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Chargement... Ancient Worlds: An Epic History of East and West (édition 2017)par Michael Scott (Auteur)
Information sur l'oeuvreAncient Worlds: A Global History of Antiquity par Michael Scott
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Inscrivez-vous à LibraryThing pour découvrir si vous aimerez ce livre Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre. It's pretty weird to open up to the first chapter of a book subtitled 'A Global History of Antiquity'-- having read an introduction, which lambasts all other historians for failing to write proper, global history, and declares that the book you're about to read is truly revolutionary in its approach--and find that it's about the Birth of Democracy in Athens. Uh... okay, weird place to start. But it also sets the tone almost perfectly: this is a collection of stories told quite often before (founding of Roman Republic, Confucius' life story, Hannibal, the First Emperor, Contantine and Christianity, early Buddhism and Hinduism in India, Buddhism in China), with a few more novel anecdotes thrown in (the pages on Armenia were nice). What holds all this together? The revolutionary method promised in the intro seems to be comparing things from different places, so people in the ancient world(s) all did political stuff, and military stuff, and religious stuff. Underwhelming, to say the least. This would, on the other hand, be perfect for high school or first year college students, who don't know the stories, or know them only a little. Scott's writing is fine, though, again, underwhelming. And younger readers might also be innocent enough to be excited by the awful contemporary historiographical cliches (here's the opening of one chapter: "One of her hands is placed provocatively on her slender waist, the other caught in a tentative caress of her thigh. Her ample bosom, emphasised by her clinging, flimsy clothers, is turned towards her companion" etc etc... He's describing a coin, but boy was that an exciting way to start a chapter! I'm way more interested in slender waists than I am in the Guptas! Way to trick me, author!) Skip this, and head straight for the first half of Frankopan's Silk Roads. Despite claiming to be about global connectivity in Antiquity, this book in fact focuses on the "Classical" civilizations of Greece and Rome. It follows the trend among historians in the past decades to "compare" China with Rome, but it does so on the basis of other popularizing books (I. Morris, P. Frankopan, J. Mann), and a random selection of often outdated scholarly publications. And despite the image on this edition's cover of an Achaemenid Persian rhyton from the Miho Museum in Kyoto (!), the Achaemenid Empire with its enormous impact on Eurasian connectivity is virtually absent from the narrative. Its successor, the Seleukid Empire, fares somewhat better -- perhaps because the author erroneously thinks of the Seleukids as "Greeks" -- but ignoring all post-1990 scholarship on the empire, its impact on world history is misrepresented. The nomad Xiongnu confederation, which unified the northern steppe zone, is mentioned only in passing as enemy of "China". The mission statement on pp. 5-7 ("The 'Ancient World' -- or 'Worlds'?") is important but turns out to be too ambitious. The book is well-written, accessible, and intelligent; but it is far from "impeccably researched", "authoritative", or "bold and imaginative", as the blurb / newspaper reviews cited by the publisher claim it is. This is still traditional Greece and Rome centered history, but with some China added. To be sure, the book tries so hard to confirm what general audiences already think, that a successful TV-series could very well be made from it.
Chinese historians of the late third century CE claimed that the Romans came from China. Connections among cultures had long fascinated Greek and Roman historians, who used myths to express kinship. In our time, the interactions between classical civilizations and Near and Far Eastern cultures have been studied in two ways, either through specific study of actual networks of trade and real moments of contact (as the Persian Wars, or cities like Palmyra), or through a comparison of their reciprocal political systems: in other words, even when there was not an actual connection, Roman and/or Greek societies were compared with different political systems in the East. In this second case, phenomena like the administration of the Han empire viz. the Roman were studied to better understand our Western perspective and to move to a study of World History, less focused on ancient western history. Michael Scott’s book adopts both these perspectives, namely the study of the actual entanglements of the Western and Eastern ‘worlds’ (Parts II and III, respectively on the late third century BC and on the fourth century CE) and an analysis of contemporaneous political revolutions (democracy in Athens, republic in Rome, Confucianism in China), as possibly resulting from similar circumstances (Part I, on the sixth century BCE). The general goal is to show that the ancient world was a largely connected one. The demonstration of this growing connectivity should justify and enhance the use of a global perspective in the study of ancient history (pp. 358-9) and provide a possible lesson to our age.
"Twenty-five-hundred years ago, civilizations around the world entered a revolutionary new era that overturned old order and laid the foundation for our world today. In the face of massive social changes across three continents, radical new forms of government emerged; mighty wars were fought over trade, religion, and ideology; and new faiths were ruthlessly employed to unify vast empires. The histories of Rome and China, Greece and India--the stories of Constantine and Confucius, Qin Shi Huangdi and Hannibal--are here revealed to be interconnected incidents in the midst of a greater drama. In Ancient Worlds, historian Michael Scott presents a gripping narrative of this unique age in human civilization, showing how diverse societies responded to similar pressures and how they influenced one another: through conquest and conversion, through trade in people, goods, and ideas. An ambitious reinvention of our grandest histories, Ancient Worlds reveals new truths about our common human heritage"--Publisher description. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
Discussion en coursAucunCouvertures populaires
Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)930History and Geography Ancient World Ancient HistoryClassification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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Voler ammassare sotto un’unica bandiera le diversità di idee e popoli, che non possono essere annullate solo scrivendo un libro, è un costringere ad accettare lo slalom, tra le vie di qualsiasi città, tra individui con la testa reclinata sullo smartphone. Ed abbiamo ottenuto l’omologazione.
Si possono aborrire i seguenti termini:
social, connessione, condivisione, facebook, bla bla bla?
Dopo decenni di letture di libri storici con la distinzione chiara tra ac e dc (bc and ad) ci troviamo, con Scott, alla divisione tra aev ev: a che pro?
Nel mio campo di studi greci e romani si pubblicano spesso libri con titoli che terminano con le parole “... nel mondo antico”. Tuttavia, a un’ispezione più attenta, ciò che il titolo intende in realtà è il mondo greco-romano del bacino mediterraneo, dove greci e romani vivevano come rane attorno a uno stagno. “Mondo antico” è diventata un’abbreviazione accettata per un’area di interazione umana molto limitata, concentrata intorno a un unico mare: I confini che ci siamo autoimposti ci hanno indotto a confondere la parte con il tutto.
(14)
Ciò che rese Roma unica – e una potenza unica nei secoli successivi al 449 a.e.v. - fu il suo complicato sistema di controlli ed equilibri, grazie al quale tutti I livelli della società rimanevano nella convinzione che fosse più vantaggioso farne parte che ripudiarlo. Secondo Polibio, Roma aveva finalmente conquistato, tramite la “disciplina di molte lotte e molti tormenti”, la concordia ordinum.
(82)
… tanto che già otto anni dopo la marcia di Annibale i resoconti delle fonti storiche del Mediterraneo e della Cina coincisero per la prima volta; da qui in poi, il mondo antico assunse l’aspetto di una scacchiera, nella quale le mosse di ciascun individuo avevano conseguenze per tutto l’insieme.
(124)
Il iv secolo, di conseguenza, merita a buon diritto la fama di momento decisivo nella storia, non soltanto perché fu teatro di dinamici cambiamenti nell’assetto religioso e politico di ampie fasce di un mondo antico effettivamente interconnesso, ma anche perché quelle mutazioni hanno ancora oggi un forte impatto sul funzionamento del nostro mondo e su molte delle idee che guidano la nostra vita.
(359-60)
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