisons and
connections
Encounters and World History
Fri 10 Dec
Revised gobbet due, 4 pm
Fri 14 Jan
2005
Term Paper due, 4 pm
5
Notes on books
It is difficult to suggest one or a small handful of books from which you will be able to derive
everything you need to know. Here, however, are some bibliographical ideas on world history in
general and the four "Encounters" of the present module:
General World History
For the module as a whole we recommend J.R. McNeill, and William H. McNeill, The human
web: a bird's-eye view of World History (New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 2003). Reading this
will give you an overview from which you will start to be able to make the comparisons that this
module demands.
In addition, the following also consider the 'big picture' in a variety of ways. For a very short
interpretation of the entire history of the universe see Fred Spier, The structure of big history. On
the history of living things on earth see Richard Fortey, Life: an unauthorized biography. On the
history of humans see John Roberts, The Penguin history of the world. On humans up to the
emergence of agriculture see Colin Tudge, The day before yesterday. On humans since the
emergence of agriculture see Robert P. Clark, The global imperative: an interpretive history of
the spread of humankind and Robert B. Marks, The origins of the modern world: a global and
ecological narrative. For maps see J. Haywood, The Cassell atlas of world history, and crucially,
on the way our "mental maps" shape our thinking, see Martin Lewis and Kären Wigen, The myth
of continents (which you should do well to think of buying). On some of the effects of such
mental maps see Jim Blaut, Eight Eurocentric historians.
Border Encounters
Environmental Encounters
Ruling Encounters
Urban Encounters
Daniel Power and Naomi Standen, eds, Frontiers in
question: Eurasian borderlands 700-1700 (London, 1999).
Jared Diamond, Guns, germs and steel: a short history of
everybody for the last 13,000 years (London, 1997).
John Morrow, A history of political thought: a thematic
introduction (New York, 1998).
Lewis Mumford, The city in history : its origins, its
transformation, and its prospects (London, 1991).
Blackwells should have copies of the books listed for the four Encounters, and of some of the
general world-history books. They should also have a selection of other books relevant to this
module. If Blackwells do not have the books you need, please order them!
6
Reading and bibliographical skills
You will be expected to read as widely as possible. You may find the books listed above helpful
in giving you a general outline of a topic, but you cannot rely on them for the detailed
illustrative information that you will need to write convincingly. You will be expected to show
evidence of having read a generous selection of items directly and specifically related to your
topic.
Finding things to read
PLEASE NOTE: There are at least two hundred and eighty people taking this
module and only a finite number of books in the library, so it is likely that there
will be considerable pressure on resources.
We are doing what we can to alleviate this by:
• recommending a handful of books that should give you some good basic ideas – these
are available in Blackwells
• providing multiple copies of books that are likely to be most heavily used
• placing some of the material for the module in the Student Texts Collection (STC) so that
everyone has at least some access to it
• making extensive use of journal articles – also to be found in STC
You can play your part by:
• not keeping books or articles for any longer than you have to – what goes around comes
around
• sharing materials with your friends
• being resourceful in seeking out alternative materials (see below)
IMPORTANT NOTE: Not everything on the reading lists is in the library. It has been included
so that you have an idea of what kind of things are out there. If the item you want is not
available, you will have to use your initiative! Use information from the item you wanted and
from related items to guide you in searching for similar things:
• browse the shelves around where the item would have been
• see what else the author has written
• take keywords from the title to guide a computer search for related items
• follow up the subject headings given in each computer record
• use the library's online databases to extend your search beyond the local catalogue
• explore the libraries at Northumbria and Durham, and the City Library
• use journal articles!
Articles
Articles are a great way to the heart of a subject. They tend to be short and to the point (unlike
some books). The library takes many scholarly journals, and there is a good selection of
individual articles from other journals in the Student Texts Collection. You can check out journal
contents on JSTOR (full-text) or FirstSearch (includes some full-text).
7
To find a journal article
• first look for the journal title (that's the part in italics or given as an abbreviation) to see
if the library takes the journal in question - if we have the journal, it will be on the
shelves (although the volume you want is likely to be in STC)
• if we do not take the journal, you should then search under the author - this will
show you whether we have a photocopy of the article in STC.
Since one of the purposes of this module is to oblige you to be even more intellectually
independent than you will have to be to cope with the other modules you will be studying here,
we are trying not to "spoon-feed" you. The lectures and workshops are designed to raise issues
and give you pointers, but you will do best if you think things out and track things down for
yourself.
Tracking things down and thinking things out will probably require you to spend much more
time in the university library than you may have expected to do before you came here. You
certainly cannot expect just to go into the library, pick up a few of the books on our booklists,
and take them away with you to read. There is much more in the library than we can list here or
even than we know about. We expect you to make your own discoveries and to tell us about
them in the workshops and in your written work. We feel that the ability to make discoveries
will help you in everything you do here. Having said that, if you've tried all the searching tools
in the Library and you still can't find anything, then your lecturers will be willing to help.
Abbreviations
When abbreviations appear on reading lists, they usually refer to academic journals. If you can't
work out what they stand for, ask one of your lecturers. They include the following:
AHR
AOASH
BAR
BSOAS
CSSH
EcHR
EHR
HJ
HJAS
JAOS
JCarH
JESHO
JIH
JMedH
JTMH
LRB
MS
NYRB
P&P
SH
TLS
TRHS
American Historical Review
Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae
British Archaeological Reports
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies
Comparative Studies in Society and History
Economic History Review
English Historical Review
Historical Journal
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies
Journal of the American Oriental Society
Journal of Caribbean History
Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient
Journal of Interdisciplinary History
Journal of Medieval History
Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene
London Review of Books
Mediaeval Studies
New York Review of Books
Past and Present
Social History
Times Literary Supplement
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society
8
Study and assessment
We will meet in the Curtis Auditorium (in the Herschel Building) at 2 pm on Tuesdays and 12
noon on Thursdays. The taught part of the module consists basically of four sets of four lectures,
each followed by a workshop in which you will discuss a ‘gobbet’ that you have prepared in
advance. The module leader will also provide an introduction and an overview (two lectures
each). This year the four Encounters will be:
•
•
•
•
Border Encounters (Naomi Standen)
Environmental Encounters (Jan Oosthoek)
Ruling Encounters (Jerry Paterson)
Urban Encounters (Jim Crow)
In addition to attending lectures and workshops (which are compulsory), you will be expected to
spend an average of about 15 hours a week studying for this module in your own time. The
majority of this will be reading and note-taking, a large minority should involve thinking and
perhaps talking about what you have read, and the rest will consist of writing down your
conclusions and the line of argument that led you there.
You should start by reading at least one of the recommended books from cover to cover, and
as the lectures progress you should read at least one item specifically relating to each of the
four Encounters. You will probably want to spend most time on the particular Encounter(s) that
you find most interesting, and on which you will probably wish to write your Term Paper. It is,
however, important to note that the four Encounters are not discrete units of history, but are all
interconnected and complementary, so that although you may be chiefly interested in just one or
two of the Encounters, the others will also offer - often unexpected - insights on your favoured
topics. This means that one effective way of approaching this module is to choose a likely Term
Paper question early on, and to listen to lectures and complete assignments with that question
always in mind. You are encouraged to follow up anything that catches your interest and to stray
beyond the reading lists provided here.
You are encouraged to find people to work with and to develop a habit of studying together
with your colleagues. The advantages of working together are enormous. For instance, if you
each read something different and then meet to share your thoughts, you vastly increase the
amount of information at your disposal. You also give yourself an opportunity to try out ideas
before you submit them for assessment. The ability to work in small groups is also a key skill,
and practice at it will be invaluable for your future career.
The lecturers on this module will be very pleased if you have questions or wish to talk about the
topics they are lecturing on. You may catch them after lectures, knock on their doors during their
office hours, make an appointment to see them, or e-mail them.
Assessment
You will submit short pieces of work for workshops during the semester, and your achievement
will be assessed by an extended Gobbet submitted before Christmas and a final Term Paper due
after Christmas. There is no exam. The breakdown of work follows; for further details see a little
further on:
One gobbet (750 words) selected for rewriting and improvement from FOUR gobbets (500
words each) completed to a satisfactory level for submission in workshops. Since the four initial
gobbets are preparatory for the workshops each one is due in the relevant workshop session and
9
at no other time. During workshops you will be offered pointers and suggestions – from both
the lecturer and your colleagues – for improving your gobbets. The rewritten gobbet will be
assessed and will be worth 45% of your final grade. It is due by 4.00 pm on the last Friday of
the teaching period (10 December). Gobbets submitted after the deadline will score a mark of
zero.
Term Paper (maximum 3000 words). This will be a research essay and is due by 4.00 pm on the
first Friday of the assessment period (14 January, 2005). The Term Paper is worth 55% of
your final grade. Term Papers submitted after the deadline will score a mark of zero.
If you feel you need an extension of these deadlines you should contact the Module Leader in
the first instance, bearing in mind that you will normally need documentary evidence before an
extension can be considered. Note, however, that for the Term Paper, extensions may only be
obtained from the relevant Degree Programme Director. For Politics/History students this is
Martin Farr ([email protected]); for all other degree programmes it is Susan-Mary Grant
([email protected]).
A note on plagiarism
Plagiarism is cheating. It is dishonest, and we hope that none of you would stoop so low.
Plagiarism is the deliberate reproduction of another's work, taken without acknowledgement and
passed off as one's own. A plagiarised essay will be given a mark of zero. The work of those
who are discovered plagiarising will also be carefully scrutinised thereafter. Incidents of
plagiarism will also be discussed in references for future jobs or further study.
Plagiarism is easier to detect than you may think. If you are caught plagiarising, the
consequences are serious. University regulations require that cases of plagiarism be
referred to the Registrar for disciplinary action.
Plagiarism can take various forms. Ignorance of what constitutes plagiarism is no excuse. For
more details see the relevant section in the History programme handbook.
Notes on gobbets
What is a gobbet?
A gobbet is a short commentary on an assigned primary source. The source is usually textual,
but it may be an image or even an artifact.
The purpose of a gobbet is for you to demonstrate that you can place the primary source in its
appropriate context – that is, that you can explain why and how this source is significant for the
topic you are studying. This means you must say something about who produced the source,
when and why, and what happened (or did not happen) as a consequence. This will require you
to read around the gobbet in order to establish the context and significance of the source.
If, for instance, you were studying the Second World War and you had to write a gobbet on
Chamberlain's ‘peace in our time’ declaration, you would be expected to identify (among other
things) that Chamberlain was prime minister of Britain, that the declaration was made in 1938
on Chamberlain's return from the Munich Conference as part of Chamberlain's determination to
avoid war with Germany, and that it was the last effort of appeasement before war broke out in
Europe. You would need to show an awareness of the controversy about appeasement amongst
10
contemporary politicians, and also the disagreements between historians, some of whom accuse
Chamberlain of betraying Britain's interests while others argue that he was doing the best he
could in the circumstances. But you might also comment, for instance, upon the staging of
Chamberlain's declaration, because his speech is closely associated with newspaper pictures of
him descending the steps of an aeroplane waving a piece of paper. This could give you an
opportunity to comment on news management (or not) in the 1930s and to develop further ideas
regarding the role of mass media since 1900. Depending on the topic under study, you might
also want to address issues like the significance of the source in terms of great-power politics or
the role of warfare in the modern world. While you might be familiar with the basic events, you
would need to read more widely in order to develop your ideas regarding the wider
ramifications.
The aim of all this is to get you thinking critically about the sources that we use to produce
history, and reading to find out more. For instance, one of the issues that often arises out of
gobbet work is that the consequences developing from a particular speech, letter, theory, image,
etc, are often very different from the intentions that led to those items being produced.
Historians have often discussed such issues and you are expected to find out as much as you can
about the debates that have ensued.
Gobbet work thus gives you practice in using the basic skills of the historian, and you will be
doing more and more of them as you progress through your undergraduate studies.
Gobbets and workshops
You will be given one gobbet for each of the four Encounters. These are included in this
handbook. You will bring TWO copies of your completed gobbet to the relevant workshop. You
hand in one copy and keep one to work on in class. Your completed gobbet is your ticket to get
into the workshop: NOBODY WILL BE ADMITTED TO THE LECTURE ROOM
WITHOUT THEIR COMPLETED GOBBET.
Your copy of your gobbet will form the basis for small-group discussion during the workshop,
and you are encouraged to annotate this copy as freely as you please. Your colleagues' comments
will help you to see your own gobbet in different lights, and you are also strongly advised to pay
close attention to the points raised by the lecturer in the workshop. All of these will help you to
improve your work.
The workshops are intended to give you practice at this particular skill before you produce your
final gobbet for marking. This final gobbet is an opportunity for you to expand one of your four
gobbets in the light of the workshop and further reading.
Technical points
•
•
•
•
•
Maximum 750 words for the submitted gobbet (500 words for workshop gobbets).
Gobbets must be typed and double-spaced, exactly like an essay.
Gobbets MUST include a bibliography, and must be footnoted following the format in the
handbook or Styleguide for YOUR PROGRAMME (eg. single-honours History students
must follow the History Styleguide, students on Archaeology programmes must use the
format for Archaeology).
You must bring TWO copies of your gobbet to class.
Remember to put your NAME on the copy that you hand in!
11
Lecture synopses
Organisational meeting: Friday 17 September, 2 pm, Curtis Auditorium, Herschel
Building
INTRODUCTION
Week 2 (w/b 20 Sept 2004)
1. Why World History? (21/09/04)
Or rather, why not World History? Why are historians’ interests so often so narrow and why can
that be a problem? Why are some subjects and world regions studied more than others? This
lecture tries to explain how thinking about such questions can open our eyes to new ways of
seeing the past – and the present.
2. Why ‘Encounters’ in World History? (23/09/04)
We could have adopted a chronological framework for this module, tracing a narrative from
prehistory through the ancient and medieval worlds to the modern period. We could also have
adopted a geographical framework and looked in turn at Africa, Eurasia, the Americas, and
Australasia. But because we believe that such frameworks obscure as much as they illuminate,
we have adopted a thematic – and explicitly comparative – approach. This lecture makes the
case for thematic and comparative approaches, and discusses some general issues arising from
the theme of ‘Encounters’.
BORDER ENCOUNTERS
Week 3 (w/b 27 Sept 2004)
3. Boundaries (28/09/04)
Humans, like many other animals, have a striking propensity to stake out claims to particular
spaces. Examples range from a teenager’s bedroom through the idea of the nation-state to the
dividing up of Antarctica. Such divisions at the group level have been commonly – and
powerfully – depicted as a series of lines on maps. This lecture explores this apparently simple
concept and discusses some of the problems with it and some of the problems it creates.
4. Frontiers (30/09/04)
Not content with marking the separation between one group and another, humans have also
shown a remarkable desire to expand the territory they control. The classic case of the frontier of
expansion is the period of the ‘Wild West’ in what is now the United States. We often admire the
resourcefulness, courage, and determination of the pioneers as they trekked into what they
regarded as an empty wilderness. In fact, the land they laid claim to was not ‘empty’ at all, and
the settlers displaced the previous inhabitants by force. The history of this frontier and others
like it has been largely written by those who won the conflict, but we should also consider the
other side of the story.
12
Week 4 (w/b 4 Oct 2004)
5. Borderlands (05/10/04)
When we consider a border or frontier, should we be thinking about two societies or one?
Groups of people are divided or divide themselves from each other: the border demarcates two
distinct societies. Yet at the same time people continually seek contact or continuity across these
divides so that distinctions become less hard-and-fast, less easy to see: the border becomes the
focus of a single frontier society. What are the characteristics of such borderlands? How do they
change over time? What attempts have been made to resolve the contradictions inherent in
borderlands?
6. Constructing the frontier (07/10/04)
Are the distinctions and divisions between groups of people an inevitable consequence of
differences in language, customs, religion, etc, or are they constructed for particular purposes? If
differences are inherent, why don’ t borderlines correspond to ethnic groupings? If frontiers are
constructed, how do we explain the persistence of certain ethnic groups over many centuries? Is
a frontier a thing or a process?
Week 5 (w/b 11 Oct 2004)
WORKSHOP on Border Encounters (12/10/04)
ENVIRONMENTAL ENCOUNTERS
7. Out of Eden: the origins and spread of agriculture and its environmental impact, 10,000
BCE-2000 BCE (14/10/04)
The origins of agriculture can be traced back to the final stages of the last Ice Age more than
10,000 years ago. It started in south-eastern Turkey and spread slowly throughout the Middle
East. Agriculture proved to be cultural and environmental dynamite that exploded when the
climate warmed up after about 9700 BC (11700 years ago). It was to transform humanity and the
surface of the earth forever. This lecture charts the environmental factors that led to the
invention of agriculture and the environmental impacts that followed in its wake.
Week 6 (w/b 18 Oct 2004)
8. Journey across the void: the colonisation of the Pacific and its environmental impact,
1400 BCE-1000 CE (19/10/04)
This lecture explores the trail of the ecological transformations left behind by the Polynesian
peoples who colonised the islands of the Pacific. The lecture will also show that the impact was
not a one-way street and that the different environments encountered on the thousands of islands
resulted in a great diversity of societies in the pacific.
13
9. Migration patterns of disease: the Plague, 536-1400 (21/10/04)
The Plague originated somewhere on the east coast of Africa around 536. After the first major
outbreaks in African harbour towns it travelled in a matter of years to the far corners of the know
world and continued to haunt the world of the Middle Ages for hundreds of years. This lecture
will chart the environmental factors that led to the emergence of the disease and how human
trade and settlement patterns helped the spread of the disease.
Week 7 (w/b 25 Oct 2004)
10. The Columbian Exchange: environmental impact of European expansion, 1492-1900
(26/10/04)
The Columbian exchange refers to the biological exchange of plants, animals, humans and
disease that took place between the Americas and Europe after 1492. The European expansion
opened a new chapter in the ecological history of the Earth since the speed of animals and plants
exchanged between continents increased to unprecedented heights. This led to massive
environmental change in many parts of the world. This lecture charts the overseas expansion of
Europe and the environmental changes it caused.
WORKSHOP on Environmental Encounters (28/10/04)
RULING ENCOUNTERS
Week 8 (w/b 1 Nov 2004)
11. ‘Power to all our friends’ (Cliff Richard) (02/11/04)
Every historian has to deal with power. In all societies, apart perhaps from some of the most
simple (even that is controversial), power is distributed unequally – some people have more than
others. Those with power have the capacity to control to a greater or lesser extent who gets what,
when, and how. Those without power have to find ways of either getting some for themselves or
coming to terms with those who have the power. But what is 'power'? What is it to say that
someone is ‘has power’? They either have the power to do something or the power over
something or somebody. This part of the module explores philosophical, archaeological,
anthropological, sociological, economic and political approaches to the nature of power. What
we will try to build up is a set of analytical tools which can be used to identify the nature of
power in the societies and states which you will study in history. We will look at terms such as
‘authority, control, leadership, influence, elites’ and at the potential sources of power in the
economy, social relationships, the use of force, and ideology.
12. ‘If I ruled the world’ (Lionel Bart) (04/11/04)
The autocratic exercise of power by a monarch, tyrant, dictator etc. seems at first sight to be the
most simple model to analyse, where one person exercises absolute or overwhelming power in
the state. Such rulers often claimed that they ruled because they had exceptional abilities and
virtues, not given to ordinary people (the ‘charismatic’ view of leadership) (‘We are all worms;
but I do believe I am a glow-worm.’(Churchill)). This can be analysed by a biographical
approach to history, looking for the characteristics of personality which explain the person’s
power. But how far will this get us in really understanding power? According to Napoleon, ‘it
was not the Roman army which conquered Gaul, but Caesar.’ But one man cannot conquer a
14
country. An army can. On the other hand, would the army have been in Gaul at all, if Caesar had
not led it there? Once there, would it have won without Caesar? We need to explore the
possibility that power is essentially a relationship and that people gain great power not simply
because they want to have that power, but because many others want them to have it for their
own ends. We need to analyse the key moments in the autocratic exercise of power: the gaining
of power, the maintenance of power, the handing on of that power. There is likely to be a
balance between the use of threat and reward to maintain power. The use of force and terror
might seem to be the key; but it could be argued that this is inherently unstable – look at the
rulers overthrown by their own military. We will look at the political economy of autocracy (e.g.
the overpayment to certain groups to maintain their loyalty often at the expense of the
population as a whole).
Week 9 (w/b 8 Nov 2004)
13. ‘Power to the People’ (John Lennon) (09/11/04)
Distributed power. Democratic systems often come into being as a revolt again the unreasonable
power of an individual or a group and often represented themselves as ways of preventing the
excessive concentration of power. But do they? Look at the most radical direct democracy in
world history, Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. The Athenian historian, Thucydides,
described Athens at the time that Pericles was its most prominent statesman as ‘in name a
democracy, but in practice rule by its leading man.’ Compare for example the role of the
President in the United States. Where does power lie in democratic systems? We will explore the
model that all societies are made up of overlapping and competing sources of power and that
democratic systems are one way of mediating between these sources of power. We will look at
elites, bureaucracies, and statesmen in democratic systems. We will look at two contrasting
critiques of democracy. The first is the contemporary criticism by Plato and Aristotle of
Athenian democracy that it gave all power to the poor (and ‘undeserving’) against the rich (and
‘deserving’). The second is the contrasting analysis of modern democracies that in the end
money talks, that power resides with business and the money men.
14. ‘Sisters are doin’ it for themselves’ (Aretha Franklin and Annie Lennox) (11/11/04)
Empowering the powerless. One of the most important features of power is the ability to exclude
others from power and the benefits of power. In all societies there have been individuals and
groups who have been, or have perceived themselves to be, powerless, the victims of the power
of others. We will look at examples such as slaves, women, and peasants. Why is that in the
classical world of Greece and Rome, for example, while individual slaves frequently sought to
escape from slavery by running away or rising in revolt, the idea that slavery as an institution
was wrong never emerged? Why then did such thinking emerge much later in Europe? We will
analyse the ways in which ruling groups impose their view of the world on society at large
(looking at the work of thinkers like Gramsci and Foucault). We will look at the strategies which
the powerless have adopted to empower themselves, particularly resistance, rebellion, and
revolution.
Week 10 (w/b 15 Nov 2004)
WORKSHOP on Ruling Encounters (16/11/04)
URBAN ENCOUNTERS
Archaeologists and historians have often connected the emergence of urban communities with
15
the rise of civilisation. But from earliest times many cities were walled demonstrating a link
between the city and warfare. These four lectures will examine this encounter: we will first
consider differing responses to urbanism in pre-industrial societies across the Old and New
worlds and how urban communities can be defined in different cultures. We will then consider
how urban communities responded to warfare and how warfare evolved to take into account the
need to attack cities and fortifications. In turn we will examine how cities reflected the changing
security of states and empires, and how fortifications and cities evolved in times of
technological change until the early modern period.
15. From the walls of Jericho to the M25 (18/11/04)
Cities emerged throughout the old world in the 4th millennium BC. Archaeologists define early
cities from differing patterns of housing, monumental architecture and public spaces and
processional ways. By contrast historians are more concerned to define urbanism from the
emergence of institutions and specialist activities. What is common to both views is an
awareness of greater complexity and diversity than is found in rural settlements. In western Asia
from early times many urban centres were walled. This served to protect the communities within
but also served to define the city from without. By contrast in central America large settlements
developed including complex monuments but without the definition provided by fortifications.
Week 11 (w/b 22 Nov 2004)
16. Warfare and the city: the city under siege (23/11/04)
The epic of the Trojan war reminds us that the siege is as old as the walled town and urban
fortifications became more complex and monumental as states became wealthier and also as a
response to developments of siege warfare. In the Greek world many of the major innovations
in technology arose from the need to refine and improve military siege technology. At the same
time the accounts of sieges inform of the human suffering of the urban dwellers.
17. Walling Rome: the end of the pax Romana (25/11/04)
City walls were a common feature of urban planning before the late 19th century. At certain
periods however great cities like Rome were undefended. This lecture will look at the
connections between imperial systems of defence and the planning of towns and urban
communities. We will see how new defensive schemes arose in response to the breakdown of
imperial frontiers and how the fabric of cities was transformed.
Week 12 (w/b 29 Nov 2004)
18. The city as battlefield and victim (30/11/04)
Technology and warfare are often connected and with the adoption of cannon and gunpowder
technology the defences of cities were transformed. We will consider the impact this had not
only on the military concerns of the city, but also in terms of urban growth, intellectual life and
political power. Finally we will review the future of the ‘city without walls’ in a new age of
insecurity.
WORKSHOP on Urban Encounters (02/12/04)
16
OVERVIEW
Week 13 (w/b 6 Dec 2004)
19. Contrasts, comparisons and connections (07/12/04)
This lecture will emphasise the comparative nature of this module by drawing together the ideas
and material presented in the four Encounters to suggest some possible general conclusions.
20. Encounters and World History (09/12/04)
In the final class we will return to the questions raised at the beginning of the semester and
consider how World History might help us to view our own subject areas in new ways. Is it
enough to place our own segment of the past in a broader chronological and geographical
perspective? Or can World History take us still further? Does this approach to the past simply
illuminate old questions or does it raise quite new ones?
17
Gobbets
BORDER ENCOUNTERS
THERE IS A MAJOR PROBLEM WITH THIS GOBBET WHEN THERE ARE SO MANY
PEOPLE ON THE MODULE. MUST CAST IT IN SUCH A WAY THAT THEY DON’T ALL
NEED THE SAME ARTICLE – EXTRA READING OPTIONS ONE POSSIB – PAN
YIHONG’S BOOK, THE BOOK ON TIBETAN HISTORY – BECKWITH AND THE MORE
GENERAL ONE (AUTHOR?), OTHER ARTICLES? SEE BAS. WHAT A NIGHTMARE
Due IN CLASS on 12 Oct 2004 and at no other time.
Wars often end with (or in some cases are avoided by) the agreement of a treaty. In discussing
the implications of this primary source, you should consider what treaties do, and under what
circumstances are they kept or broken.
This treaty is one of a series between Tibet and Tang China (618-907) during the eighth and
early ninth centuries, when Tibet was one of Tang China's most powerful neighbours.
The treaty of 783
Tang possesses all-under-heaven [that is, the known world]; wherever the footprints of Yu
[Chinese culture hero who travelled the known world and built dykes to hold back the great
flood] extend, as far as boats and chariots can go, there is no one that does not obey. Under the
renewed brilliance of successive sovereigns, it continues year after year to all eternity, throwing
luster on the great kingly inheritance, and spreading holy teachings within the four seas [the
known world]. With the Tibetan btsan-po [monarch] it has made matrimonial alliance generation
after generation. It has firmly bound itself in the neighborly friendship, forming a common body
in peace or danger, and forming nephew-and-uncle countries [i.e. the rulers maintain a fictive
kin relationship as uncle and nephew] for nearly two hundred years. From time to time because
of petty annoyances, [the two countries] have abandoned magnanimity and become enemies.
The frontier territories have been troubled without having even a year of peace.
The [Tang] emperor, on his succession to the throne, took pity on the black-haired people [i.e.
the commoners]. He caused the enslaved prisoners to be released to return to the Tibetan tribes.
The Tibetan nation has displayed courtesy and in the same way has shown desire for harmony.
Envoys have gone and returned, announcing in succession the orders of their sovereigns. This
makes it impossible that deceptive plots should arise and chariots of war should be used. Tibet,
furthermore, for the sake of what is essential to the two countries and of seeking to make it
permanent, now requests to put into practice an anciently established procedure of concluding a
covenant.
The [Chinese] state, in striving to give rest to the people in the border areas, will renounce its
former territory, abandon profit and pursue the course of public good, make firm the covenant
and follow the treaty.
Now the territories that the Chinese state holds to the west of Jingzhou as far as the western
mouth of the Tanzheng strait; west of Longzhou as far as Qingshui county; west of Fengzhou as
far as Tonggu county, and on to the Western Mountains of Jiannan and the eastern banks of the
Dadu River shall be the Han [that is, Chinese] territory (see Pan Yihong article).
The garrisons which the Tibetan nation holds in [the prefectures of] Lan, Wei, Yuan and Hui;
18
west as far as Lintao, and east to Chengzhou, reaching the Mosuo and various Man
[non-Chinese peoples] on the western frontiers of Jiannan and the southwest of the Dadu river,
shall be the Tibetan territory (see Pan Yihong article).
As for the places garrisoned by troops, the people who presently live in prefectures and counties,
and the Man tribes on both sides of the frontiers who are presently subject to Han, according to
the present distribution of their lands, all are to remain as heretofore.
On the north of the Yellow River, from the former Xinquan Army, directly north as far as the
Great Desert [the Gobi Desert], and directly south as far as the Luotuoling of the Helan
Mountains, shall be the border, and in between shall be neutral territory (see map on handout).
With regard to the places not recorded in the covenant text, wherever Tibet has troops stationed,
Tibet shall keep; wherever Han has troops stationed, Han shall keep. Both shall retain what they
presently hold and shall not encroach on the other.
The places that heretofore have not had troops, shall not have new garrisons established, nor
shall there be walled towns and fortifications built, nor shall there be ploughing and sowing.
Now the generals and grand councilors of the two countries have received a commission to meet,
and they, having undergone purification rites in preparation for the ceremony, announce it to the
gods of heaven and earth, of the mountains and rivers, and make the gods be witness that there
should be no violation. The text of the covenant shall be preserved in the ancestral temple, with
a copy in the appropriate office. What the two countries have completed may they preserve
forever.
Translated by Pan Yihong, 'The Sino-Tibetan treaties in the Tang dynasty', T'oung Pao, 78
(1992), pp. 155-6.
The language here may be a little daunting, but most of the tricky bits are explained in the article
to which this translation is appended, which is available in multiple copies in the Cowen Library.
Beware anachronism within the text itself, for instance, chariots had not been used in anger for
hundreds of years by this time.
Once you have thought about the text itself, then you can write (max. 500 words):
1. When times, places and incidents are as unfamiliar as these, it is especially important to begin
your commentary by stating briefly the context in which the document was produced.
2. Next, you should consider how this document fits into a much longer pattern of relations
between China and its neighbours. See suggested reading below.
3. When you have finished your gobbet, you should identify (in a single sentence) ONE further
example of a treaty from a different period and a different world region which could usefully be
compared with the treaty here.
Reading suggestions
Remember to use the reading lists in the handbook too, and to search the bibliographies you find
in those books for likely material.
•
Barfield, Thomas, The perilous frontier: nomadic empires and China, 221 B.C. to A.D.
19
•
•
•
•
1757 (Oxford, 1989).
Pan, Yihong, Son of heaven and heavenly Qaghan: Sui-Tang China and its neighbors
(Bellingham, Wash., 1997).
Rossabi, Morris, ed., China among equals: the Middle Kingdom and its neighbors, 10th
to 14th centuries (Berkeley, 1983).
Walker, Richard Louis, The multi-state system of ancient China (Westport, Conn., 1953).
Wright, David C., ‘Parity, pedigree and peace: routine Sung diplomatic missives to the
Liao’, Journal of Sung-Yüan Studies, 26 (1996), 55-85. [Copies in Cowen Library].
If you feel really energetic you could get yourself a Ridings Card from the Library and go to
Durham to look at Paul Demiéville, Le concile de Lhasa (Paris, 1952). It remains the classic
work on the subject and you'd be surprised how much French you know if you just have a go!
ENVIRONMENTAL ENCOUNTERS
Due IN CLASS on 28 Oct 2004 and at no other time.
This account is from Messina, Italy, and it describes the arrival and initial progress of the Black
Death. Consider what this passage says about the environmental factors affecting the spread of
epidemic disease, and the consequences of the human response to such a disease.
At the end of your gobbet, include ONE SENTENCE identifying a comparable example taken
from a different time and different world region.
The Black Death: a description of the Plague
At the beginning of October, in the year of the incarnation of the Son of God 1347, twelve
Genoese galleys . . . entered the harbor of Messina. In their bones they bore so virulent a disease
that anyone who only spoke to them was seized by a mortal illness and in no manner could
evade death. The infection spread to everyone who had any contact with the diseased. Those
infected felt themselves penetrated by a pain throughout their whole bodies and, so to say,
undermined. Then there developed on the thighs or upper arms a boil about the size of a lentil
which the people called "burn boil". This infected the whole body, and penetrated it so that the
patient violently vomited blood. This vomiting of blood continued without intermission for three
days, there being no means of healing it, and then the patient expired.
Not only all those who had speech with them died, but also those who had touched or used any
of their things. When the inhabitants of Messina discovered that this sudden death emanated
from the Genoese ships they hurriedly ordered them out of the harbor and town. But the evil
remained and caused a fearful outbreak of death. Soon men hated each other so much that if a
son was attacked by the disease his father would not tend him. If, in spite of all, he dared to
approach him, he was immediately infected and was bound to die within three days. Nor was
this all; all those dwelling in the same house with him, even the cats and other domestic animals,
followed him in death. As the number of deaths increased in Messina many desired to confess
their sins to the priests and to draw up their last will and testament. But ecclesiastics, lawyers
and notaries refused to enter the houses of the diseased.
Soon the corpses were lying forsaken in the houses. No ecclesiastic, no son, no father and no
relation dared to enter, but they hired servants with high wages to bury the dead. The houses of
20
the deceased remained open with all their valuables, gold and jewels. . . . When the catastrophe
had reached its climax the Messinians resolved to emigrate. One portion of them settled in the
vineyards and fields, but a larger portion sought refuge in the town of Catania. The disease clung
to the fugitives and accompanied them everywhere where they turned in search of help. Many of
the fleeing fell down by the roadside and dragged themselves into the fields and bushes to expire.
Those who reached Catania breathed their last in the hospitals there. The terrified citizens would
not permit the burying of fugitives from Messina within the town, and so they were all thrown
into deep trenches outside the walls.
Thus the people of Messina dispersed over the whole island of Sicily and with them the disease,
so that innumerable people died. The town of Catania lost all its inhabitants, and ultimately sank
into complete oblivion. Here not only the "burn blisters" appeared, but there developed gland
boils on the groin, the thighs, the arms, or on the neck. At first these were of the size of a hazel
nut, and developed accompanied by violent shivering fits, which soon rendered those attacked
so weak that they could not stand up, but were forced to lie in their beds consumed by violent
fever. Soon the boils grew to the size of a walnut, then to that of a hen's egg or a goose's egg,
and they were exceedingly painful, and irritated the body, causing the sufferer to vomit blood.
The sickness lasted three days, and on the fourth, at the latest, the patient succumbed. As soon as
anyone in Catania was seized with a headache and shivering, he knew that he was bound to pass
away within the specified time. . . . When the plague had attained its height in Catania, the
patriarch endowed all ecclesiastics, even the youngest, with all priestly powers for the
absolution of sin which he himself possessed as bishop and patriarch. But the pestilence raged
from October 1347 to April 1348. The patriarch himself was one of the last to be carried off. He
died fulfilling his duty. At the same time, Duke Giovanni, who had carefully avoided every
infected house and every patient, died.
Available from: http://history.boisestate.edu/westciv/plague/07.shtml
RULING ENCOUNTERS
Due IN CLASS on 16 Nov 2004 and at no other time.
Consider the following report from the news agency CNN. Look at the ways in which power is
displayed or symbolised. You might well wish to consider comparative material across time and
space, and in any case at the end of your gobbet you should include ONE SENTENCE giving a
comparative example from another period and a different world region.
A report for CNN, April 10, 2003
A U.S. Marine told CNN Thursday he meant no disrespect when he draped an American flag
over the face of a statue of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in a central Baghdad square before
the Marines tied the statue to a tank recovery vehicle and pulled it down.
Many Arabs both in and out of Iraq were displeased with the display on Wednesday before the
Marines toppled the statue, saying the act came too close to declaring a U.S. occupation of
Baghdad.
But Corporal Edward Chin told CNN’s Paula Zahn that the display of the American Stars and
Stripes, and the subsequent removal of that flag and the hanging of a pre-Gulf War Iraqi flag,
21
were “more like a symbol that we were here to give Iraqis their country back.”
“They wanted a flag on his head, the American flag,” Chin said. “They brought it up to me and I
put it on there for a brief moment. The Iraqi crowd, they were egging us on. They were happy to
see us do it. We took it down after a brief moment and put their flag up.”
The corporal removed the Iraqi flag before the Marines fired up their armored tank recovery
vehicle and dragged the statue down. The Marines joined the effort to pull down the Firdos
Square statue – erected last April for the Iraqi president’s 65th birthday – when it became clear a
small group of Iraqis would not be able to bring it down on their own.
“We pretty much saw the Iraqi people trying to pull down the statue,” Chin said. “They couldn’t
do it with just a rope, and our commanding officer gave us the go-ahead to give them a hand.”
Chin said the Iraqis were “Exuberant” when the statue fell, eventually “ripping its head off” and
dragging it through the streets.
URBAN ENCOUNTERS
Due IN CLASS on 2 Dec 2004 and at no other time.
Comment on this illustration. Discuss the context and the current state of the monument. How
does it inform the study of urban history, both at this city but also in our wider understanding of
urban monuments and infrastructures?
At the end of your gobbet, include ONE SENTENCE identifying a comparable example taken
from a different time and different world region.
22
See the bibliography C. ii.
Term paper questions and reading lists
How is a Term Paper different from an ordinary essay?
To start with, it is about twice as long: 3000 words. This means that you must do more research
and think harder than you would for an ordinary essay. You will need to develop your points
more fully by making more detailed and careful comparisons; you should be looking beyond the
surface similarities to establish exactly how much is similar and where the differences can be
seen to lie. The extra words also give you an opportunity to explore certain points that you might
have to leave out of a shorter piece of work, and to take greater account of complexities and
subtleties in the situations you are analysing.
This is where you will need all your bibliographical skills. Take the opportunity to explore
beyond the reading lists to find books and journal articles that your lecturers have not
specifically recommended or do not know about. One of the main points of the Term Paper
exercise is further to develop your intellectual independence.
Do not make the mistake of simply padding out a normal essay to 3000 words. The Term Paper
is testing different skills, and you may be marked down heavily for irrelevance or repetition.
How should I select my examples?
In writing your Term Paper you are expected to range widely in time and space for your
examples. This means that you MUST draw your evidence from at least THREE periods of
history (prehistory, ancient/classical, medieval, early modern, modern) and at least THREE
world regions. Remember that history here includes prehistory (back to the Big Bang!), that
there is a great deal more in the world than Europe and the United States, and that European
history is really rather short when measured on the global scale.
23
The dating of the periods listed above is the subject of periodic debate, and appropriate datings
may also vary from one part of the world to another. However, rough correspondences might be:
up to c. 1500 BCE (prehistory), c. 1500 BCE-c. 400 CE (ancient/classical), c. 400-1500 CE
(medieval), c. 1500-1750 (early modern), c. 1750-present (modern). You MUST deal with at
least three of these periods in your Term Paper. For just one of many approaches to this issue see
Nicola Di Cosmo, 'State formation and periodization in Inner Asian history', Journal of World
History, 10:1 (1999), 1-40.
The division of the world into regions is also highly contentious, as seen in Martin Lewis and
Kären Wigen, The myth of continents: a critique of metageography (Berkeley, 1997). We
suggest a simple, if rather unreconstructed, division as follows: Europe (including Britain!), Asia,
Africa (these three continents together regarded as the Old World); the Americas (including what
is now the United States), Australasia/Pacific (these two continents together regarded as the New
World). You may use other schemas if you justify them, but please note that we will NEVER
accept Britain and the United States as world regions in their own right. In other words, please
don't try to compare Britain with Germany, Greece or any other European country, or to
compare the United States with Canada, Brazil or any other country in the Americas - if you do
you will be marked down. For most of our purposes in this module, Britain is part of Europe and
the United States is part of the Americas.
As a last point here, we want to emphasise that we are asking you to think big, and to think
thematically. In this module even more than in many others, you should avoid presenting merely
a chronological account of ‘what happened’. What we are looking for (in this module and all
others) is analysis of "what happened" and suggestions about what it all might mean.
Expectations for essays
A good essay does the following:
•
•
•
•
shows an understanding of different views on the topic, including the evidence used to
support those views.
demonstrates that you have drawn your own conclusions on the basis of a significant
amount of reading.
presents an argument that tries to persuade the reader to agree with your view on the
topic.
provides reading pleasure by being well-written and following technical conventions
accurately.
There is a Programme styleguide, which we will expect you to follow in matters of citation,
footnoting, etc. We shall be impatient with technical errors in essays (i.e. we will deduct marks).
Marking
In general, notice that regurgitation of reading will receive low marks, while intellectual
adventurousness and risk-taking will receive high marks. To do reasonably well you must at
least attempt to engage imaginatively with the issues. In more detail:
A Failing essay (39% and below) will show little, if any, understanding and no
independent thought, have no argument to speak of, and be very poorly written.
A Third-class essay (40-49%) will show minimal understanding and little or no
independent thought, have weak argumentation, and poor writing.
A Lower-Second essay (50-59%) will show a basic understanding of different views on the
topic and evidence of an attempt to draw independent conclusions, with a reasonable standard of
24
argumentation and writing.
An Upper-Second essay (60-69%) will have a well-written and persuasive argument
showing a good understanding of different views and setting out your own conclusions.
A First-class essay (70% and above) will be outstanding in all respects.
You will observe that these expectations and marking criteria map onto the Faculty of Arts
Verbal Descriptors for BA Programmes.
Technical points
•
•
•
•
•
Maximum 3000 words total (that is, footnotes are included, not extra).
Term Papers must be typed and double-spaced.
Papers MUST include a bibliography, and should be footnoted following the format in
the handbook or Styleguide for YOUR PROGRAMME (i.e. single-honours History must
follow the History Styleguide, students on Archaeology programmes must use the format
for Archaeology, and so on). You will lose marks if your bibliography is missing or does
not follow the relevant styleguide.
You should include in your bibliography everything you have read in preparing your
Term Paper, even if it is not specifically cited.
DO NOT PLAGIARISE
THE QUESTIONS
If none of the following appeals to you, you can agree an essay title of your own with the
relevant lecturer. But DO NOT devise a title of your own without getting agreement in advance;
it is absolutely essential that the subject of your Term Paper be both testing and in keeping with
the spirit of the module.
BORDER ENCOUNTERS
1. ‘How can you write a book about boundaries that includes no maps? We cannot
understand frontiers until we map them.’ Discuss.
2. Can territorial expansion ever be justifiable?
3. Why have borderlands been such a persistent phenomenon in World History?
4. Are frontiers imaginary?
Bibliography
Since frontiers and boundaries can be found from earliest times, and among other animals as
well as among humans, this bibliography, despite its length, gives only the tip of the iceberg of
potential reading. There are numerous journal articles in this list; they are strongly commended
to you as a concise way to the heart of an issue and an argument. I have deliberately tried to
provide reading dealing with examples from all over the world and all periods of history and
prehistory so that you have plenty of choice for illustrating your own arguments. Remember that
no matter which question you answer, you must include examples from at least three different
world regions and at least three different periods.
25
Frontiers as lines and zones
•
Barfield, T.J., The perilous frontier: nomadic empires and China, 221 BC to AD 1757
(Oxford, 1989).
•
Bartlett, R., The making of Europe: conquest, colonisation and cultural change 950-1350
(London, 1993).
•
Bonner, Michael, 'The naming of the frontier: 'Awâsim, Thughûr, and the Arab geographers',
BSOAS, 57:1 (1994), 17-21.
•
Chen Hanseng, Frontier land systems in southernmost China (New York, 1949).
•
Coulson, C.L.H., 'Fortress-policy in Capetian tradition and Angevin practice: aspects of the
conquest of Normandy by Philip Augustus', Anglo-Norman Studies, 6 (1983), 13-38.
•
Davies, R.R., Domination and conquest: the experience of Ireland, Scotland and Wales
1100-1300 (Cambridge, 1990).
•
Davis, S.L., and J.R.V. Prescott, Aboriginal frontiers and boundaries in Australia
(Melbourne, 1992).
•
De Atley, Suzanne P. and Findlow, Frank J., Exploring the limits: frontiers and boundaries in
prehistory (Oxford, 1984).
•
Donnan, Hastings, and Thomas M. Wilson, Borders: frontiers of identity, nation and state
(Oxford, 1999).
•
Duffy, P.M., 'The nature of the medieval frontier in Ireland', Studia Hibernica, 22-3 (1982-3),
21-38.
•
Etherington, Norman, The great treks: the transformation of Southern Africa, 1815-1854
(Harlow, 2001).
•
Febvre, L., A geographical introduction to history, trans. E.G. Mountford and J.H. Paxton
(London, 1932).
•
Febvre, Lucien, 'Frontière: the word and the concept', A new kind of history: from the
writings of Lucien Febvre, trans. K. Folca, ed. Peter Burke (London, 1973), pp. 208-18.
•
Green, Stanton W. and Perlman, Stephen M., The archaeology of frontiers and boundaries
(Orlando, 1985).
•
Hay, D., 'England, Scotland and Europe: The problem of the frontier', TRHS, 5th ser., 25
(1975), 77-91.
•
Hayes, D.M., From boundaries blurred to boundaries defined: clerical emphases on the
limits of sacred space in England and France during the later Middle Ages ().
•
Holt, Frank Lee, Alexander the Great and Bactria: the formation of a Greek frontier in
central Asia (Leiden, 1988).
•
Jagchid, S. and Van Simmons, J., Peace, war and trade along the Great Wall (Bloomington,
1989).
•
Jones, Grant D., Maya resistance to Spanish rule (Albuquerque, 1989).
26
•
Jones, S.B., Boundary-making: a handbook for statesmen, treaty editors and boundary
commissioners (Washington, DC, 1945).
•
Jones, Stephen B., 'Boundary concepts in the setting of place and time', Annals of the
Association of American Geographers, 49 (1959), 241-55.
•
Kaegi, W., 'The frontier: barrier or bridge?', 17th international Byzantine congress, major
papers (New York, 1986), 279-305.
•
Khodarkovsky, M., 'From frontier to empire: the concept of the frontier in Russia,
sixteenth-eighteenth centuries', Russian History, 19 (1992), 115-28.
•
Kristof, Ladis K. D., 'The nature of frontiers and boundaries', Annals of the Association of
American Geographers, 49 (1959), 269-82.
•
Lamar, Howard, and Leonard Thompson, The frontier in history: north America and
southern Africa compared (New Haven, 1981).
•
Lattimore, O., 'Origins of the Great Wall of China: a frontier concept in theory and practice',
Studies in frontier history: collected papers 1928-58 (London, 1962), pp. 97-118.
•
Lattimore, O., Inner Asian frontiers of China (New York, 1951).
•
Legrand, Catherine, Frontier expansion and peasant protest in Colombia, 1850-1936
(Albuquerque, 1986).
•
Luttwak, E., The grand strategy of the Roman Empire (Baltimore, 1976).
•
Mackay, A., Spain in the Middle Ages: from frontier to empire, 1000-1500 (London, 1977).
•
McNeill, William Hardy, Europe's steppe frontier, 1500-1800 (Chicago, 1964).
•
Mehra, Parshotam, The North-eastern frontier: a documentary study of the internecine
rivalry between India, Tibet, and China (Delhi, 1980).
•
Murray, Alan V., ed., Crusade and conversion on the Baltic frontier 1150-1500 (Aldershot,
2001).
•
Nielsen, Jorgen S., ed., Christian-Muslim frontier: chaos, clash or dialogue? (London,
1998).
•
Noble, T.F.X., 'Louis the Pious and the frontiers of the Frankish realm', Charlemagne's heir:
the reign of Louis the Pious, ed. P. Godman and R. Collins (Oxford, 1990), 333-47.
•
Parker, S. Thomas, Romans and Saracens: a history of the Arabian frontier (Philadelphia,
1986).
•
Phillips, J.R.S., The medieval expansion of Europe, second ed. (Oxford, 1998).
•
Pohl, Wood, et al, ed., The transformation of frontiers: from late antiquity to the
Carolingians (Leiden, 2001)
•
Power, Daniel J., 'What did the frontier of Angevin Normandy comprise?' Anglo-Norman
Studies 17: proceedings of the Battle conference 1994, ed. C. Harper-Bill (Woodbridge,
1995), 181-201.
27
•
Power, Daniel, and Naomi Standen, Frontiers in question: Eurasian borderlands, 700 1700
(Houndsmills, 1999).
•
Prescott, J. R. V., Political frontiers and boundaries (London, 1987).
•
Prescott, J.R.V., Boundaries and frontiers (London, 1978).
•
Smith, J., 'The fines imperii', New Cambridge Medieval History.
•
Spence, R.T., 'The pacification of the Cumberland borders, 1593-1628', Northern History, 13
(1977), 59-160.
•
Stalls, Clay, Possessing the land: Aragon's expansion into Islam's Ebro frontier under
Alfonso the Battler, 1104-1134 (Leiden, 1995).
•
Standen, N., 'The disappearance of a frontier region: the Liao and the borders of tenth
century north China', Selected papers of the 10th biannual conference, European Association
for Chinese Studies (Prague, 1996), unpaginated.
•
Steffen, Jerome O., and David Harry Miller, The frontier: comparative studies (Norman,
1977).
•
Thompson, John, Closing the frontier: radical response in Oklahoma, 1889-1923 (Norman,
1986).
•
Tietze, K., 'The Liao Song border conflict of 1074-1076', Studia Sino-Mongolica: Festschrift
für Herbert Franke, ed. W. Bauer (Wiesbaden, 1979), 127-51.
•
Truett, Samuel, 'Neighbors by nature: rethinking region, nation, and environmental history in
the U.S.-Mexico borderlands,' Environmental History, 2:2 (1997), 160-78.
•
Tuan Yi-fu , Space and place: the perspective of experience (Minneapolis, 1977).
•
Turner, Frederick Jackson, 'The significance of the frontier in American history', The frontier
in American history (New York, 1920), pp. 1-38.
•
Von Glahn, Richard, The country of streams and grottoes: expansion, settlement, and the
civilizing of the Sichuan frontier in Song times (Cambridge, Mass., 1987).
•
Watson, William, Cultural frontiers in ancient East Asia (Edinburgh, 1971).
•
Whittaker, C.R., Frontiers of the Roman empire: a social and economic study (Baltimore,
1994).
•
Whittaker, C.R., 'Frontiers', The High Empire, AD 70-192, The Cambridge Ancient
•
History XI, 2nd ed., ed. A.K. Bowman, P. Garnsey and D. Rathbone (Cambridge, 2000).
•
Wieczynski, J.L., The Russian frontier: the impact of borderlands upon the course of early
Russian history (Charlottesville, 1976).
•
Wittek, P., The rise of the Ottoman Empire (London, 1938).
•
Wyman, W.D., and C.B. Kroeber, eds, The frontier in perspective (Madison, 1957).
Borderlands
28
•
Abulafia, David, and Nora Berend, ed. Medieval frontiers: concepts and practices
(Aldershot, 2002).
•
Bartlett, R., and Mackay, A., eds, Medieval frontier societies (Oxford, 1989).
•
Bates, D., Normandy before 1066 (London, 1982).
•
Bentley, Jerry H., Old World encounters: cross-cultural contacts and exchanges in
pre-modern times (Oxford, 1993).
•
Bonner, Michael, Aristocratic violence and holy war: studies in the jihad and the
Arab-Byzantine frontier (New Haven, 1996).
•
Bowman, Alan Keir, Life and letters on the Roman frontier: Vindolanda and its people
(London, 1994).
•
Brodman, James, Ransoming captives in crusader Spain: the Order of Merced on the
Christian-Islamic frontier (Philadelphia, 1986).
•
Brown, Melissa J., ed., Negotiating ethnicities in China and Taiwan (Berkeley, 1996).
•
Cherry, David, Frontier and society in Roman North Africa (Oxford, 1998).
Cronon, William, Changes in the land: Indians, colonists and the ecology of New England
(New York, 1983).
•
Davies, R.R., 'Kings, lords and liberties in the March of Wales, 1066-1272', TRHS, 5th ser.,
29 (1979), 41-61.
•
Deutsch, Sarah, No separate refuge: culture, class, and gender on an Anglo-Hispanic
frontier in the American Southwest, 1880-1940 (New York, 1987).
•
Dixon, P., 'Towerhouses, pelehouses and border society', Archaeological Journal, 136 (1979),
240-52.
•
Drakard, Jane, A Malay frontier: unity and duality in a Sumatran kingdom (Ithaca, 1990).
•
Goodman, A., 'The Anglo-Scottish marches in the fifteenth century: a frontier society?',
Scotland and England, 1286-1815, ed. R.A. Mason (Edinburgh, 1987), pp. 18-33.
•
Grove, Richard H., Green imperialism: colonial expansion, tropical island Edens, and the
origins of environmentalism, 1600-1860 (Cambridge, 1995).
•
Guelke, Leonard, and Robert Shell, 'Landscape and conquest: frontier water alienation and
Khoikhoi strategies of survival, 1652-1789', Agriculture, resources exploitation, and
environmental change, ed. Helen Wheatley (Aldershot, 1997).
•
Haldon, J.F. and Kennedy, H., 'The Arab-Byzantine frontier in the eighth and ninth centuries:
military organization and society in the borderlands', Recueil des travaux de l'Institut
d'Études Byzantines, 19 (1980), 79-116.
•
Harley, J.B., The new nature of maps: essays in the history of cartography (Baltimore,
2001).
•
Harrell, Stevan, ed., Cultural encounters on China's ethnic frontiers (Seattle, 1995).
•
Hennessy, A., The frontier in Latin American history (London, 1975).
29
•
Khouri, Rami G., Jerash, a frontier city of the Roman East (London, 1986).
•
Lewis, James B., Frontier contact between Choson Korea and Tokugawa Japan (London,
2003).
•
Lines, William J., Taming the Great South Land: a history of the conquest of nature in
Australia, (Sydney, 1992).
MacKay Mackenzie, W., 'The Debateable Land', Scottish Historical Review, 30 (1951),
109-25.
•
Maffly-Kipp, Laurie, Religion and society in frontier California (New Haven, 1994).
•
Millward, James A., Beyond the pass: Economy, ethnicity, and empire in Qing Central Asia,
1759-1864 (Stanford, 1998).
Radding, Cynthia, Wandering peoples: colonialism, ethnic spaces, and ecological frontiers
in Northwestern Mexico, 1700-1850 (Durham, NC, 1997).
•
Schwartz, Stuart B., ed., Implicit understandings: observing, reporting, and reflecting on the
encounters between Europeans and other peoples in the early modern era (Cambridge,
1994).
•
Shepherd, John R., Statecraft and political economy on the Taiwan frontier, 1600-1800
(Stanford, 1993).
•
Storey, R.L., 'The wardens of the marches of England towards Scotland, 1377-1485', EHR,
72 (1957), 593-615.
•
Suppe, F.C., Military institutions on the Welsh Marches: Shropshire 1066-1300 (Woodbridge,
1994).
•
Tapper, Richard, Frontier nomads of Iran: a political and social history of the Shahsevan
(New York, 1966).
•
TeBrake, W.H., Medieval frontier: culture and ecology in Rijnland (Austin, 1985).
•
Tuck, J.A., 'War and society in the medieval north', Northern History, 21 (1985), 33-52.
•
Vermeer, Eduard B., 'Population and ecology along the frontier in Qing China', Sediments of
time: environment and society in Chinese history, ed. M. Elvin and T.J. Liu (Cambridge,
1998), pp. 235-279.
•
White, R., The middle ground: Indians, empires, and republics in the Great Lakes region,
1650-1815 (Cambridge, 1991).
•
van Schendel, Willem, ‘Working through partition: making a living in the Bengal
borderland’, International Review of Social History, 46:3 (2001), 371-91.
ENVIRONMENTAL ENCOUNTERS
5. Why is climate change by the end of the last Ice Age not a sufficient explanation for the
origins of agriculture worldwide?
6. Why, in World History, do epidemics spread so rapidly (eg. the Black Death, AIDS,
influenza)?
30
7. The colonisation of the Americas by Europeans has not been the only 'Columbian
Exchange' in World History. Why have 'Columbian Exchanges' had a more severe impact
on the 'New World' than the 'Old World'?
8. Why did the culture of the Polynesian colonists on Easter Island collapse while cultures
in other colonised lands (eg. Mauritius, Madeira, North America) survived?
Bibliography
Remember that no matter which question you answer, you must include examples from at least
three different world regions and at least three different periods.
Out of Eden
•
Bar-Yosef, O., and A. Cohen-Belfer, ‘The origins of sedentism and farming communities in
the Levant’, Journal of World Prehistory, 3 (1989), 447-498.
•
Diamond, Jared, “The Rise and Spread of Food Production”, Part Two, in: Guns, Germs and Steel (London,
Vintage, 1998), pp. 83-191.
•
Fagan, Brain, How Climate Changed Civilization (London, Granta Books, 2004), ch 5-7.
•
Harris, D.R., (ed.), The Origins and Spread of Agriculture and Pastoralism in Eurasia
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•
Herman, R. Hawkins, Environmental and Cultural Consequences of Settlement Patterns in
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Hodder, I. The domestication of Europe (Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1992).
•
Maisel, Charles Keith, The emergence of civilization : from hunting and gathering to
agriculture, cities and the state in the Near East (London, Routledge, 1990).
•
McCorriston, J., and Hole, F., ‘The ecology of seasonal stress and the origins of agriculture
in the Near East’, American Anthropologist, 93 (1991), 46-6.
•
McNeill, J.R., and William H. McNeill, “Shifting to Food Production, 11,000-3,000 Years Ago”, in: The human
web. A Bird's-eye view of World History (New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 2003), pp. 25-40.
•
Mithen, Steven, “Western Asia”, in: After the Ice. A Global Human History, 20,000-5000 BC
(London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003), pp 20-106.
•
Ponting, Clive, “The First Great Transition”, Ch. 4 & 5, in: A Green History of the World,
(London, Penguin, 1991), pp. 37-87.
•
Richerson, Peter J., Robert Boyd, and Robert L. Bettinger , ‘Was agriculture impossible
during the Pleistocene but mandatory during the Holocene? A climate change hypothesis’.
American Antiquity 66 (2001) 38-411.
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Roberts, Neil, “The First Farmers”, Ch. 5, in: The Holocene: an Environmental History,
(Malden, MA, Blackwell, 1998).
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Sherratt, A., ‘Climatic cycles and behavioural revolutions: the emergence of modern humans
and the beginning of farming’, Antiquity, 71 (1997) 271-287.
31
•
Smith, Bruce D., The emergence of agriculture (New York. Scientific American
Library, 1995).
•
Toynbee, Arnold, Mankind and Mother Earth : a narrative history of the world (Oxford:
Oxford University Press. 1976), Ch. 2, 5-8.
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Reed, C. A. (ed.), The origins of agriculture, (The Hague: Mouton, 1977).
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(1995), 481-500.
Journey across the void
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Bridgman, H. A., ‘Could climate change have had an influence on the Polynesian
migrations?’, Palaeogeography, Palaeoclinuitology, Palaeoecology, 41(1983) 193-206.
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other Pacific Islands’, in Martin, P. S. and Klein, R. G. (eds.) Quaternary Extinctions: A
Prehistoric Revolution (Tucson, The University of Arizona Press, 1984).
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Germs and Steel (London, Vintage, 1998), pp. 53-66.
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http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/anthro/bec/papers/Diamond_Ecological_Collapses.PDF
Graves, D.J., and Addison, ‘The Polynesian settlement of the Hawaiian Archipleago:
integrating models and methods in archaeological interpretation’, World Archaeology, 26
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Grove, Richard H., ‘The Origins of Environmentalism’, Nature, vol. 345, 3 May 1990.
Grove, Richard H., Green imperialism: colonial expansion, tropical island Edens, and the
origins of environmentalism, 1600-1860 (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University
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Grove, Richard H., The Culture of Islands and the History of Environmental Concern,
Harvard Seminar on Environmental Values Tuesday, April 18, 2000. Available at:
http://ecoethics.net/hsev/200004txt.htm
Hughes, J. Donald, “Tahiti, Hawai’I, New Zealand: Polynesian impacts on Island
Ecosystems”, in: An Environmental History of the World. Humankind’s Changing Role in the
Community of Life, (London & New York, Routledge, 2002), pp. 93-99.
Irwin, G., The Prehistoric Exploration and Colonisation of the Pacific (Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, 1992).
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Avialable from: http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/93/11/5296.pdf
McNeill, John R., “Of Rats and Men. A Synoptic Environmental History of the Island
Pacific”, Journal of World History, Vol. 5, no. 2, 299-349.
Nunn, P.D., & J.M.R. Britton, ‘Human-Environment Relationships in the Pacific Islnds
around A.D. 1300’, Environment and History, February, 2001, vol. 7 (2001) 3-22.
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85, 4 (2003) 219-229.
Ponting, Clive, “The Lessons of Easter Island”, Ch. 1, in: A Green History of the World,
(London, Penguin, 1991), pp. 1-7.
Weisler, M. I., ‘Henderson Island Prehistory: Colonization and Extinction on a Remote
32
Polynesian Island’, Biological Journal of the Linnaean Society, 56 (1995) 377-404.
Migration patterns of disease
•
Barry, John M., The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History
(New York: Viking, 2003).
•
Cantor, Norman F., In the Wake of the Plague, (London, Simon & Schuster, 2001).
•
Carmichael, Ann, ‘Infection, Hidden Hunger, and History’, in Journal of Interdisciplinary
History 14, 2 (1983) 249-264.
•
Davies, D.E., ‘The scarcity of Rats and the Black Death: An Ecological History’, Journal of
Interdisciplinary History, 16 (1986), pp. 455-470.
•
Diamond, Jared, ‘The Arrow of Disease’, Discover, 13 (October 1992) 64-73. Available
from: http://muweb.millersville.edu/~columbus/data/art/DIAMOND1.ART
•
Dols, Michael, The Black Death in the Middle East (Princeton 1977).
•
Gottfried, Robert, The Black Death: Natural and Human Disaster in Medieval Europe (New
York: Free Press, 1983).
•
Hatcher, John, “England in the Aftermath of the Black Death”, Past and Present 144 (August
1994), pp. 3-35.
•
Herlihy, David, The Black Death and the transformation of the West (Cambridge, Mass.,
Harvard University Press, 1997).
•
Karlen, Arno, Man and Microbes: Disease and Plagues in History and Modern Times (New
York: Putnam Books, 1995).
•
Keys, David, “Part I. The Plague”, In: Catastrophe. An Investigation into the Origins of the
Modern World, (London, Arrow Books, 2000), pp. 9-31.
•
McNeill, William H., “The Impact of the Mongol Empire on shifting Disease Balances,
1200-1500”, Ch. 4, in: Plagues and Peoples, (London, Penguin, 1994), pp. 141-184.
•
Patterson, K. David, and Gerald F. Pyle, ‘The geography and mortality of the 1918 influenza
pandemic’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 1991 65:4-21.
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Killer (Indianapolis, Wiley, 2004).
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University Press, 1998).
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33
Websites
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The onset of the Black Death, described by Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375). Contemporary
account of the arrival of the Black Death in Florence.
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/boccacio2.html
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Plague and Public Health in Renaissance Europe. Primary documents describing the impact
of the Black Death on Italian cities. http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/osheim/intro.html
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The Columbian Exchange
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Carney, Judith A., ‘African Rice In The Columbian Exchange’, The Journal of African
History, 42 (2001) 377-396.
•
Crosby, Alfred W., The Colombian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of
1492 (Wesport, Conn., Greenwood Press, 1977).
•
Crosby, Alfred W., Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900
(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993).
•
Crosby, Alfred W., “Ecological Imperialism: Overseas Migration of Western Europeans as a
Biological Phenomenon”, in: Donald Worster (ed.), The Ends of the Earth. Perspectives in
Environmental History (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 103-117.
•
Diamond, Jared, “Lethal
195-214.
•
•
•
•
•
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gift of Lifestock”,Ch. 11, in: Guns, Germs and Steel (London, Vintage, 1998), pp.
Drake, J.A. et al. (eds.), Biological Invasions: A Global Perspective (Chichester: John Wiley
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McNeill, J.R., & William H. McNeill, ‘Spinning the Worldwide Web, 1450-1800’, Part VI,
in: The human web. A Bird's-eye view of World History (New York, W.W. Norton & Co.,
2003), pp. 155-212.
Micozzi, Marc S., ‘Health and Disease in the New World’, Encounters (Double Issue No.
5-6, pp. 42-43). Available from:
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Richards, John F., ‘The Columbian Exchange: The West Indies’, Ch. 9, in: The Unending
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•
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Carr, Ian, Plagues and Peoples: the Columbian Exchange, available at:
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34
RULING ENCOUNTERS
(These broad historical questions cannot be answered adequately by concentrating on only a
small number of case studies. Your paper must show an awareness of the issue over time and
place and should seek to illustrate the discussion with examples taken from a broad time frame
and across a geographic range. For example, the question on democratic systems cannot be
adequately answered by concentrating simply on, say, democratic Athens of the Fifth Century
B.C.E.; it must show awareness e.g. of Radical movements in Early Modern Europe, the French
Revolution, the American Constitution, the debate about Socialism, the ‘People’s Democracies’
such as China, the debates about the inclusion of minorities or other excluded groups etc).
On autocracies, tyrannies, monarchies etc
•
Andrewes, A., The Greek Tyrants (London, 1956).
•
Arendt, H., The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York, 1951, 1973).
•
Averbach, D., Charisma in Politics, Religion and the Media (London, 1996).
•
Bendix, Reinhard, Kings or People: Power and the Mandate to Rule (Berkeley, 1978).
•
Blondel, J., Political Leadership (London, 1987).
•
Brandauer, Frederick P., and Chn-chieh Huang, ed., Imperial rulership and cultural change
in traditional China (Seattle: University of Washington, 1994).
•
Finer, S.E., The Man on Horseback: the role of the military in politics (London, 1976).
•
Friedrich, Carl and Zbigniew Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy
(Harvard, 1965).
•
Garnsey, P. and R. Saller, The Roman Empire: Economy, Society and Culture (Berkeley,
1987).
•
Henshall, N., The Myth of Absolutism: change and continuity in Early Modern European
Monarchy (London, 1992).
•
Millar, F., The Roman Empire and its Neighbours (2nd ed. London, 1981).
•
Millar, F.,The Emperor in the Roman World (London, 1977).
•
Millar, J., Absolutism in Seventeenth-Century Europe (London, 1990).
•
Twitchett, D., ‘How to be an Emperor: T'ang T'ai-tsung’s Vision of His Role’, Asia Major
3rd series, IX, 1996, 1-102.
•
Veyne, P., Bread and Circuses (London, 1990).
•
Weber, M., On Charisma and Institution Building (Chicago, 1968).
•
Willner, A. R., The Spellbinders: Charismatic Political Leadership (Yale, 1984).
•
Wintrobe, R., The Political Economy of Dictatorship (Cambridge, 1998).
On the psychology of power and obedience
35
•
Adorno, T. W., Else Frenkel-Brunswick, Daniel J. Levinson, R. Nevitt Sandford, The
Authoritarian Personality (London, 1950).
•
Blass, T. ed. Obedience to Authority: Current Perspectives on the Milgram Paradigm (New
Jersey, 2000).
•
Browning, C.R., Ordinary Men (London, 2001).
•
Goldhagen, D. J., Hitler’s Willing Executioners (London, 1997).
•
McClelland, David C., Power: the inner experience (New York, 1975).
•
Milgram, Stanley, Obedience to Authority (London, 1974).
•
Stone, W. F., G. Lederer, R. Christie edd. Strength and Weakness: The Authoritarian
Personality Today (New York, 1993).
On democracy
•
Arblaster, A., Democracy (2nd ed. London, 1994).
•
Case, William, Politics in Southeast Asia: democracy or less (Richmond: Curzon, 2001).
•
Catt, H., Democracy in Practice (London, 1999).
•
Dahl, R. A., Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City (Yale, 1961).
•
Euben, J.P., J.R.Wallach and J. Ober edd. Athenian Political Thought and the Reconstruction
of American Democracy (Cornell, 1994).
•
Fincher, John H., Chinese democracy, the self-government movement in local, provincial,
and national politics, 1905-1914 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981).
•
Finley, M.I., Democracy Ancient and Modern (London, 1973).
•
Foner, E., The Story of American Freedom (London, 1999).
•
Gravers, Mikael, et al, ed., Southeast Asia between autocracy and democracy: identity and
political processes (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1989).
•
Hansen, M.H., The Athenian Democracy (Oxford, 1991).
•
Ober J., and C. Hendrick edd. Demokratia: a conversation on democracies ancient and
modern (Princeton, 1996).
•
Ober, J., Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens (Princeton, 1989).
On leadership in modern democracies
•
Foley, M., The Rise of the British Presidency (Manchester, 1993).
•
Hennessy, P., The Prime Minister, The Office and Its Holders since 1945 (London, 2001).
•
Hirschfeld, R. S., ed. The Power of the Presidents: Concepts and Controversy (New York,
1968).
•
Kavanagh, C. and A. Seldon, The Powers behind the Prime Minister (London, 2000).
36
•
Koenig, Louis, The Chief Executive (Fort Worth, 1996).
•
Mervin, C., The President of the United States (Hemel Hempstead, 1993).
On the powerless and their strategies
•
Bedau H.A. ed. Civil Disobedience in Focus (London, 1991).
•
Bercé, Y-M., Revolt and Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Manchester, 1987).
•
Calvert, P., Revolution and Counter-revolution
•
Coleman, Jane, Against the State: Studies in Sedition and Rebellion (London, 1990).
•
Dunn, J., Modern Revolutions (Cambridge, 1972).
•
Edmonson, R., The Political Context of Collective Action: Power, Argumentation and
Democracy (London, 1997).
•
Greene, T.H., Comparative Revolutionary Movements (2nd. Ed. New Jersey, 1984).
•
Lichbach, M.I., The Rebel’s Dilemma (Michigan, 1995).
•
Lintott, A., Violence, Civil Strife and Revolution in the Classical City (London, 1982).
•
Olson, M., The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (Harvard,
1965).
(Open University Press, 1990).
On slaves
•
Bradley, K.R., Slavery and Rebellion in the Roman World (London, 1989).
•
Engerman, S., S. Drescher and R. Paquette edd. Slavery (Oxford, 2001).
•
Garnsey, P., Ideas of Slavery from Aristotle to Augustine (Cambridge, 1997).
•
Wiedemann, T., Greek and Roman Slavery (London, 1981).
On the campaign for civil rights
•
R. Cook, Sweet Land of Liberty? The African-American Struggle for Civil Rights in the
Twentieth Century (London, 1998).
On rebellion and protest
•
Bernhardt, Kathryn, Rents, taxes, and peasant resistance: the lower Yangzi region, 1840
1950 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1992).
•
Ch'en, Jo-hsi, Democracy wall and the unofficial journals (Berkeley: Center for Chinese
Studies, University of California, 1982).
•
Gray, Jack, Rebellions and revolutions: China from the 1800s to the 1980s (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1990).
•
Kartodirdjo, Sartono, Protest movements in rural Java; a study of agrarian unrest in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (New York: Oxford UP, 1973).
37
•
Kelliher, Daniel Roy, Peasant power in China: the era of rural reform, 1979-1989 (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1992).
•
Kuhn, Philip A., Rebellion and its enemies in late imperial China, militarization and social
structure, 1796-1864 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970).
•
Landsberger H.A. ed. Rural Protest: Peasant Movements and Social Change (London,
1973).
•
Lockard, Craig, Dance of life: popular music and politics in Southeast Asia (Honolulu:
University of Hawai'i, 1998).
•
Perry, Elizabeth J., Challenging the mandate of Heaven: social protest and state power in
China (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2002).
•
Prazniak, Roxann, Of camel kings and other things: rural rebels against modernity in late
imperial China (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998).
•
Scott, James C., The Weapons of the Weak. Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (Yale,
1985).
•
Thaxton, Ralph, Salt of the earth: the political origins of peasant protest and communist
revolution in China , Berkeley: University of California 1997).
On women
•
R. Hawley and B. Levick edd. Women in Antiquity: New Assessments. (London, 1995) S.M.
Okin, Women in Western Political Thought (New Jersey, 1979).
•
M. Pugh, Women and the Women’s Movement in Britain (2nd ed. London, 2000).
•
J.W. Scott ed., Feminism and History (Oxford, 1996).
•
J.W. Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York, 1999).
On terror
•
Kegley jr., C.W., International Terrorism: Characteristics, Causes, Controls (London, 1990).
•
Laqueur, W., The Age of Terrorism (Boston, 1987).
•
Reich, W., Origins of Terrorism: psychologies, ideologies, theologies, states of mind
(Cambridge, 1990).
URBAN ENCOUNTERS
13. What makes a city, is it people or buildings? Discuss the significance of
structural evidence for defining urban settlements. Answer with reference to examples
drawn from at least three continents across the world and at least three (pre)historical periods.
14. “The emperor Anastasius when he heard this sent a large army of Greek soldiers to winter in
the cities and garrison them. All the booty that he (Kawad) had taken, and the captives that he
had carried off, were, not, however enough for Kawad (the Sasanian Persian ruler), nor was he
38
sated with the great quantity of blood he had shed; but he again sent ambassadors to the emperor
saying send me the money or accept war.” The Chronicle of the Pseudo-Joshua the Stylite
(chapter 54), an account of the wars between the Romans and Persians in the sixth century AD.
See Greatrex 1998. Bibliography C ii.
Consider the experience of sieges as recorded in contemporary accounts. Answer the
question with reference to at least three centres from different world regions and at least three
(pre)historical periods.
15. Assess how far defence and fortifications were a positive factor in the creation and
maintenance of new urban communities. Contrast with at least two further examples from
ancient, medieval early modern or modern periods. Your examples must come from at least
three world regions.
16. How did innovations in military technology influence the planning and appearance of
cities? Discuss with at least three examples from ancient, medieval, early modern or modern
periods and from at least three world regions.
Bibliography
A. Urban history introduction
•
See especially Gates 2003, Hall 1998.
•
Past Worlds The Times Atlas of Archaeology (1988 London).
•
Meyers E. M. The Oxford Encyclopaedia of Archaeology in the Near East (1997 Oxford)
•
Chant, C. and Goodman, D. Pre-industrial Cities and Technology (1999 London)
•
Gates C. Ancient cities : introduction to the archaeology of the Near East and Egypt, Greece
and Rome. New York: Routledge, 2003
•
Kostof S. The City Assembled, the elements of urban form through the ages (1992)
•
Hall, P Cities and Civilisation London 1998
•
Hammond, M. The city in the ancient world (1972 Harvard)
•
Morris, A.E. J. History of Urban form, before the industrial revolution 3 rd ed. (1994
London)
B. Early cities and civilization
•
Crawford H. Sumer and the Sumerians (CUP)
•
Oates , D and J The rise of civilisation 1976 Oxford
•
Oates , D and J Nimrud, an Assyrian imperial city revealed (2001 London)
•
Oates J Babylon (1986 London)
•
Postgate, N. The First Empires (1977 London)
•
Redman, C. The rise of civilisation (1978 San Francisco)
39
•
Trigger, B. Understanding Early Civilizations, a comparative study (2003, CUP)
•
Yoffee, N. Myths of the Archaic State, Evolution of the Earliest Cities, Sates and
Civilizations (2004, CUP)
•
Wenke, R. Ancient Egyptian Civilization (2004, CUP)
C. i. Warfare and the ancient city
•
Tracey, J. ed. City walls the urban enciente in global perspective (2000 Cambridge)
•
www.deremilitari.org Website of medieval military history society
•
Connelly P. Greece and Rome at War (1988)
•
Lawrance A.W. Greek aims in fortifications (1979 Oxford)
•
Marsden, E.W. Greek and Roman Artillery: Historical Development (1969 Oxford)
•
McNicoll, A. W. Hellenistic fortifications from the Aegean to the Euphrates (1997 Oxford)
•
Owens J. E. The city in the Greek and Roman world (1991 London)
•
Shaw, B. D. ‘War and Violence’, in Late antiquity, a guide to the post classical world edd.
G.Bowersock, O. Grabar, P. Brown. (1999 Princeton) 130-169.
•
Johnson S. Late Roman Fortifications (1983, London)
•
Peddie, J. The Roman War Machine (1994)
•
Tomlinson, R. A. From Mycenae to Constantinople, the evolution of the ancient city (1992
London)
•
Winter, F.E. Greek fortifications (1972 London)
C. ii. Case studies from Roman world
•
Bidwell P Roman forts in Britain (1998 London)
•
Crow, J. Housesteads (1995 London, new edition 2004 Stroud)
•
Cameron, A. Procopius and the Sixth Century (1996 London)
•
Crow, J. “Fortifications and urbanism in late antiquity: Thessaloniki and other eastern cities”,
Recent research in late antique urbanism L. Lavan (J.R.A. supplement 42, 2001) 89-105
•
Foss, C. and Winfield D. Byzantine fortifications, an introduction (1985 Pretoria)
•
Greatrex G. Rome and Persia at war 502-532 (1998, Leeds)
•
Peters, F. E. Jerusalem (1985 Princeton)
•
Richmond, I.A. The city walls of Imperial Rome (1930 Oxford)
•
Runcinam S. The Fall of Constantinople 1453 (1988)
40
•
Schneider, A. M. “The city walls of Istanbul ,” Antiquity 11, 1937, 461-468.
•
Schneider, A. M. “The city walls of Nicaea,” Antiquity 12, 1938, 437-443
•
Todd, M. The walls of Rome 1977, London
•
Van Millingen A. Byzantine Constantinople, the walls of the city and the adjoining historical
sites (1899, London) Special collection
D. Siege warfare and technology in the early modern period
•
*Corfis, Ivy A. and Wolfe, Michael ed. . The medieval city under siege (1995, Woodbridge)
•
Duffy, C. Siege Warfare, the fortress in the early modern world 1494-1660 (1979 London)
•
Hale, J. War and society in Renaissance Europe (1985 London)
•
Hale, J. R. Renaissance Fortification, art or engineering (1977 London)
•
Hebbert, F.J. Soldier of France, Sebastien LePrestre Vauban 1633-1707 1990 New York
•
Hogg, I. V. Fortress, a history of military defence (1975 London)
•
McIvor, I. A Fortified Frontier, Defences of the Anglo-Scottish Border 2001 Stroud
•
McNeill, W.H. The pursuit of power. Technology, armed force and society since AD 1000
(1982 Oxford)
•
Pepper, S. and Adams N. Firearms and fortifiacations: military architecture and siege
warfare in sixteenth-century Siena (Chicago, 1986).
•
Parker, G ed. The Cambridge Illustrated History of Warfare (1995 Cambridge)
•
Parker, G. The Military Revolution, Military innovation and the rise of the West (1996
Cambridge)
•
O’Neil, B. H. St. J., Castles and Cannon (1960 Oxford)
•
Toy, S. The fortified cities of India (1965 London)
•
Toy, S A History of Fortifications from 3000B.C. to AD 1700 (1955 London)
OVERVIEW
This set of questions highlights some broad World History topics and an 'extra' Encounter on
which you have not had lectures. Some of the questions include book references to start you off.
For the others you will need to be more resourceful about exploring the extensive materials in
the library relevant to these topics. Remember that whichever question you answer, you must
include examples from at least three different world regions and at least three periods of history
or prehistory.
17. ‘In historical explanation it is an understanding of society which is essential, not of the
individual’. Discuss.
41
18. Given the nature of the evidence, is it possible to write the history of women?
19. Are 'advanced' societies superior to 'backward' societies?
•
Blaut, J.M., Eight eurocentric historians (London, 2000).
•
Landes, David, The wealth and poverty of nations (London, 1998).
20. Why do literate societies tend to prevail over illiterate ones?
•
Archer, D., Literacy and Power: The Latin American Battleground
•
Barton, D., Literacy
•
Beard, M., Literacy in the Roman World
•
Biller, P., Heresy and Literacy 1000-1530
•
Bowman, A. &Woolf, G., Literacy and Power in the Ancient World
•
Brooks, J., When Russia Learned to Read
•
Burke, P., 'The Uses of Literacy in Early Modern Italy', in P Burke and R Porter (eds), The
Social History of Language, 21-42.
•
Clanchy, M., From Memory to Written Record
•
Cressy, D., Literacy and the Social Order: Reading and Writing in Tudor and Stuart England
•
*Diringer, D., The Alphabet: A Key to the History of Mankind
•
Diringer, D., Writing
•
Eisenstein, E., The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe
•
Eisenstein, E., The Printing Press as an Agent of Change [2-Volume version of previous
item].
•
Febvre, L., The Coming of the Book
•
Ford, W., 'The Problem of Literacy in Early Modern England', History 78 (1993), 22-37.
•
Goody, J., Literacy in Traditional Societies
•
Goody, J., The Interface between the Written and the Oral
•
Graff, H., The Literacy Myth: Literacy and Social Structure in the Nineteenth-Century City
•
Harris, R., The Origin of Writing
•
Harris, W., Ancient Literacy
•
Hoggart, R., The Uses of Literacy
•
Houston, R., Literacy in Early Modern Europe
•
Jensen, H., Sign, Symbol, and Script
42
•
McKitterick, R., The Use of Literacy in Early Medieval Europe
•
*Martin, H., The History and Power of Writing
•
Meek, M., On Being Literate
•
*Olson, D., 'From Utterance to Text', HER 47 (1977), 257-81.
•
Olson, D., The World on Paper
•
Ong, W., Orality and Literacy
•
Reay, B., 'The Context and Meaning of Popular Literacy', P & P 131 (1991), 89-129
•
*Resnick, D. & L., 'The Nature of Literacy: An Historical Explanation', HER 47 (1977), 370
85
•
Senner, W., The Origins of Writing
•
*Spufford, M., 'First Steps in Literacy', SH 4 (1979), 407-35
•
Steinberg, S., Five Hundred Years of Printing
•
Todd, E., The Causes of Progress
•
Vincent, D., Literacy and Popular Culture: England 1750-1914
Dissertation materials
In your third year each student in the School of Historical Studies will write a dissertation on a
topic of their choice. Dissertations must be based on primary materials, which can sometimes be
hard to locate. As an introduction to the kinds of materials and/or topics that you might consider,
we append these suggestions on topics related to the four Encounters studied in this module.
BORDER ENCOUNTERS
•
Gertrude Bell papers and books
Robinson Library: http://www.gerty.ncl.ac.uk/home/index.htm.
These materials include accounts of Bell's travels in the Near and Middle East, Arabia and Iraq,
together with thousands of photographs. Bell undertook her journeys at the turn of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She was interested in the Arab peoples, many of whom were
nomads who paid little heed to borders that were still fluid at the time.
Topics relevant to Border Encounters might include investigation of relationships between
governments seeking to define their own borders more precisely and the people who actually
lived in the borderlands.
•
Chinese historical materials in translation
There are translations of chronicles from a variety of periods starting from sometime before the
third century BCE and continuing into the tenth century CE, eg. The Zuo commentary, Records
of the Grand Historian, Historical records of the Five Dynasties. These can provide a wealth of
detail on the activities of the court, with particular emphasis on military ventures and stories
with morals.
43
For later periods there are more varied materials, including diplomatic reports, eye-witness
accounts of everything from trading activities to military conquests, and a soldier's diary.
Topics relevant to Border Encounters could include the expansion of states and the nature of
resistance to that expansion, and aspects of the changing relationship between Chinese states and
nomadic peoples.
ENVIRONMENTAL ENCOUNTERS
•
Scottish forestry during the Enlightenment
During the Enlightenment, the first large-scale experiments in plantation forestry in Britain were
carried out in Scotland. They reflected the ideals of rational land use and the new aesthetic
norms of the Scottish Enlightenment. This topic provides much scope for a number of possible
dissertations in topics ranging from the management of individual estates to a survey of 18th
century forestry literature or a dissertation looking at the aesthetic aspects of forestry.
Possible sources to be used include estate papers, for example: The estates of the Earls of
Seafield and Grant in the North of Scotland. Archival material: National Archives of Scotland,
Collection GD248, Papers of the Grant of Grant and Ogilvy of Findlater familes, Earls of
Seafield (Seafield Papers).
•
Environmental pollution in the Tyneside area
The chemical industry of the North-East today is most closely associated with Teesside but the
early chemical industries of the 18th and 19th centuries were centred on Tyneside. The most
important chemical activity was the production of alkali. One of the great problems associated
with the alkali works was pollution, mainly from emissions of hydrochloric acid fumes which
polluted the neighbouring countryside.
This topic provides scope for dissertations considering pollution around the Tyne, its impacts,
what people thought of it and action undertaken to prevent pollution. A particular rich archive
collection useful for these purposes is located in the Tyne and Wear Archives in Gateshead but
the regional Archives of the North East in Newcastle surely hold material related to industrial
pollution.
An example of such material is the collection of United Alkali Co. Ltd, Tyne and Wear Archives,
DX1149 and the Felling Chemical Works, Tyne and Wear Archives, DT.BEL/xx.
RULING ENCOUNTERS
Many topics in the huge area related to Ruling Encounters would be available: consult Jerry
Paterson for further information. A number which involve comparative studies include:
•
Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy. Look at the way he exploits Livy’s account of the Roman
Republic for his own ends in analysing the nature of politics in his own day.
•
The way in which Augustus, the first Roman emperor, was widely exploited in literature
and propaganda in England from 1600 to 1800 in the debate about the nature of kingship.
•
The influence of Greece and/or Rome in the thinking of the creators of the American
44
constitution.
•
Why has there been so little anarchy in human history? There are plenty of studies of
Russian and European anarchists in the 19th century, but I know of no good general study of
the significance (or insignificance) of anarchy in human history.
•
The justification for resistance to rulers from Classical Greece to Martin Luther King.
URBAN ENCOUNTERS
•
Artillery and fortifications, 15-17th century, Europe and the Ottoman empire.
•
Fortress cities on the eastern frontier of Rome and Persia in late antiquity.
•
Urbanism and literate societies in western Asia and the Mediterranean.
•
Roman frontiers especially the East
45