Conceiving the empire : China and Rome compared / edited by Fritz-Heiner Mutschler, Achim Mittag.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Mutschler, Fritz-Heiner.

Mittag, Achim, 1958-

Alumni and Friends Memorial Book Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

History, Ancient--Historiography.

History, Ancient.

Imperialism--Historiography.

Imperialism.

China--History--Han dynasty, 202 B.C.-220 A.D.

China.

History.

Rome--History--Empire, 30 B.C.-476 A.D.

Rome.

Rome (Empire).

Physical Description:

xx, 481 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, [2008]

Summary:

The essays in Conceiving the Empire: China and Rome Compared explore how the idea of `empire' arose and developed in the two most powerful polities in antiquity. Extending its scope well beyond the notions of tianxia, `All-under-Heaven' in China, and imperium in Rome, the volume deals with the mental images of `empire' that emerged with the formation of political macro-entities in the East and in the West. How are we to understand these views, ideas, symbolical representations, and the values connected with them? When and how did they come into being? In what respects do they differ in East and West, and what do they have in common? How did they affect the political and social dynamics? And in what way were they in turn influenced by changing political and social realities? These questions are addressed in eight pairs of papers which relate to three successive historical stages: the pre-imperial period, the period of the firmly established empire, i.e. the Qin-Han epoch in China and the early principate in Rome, and the period of the empires' decline and division. While the central focus is on historiography, this experiment in comparison takes on a truly interdisciplinary character as other related fields are also invoked: geography and cartography, epigraphy, art and architecture, and, more generally, political thought and the history of ideas. Written by a team of experts in Sinology and Classical Studies, Conceiving the Empire concentrates the attention of the emerging field of East-West cross-cultural studies on the essential feature of the ancient Mediterranean and Chinese worlds: the emergence of empire and the enduring influence of the imperial order.

Contents:

Pt. I. The birth of the imperial order. A. The idea of 'empire' : its genesis before and its unfolding after the emergence of the empire. City and empire / Albrecht Dihle

Interlude : kingship and empire / Zhu Weizheng

The rhetoric of 'empire' in the classical era in China / Michael Nylan

B. Historiography and the emerging empire. Imagining the empire? Concepts of 'primeval unity' in pre-imperial historiographic tradition / Yuri Pines

The emergence of empire : Rome and the surrounding world in historical narratives from the late third century BC to the early first century AD / Huang Yang and Fritz-Heiner Mutschler

Pt. II. The firmly established empire. A. Imperial grandeur and historiography à la grande. The problem of 'imperial historiography' in Rome / Fritz-Heiner Mutschler

Forging legacy : the pact between empire and historiography in ancient China / Achim Mittag

B. The spatial dimension of the unified world : imperial geography and cartographical representations. Diagram (tu) and text (wen) : mapping the Chinese world / Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer

Text and image : mapping the Roman World / Katherine Clarke

C. Self-image and the formation of imperial rhetorics. Announcements from the mountains : the stele inscriptions of the Qin First Emperor / Martin Kern

The Res Gestae Divi Augusti and the Roman Empire / Christian Witschel

D. The power of images : imperial order and imperial aura as represented in art and architecture. Image and empire : the shaping of Augustan Rome / Rolf Michael Schneider

Imperial aura and the image of the other in Han art / Michèle Pirazzoli-t'Serstevens

Pt. III. The waning of the imperial order. A. History-writing in the face of crisis. The impact of the empire's crises on historiography and historical thinking in late antiquity / Hans Armin Gärtner and Ye Min

Empire on the brink : Chinese historiography in the post-Han period / Achim Mittag and Ye Min

B. When the imperial order disintegrates : rethinking the 'empire' under religious auspices. New tendencies, religious and philosophical, in the Roman Empire of the third to early fifth centuries / Gerard O'Daly

New tendencies, religious and philosophical, in the Chinese world of the third through sixth centuries / Thomas Jansen.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Alumni and Friends Memorial Book Fund.

ISBN:

9780199214648

0199214646

OCLC:

234296865

Publisher Number:

99936954547