Ecumene

Abstract: Introduction 1. An Ecumene in the 'The Lands Below the Winds' 2. Arab Priests and Pliant Pilgrims 3. The Hijazi Experience and Direct Colonial Visions of the heart of the Ecumene 4. Colonizing Islam and the Western-Oriented Project of Indies Nationhood 5. Reorientation among the Jawa of Mecca 6. The Jawa and Cairo 7. Islamic Voices from Singapore, Java, and Sumatra 8. Towards an Indigenous and Islamic Indonesia 9. Indonesia Visualised as a Fractured Umma below the Winds 10. From the Meccan Discourse of a Jawi Ecumene to the Cairene Discourse of an Indonesian Homeland

Abstract: The twentieth century has come to witness the growth of a global ecumene of culture, an organization of diversity structured by center‐periphery relationships. In this article two prominent perspectives toward culture in the world system are inspected, and another view is suggested which gives greater emphasis to the relationship between transnational cultural flows and continued cultural creativity at the periphery.

Abstract: Preface to the second edition 1 Societies as organized power networks 2 The end of general social evolution: how prehistoric peoples evaded power 3 The emergence of stratification, states and multi-power-actor civilisation in Mesopotamia 4 A comparative analysis of the emergence of stratification, states and multi-power-actor civilisations 5 The first empires of domination: the dialectics of compulsory cooperation 6 'Indo-Europeans' and iron: expanding, diversified power networks 7 Phoenicians and Greeks: decentralized multi-power-actor civilisations 8 Revitalized empires of domination: Assyria and Persia 9 The Roman territorial empire 10 Ideology transcendent: the Christian ecumene 11 A comparative excursus into the world religions: Confucianism, Islam, and (especially) Hindu caste 12 The European dynamic: I the intensive phase, AD 800-1155 13 The European dynamics: II the rise of coordinating states, 1155-1477 14 The European dynamic: III international capitalism and organic national states, 1477-1760 15 European conclusions: explaining European dynamism - capitalism, Christendom, and states 16 Patterns of world-historical development in agrarian societies Index

Abstract: PETER FIBIGER BANG and DARIUSZ KOLODZIEJCZYK, eds. Universal Empire: A Comparative Approach to Imperial Culture and Representation in Eurasian History (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012, 2015). Pp. 400. $120.00 cloth, $32.99 paperback.This edited volume brings together studies on empires and universal/universalist ideas across a wide geographical and chronological spectrum. It includes a detailed introduction by the editors, eleven chapters, and a concluding section, and is divided into two parts. The first part, "Eurasia-Antiquity till Early Modernity," charts the adventures of the concept of universal empire across Eurasia, from the first millennium BCE to the eighteenth century, through nine contributions. Detailed, often-comparative studies included in this section focus on the ancient Assyrian and Persian Empires, the Hellenistic world and the Mauryan Empire, the Roman and Abbasid Empires, medieval European and Byzantine Empires, the Ottomans and the Mughals, and eventually the Vijayanagara and Qing Empires. The second part, "Contrasting Universalisms-Old and New World," is considerably shorter, and its function is to bring in further comparative perspectives. One such perspective is supplied through the case of the Pre-Columbian Aztec Empire, and the second in this section is on the development of European (later global) systems of sovereign states from the late medieval period onward.Thanks to the long and meticulous intellectual collaboration that preceded the publication of this project, the edited volume offers a satisfying, stimulating reading experience. At a time when edited volumes are increasingly put together in haphazard fashion, Fibiger Bang and Kolodziejczyk are to be lauded for offering the academic community a collection that is comprehensive in thematic and geographical coverage and rich in content and argumentation. This volume will serve as an important reference for scholars working on imperial ideologies as well as imperial governance, ritual, and cultural exchange.In their introductory chapter, "'Elephant of India': Universal Empire through Time and across Cultures," the editors invite scholars of pre-modern empires to engage in comparative studies and introduce the general themes the editors asked their authors to address: "(1) symbolism, ceremony and diplomatic relations; (2) universal or cosmopolitan literary high cultures; and ... (3) the inclination to present universal imperial rule as an expression of cosmic order." The introductory chapter also offers a useful historical survey, supported with adequate maps, that establishes the chronological and geographical boundaries of the volume. This chapter clearly conveys the editors' argument that universalist political and religious ideas existed in a variety of cultures across time, and that these were often the outcome of cultural syntheses, rather than the manifestations of cultural traits specific to a single area or culture.In "Propaganda and Practice in Assyrian and Persian Imperial Culture," Gojko Barjamovic investigates the gap between the "propagandists writings, grand orchestrated spectacles, and monumental art and architecture," and the nitty-gritty of the empires' management. Political power available to the imperial centers was an ever-changing quantity, and the business of empire was a relentless struggle against technological limitations and the power of regional elites. Next, Peter Fibiger Bang applies some of the volume's themes to what he calls the "Hellenistic ecumene," which he extends from Antiochos' Near East to Asoka's Indian subcontinent, in the second and third centuries BCE. As he depicts a world that is partly unified, in the wake of the Alexandrine conquests, by the emergence of new universalist imperial ideologies, it is quite striking to see the ways in which Hellenism and a Sanskrit court culture played similar roles in bonding culturally and linguistically diverse regional elites together across large distances. …