COST A36, Tributary Empires Compared.

Romans, Ottomans, Mughals and beyond

Report of the mid-term meeting, Warsaw 13-15 October 2006

The purpose of the meeting was to gather and further discuss the issues raised during the previous conferences of Working Groups 1, 2, and 3, held respectively in Copenhagen (June 2005), Istanbul (October 2005), and Athens (June 2006). Its focus was on synthesis and interdisciplinary approaches combining history, historical sociology and anthropology as well as art history. The range of examples included Ancient and Byzantine Rome, Assyrian and Achaemenid Empires, Arab Caliphate, Han China, the Mughal, Safavid and Ottoman Empires, the Portuguese seaborne Empire in the Indian Ocean, Russia, West Africa, and even pre-Columbian Mezoamerica.

Four sessions held during the first two days readdressed several problems already discussed in Copenhagen during the first meeting of Working Group 1 while picking up themes of working groups 2 and 3 on the way. Two sessions of Day 1 were held under the common heading: Universal Empire and Historical Sociology. In the morning session, entitled Sociology and anthropology on history, Garry Runciman raised the issues of institutional domination and cultural hegemony enabling imperial longevity lasting for generations as well as the mechanisms of control by the center over peripheral societies aiming at neither complete absorption nor alienation. Jan Kieniewicz discussed the practicability of differentiating between sea-borne and land-bound empires. Drawing examples from the early modern Indian Ocean, he also proposed a typology of encounters between dominant and dependent societies. Michal Tymowski discussed the problem of loosely organized “early states,” typical for Western Africa but also early medieval Europe, and raised the issue whether the term “empire” can be applied to these structures. According to Tymowski, segmentation of power enabled the functioning of these states but also facilitated their eventual decomposition.

In the second session of Day 1, titled History meets sociology, Chris Wickham compared the modes of tax collection in the Roman Empire and Arab Caliphate. He addressed such issues as monetization of the Roman economy, the scope for negotiation between the taxed and the state, and –finally- the extent of “feudalization” in the late Abbasid state. Walter Scheidel compared developments over the longue durée in the history of Rome and China. In conclusion he demonstrated the existence of numerous similarities despite the separation of long distance, limited contacts between the two states, and a lack of common models. Stephen Blake emphasized the role of household and rituals related to birth, circumcision, marriage, and death within the ruling family in consolidating and legitimizing dynastic power in the Mughal, Safavid, and Ottoman empires. To round of the day and point towards the next morning, Phiroze Vasunia presented the project of a scholarly network tracing the bearing of common ancient symbols –Middle Eastern, Indian and Greco-Roman- on the making of early modern and modern empires and particularly in the construction of their historiographies.

Two sessions of Day 2 were held under the common heading: Imperial Universalism, shared symbols and ideological constructions. They served to examine the emergence and development of a set of common symbols and notions of empire, originating in the ancient Near East, which tie the Romans, the Ottomans and the Mughals together in a shared cultural heritage and continuously reinvented tradition of empire and state-craft. In that way, the session served to complement a sociological or typological justification for singling out the Romans, Ottomans and Mughals for comparative analysis by alluding to their, admittedly broad, shared genealogies.
 
Gojko Barjamovic traced visual symbols used by Assyrian and Achaemenid rulers to construct imperial ideology. Rolf Schneider demonstrated the impact of Oriental models, dress codes and symbols on Roman visual art and imperial self-presentation. Garth Fowden examined the impact of Aristotelian and pseudo-Aristotelian writings on the making of Islamic philosophy and political culture. The intellectual liaison between the Hellenistic tradition and Islamic statecraft, initiated under the Umayyads, was reinforced under the Ottomans, especially during the reign of Mehmed II. Judith Herrin (absent, but sent the paper) traced the impact of Christianity on the late ancient Roman imperial ideology and – consecutively - the impact of Roman imperial ideology on Christian medieval states in the East (Byzantium) and West. Opening the afternoon session, Cemal Kafadar presented the model of an ideal empire as depicted in Ottoman political treatises composed between the late 16th and early 18th century. Ebba Koch traced symbols of universal rule in Mughal art, combining Middle Eastern, Islamic, and Indian visual traditions. For a contrasting perspective, Justyna Olko finally discussed different strategies applied by Aztec rulers to control dependent territories, accommodate provincial elites and ensure the flow of goods and labor to the capital.

The last session, held on Day 3 and entitled Frontiers of Empire, was especially relevant for the research field of Working Group 3 (Experience of Empire-Responses from the provinces). All discussants stressed the crucial importance of frontiers for the making and self-image of any empire. Adam Ziólkowski demonstrated chronological development of the concept of the Roman frontier, from theoretically limitless Roman universe under the early Empire to the defensive attitude towards the outside world, inhabited by “hostile and barbarous” neighbors, prevailing during the later Roman centuries. Dariusz Kolodziejczyk juxtaposed official Ottoman propaganda, claiming the universal sovereignty of the Islamic padishah, with pragmatic approach accepting the limits of Ottoman power, not only in relation with neighboring states, but also within the empire, whose inhabitants enjoyed large margins of political autonomy. Michael Khodarkovsky examined the Russian steppe frontiers and their impact on Russian history, discussing colonial character of the Russian empire and the patterns of Russian territorial expansion. Finally, David Ludden, while drawing on examples from Mughal and British India, attempted to tie the different threats of the meeting together by discussing empire as a state of a permanent, but ever mobile frontier; not in terms of geography alone, but also in the wider sense of a constantly changing and dynamic balance between the imperial establishment and various autonomous subsystems of cultural, political and social organization.

Dariusz Kolodziejczyk, Warsaw University, 22 October 2006
Peter Fibiger Bang, University of Copenhagen, 1 November 2006.