My review article for JRS, "The Problem(s) of Empire," is finally out. It's sort of a hybrid: part long review of *The Oxford World History of Empire* and part "think piece" on empires, comparative history, and empire as such. Let me know if you don't have access to JRS; happy to send a PDF. - ThreadSky

carlosfnorena.bsky.social • 57 days ago

My review article for JRS, "The Problem(s) of Empire," is finally out.

It's sort of a hybrid: part long review of *The Oxford World History of Empire* and part "think piece" on empires, comparative history, and empire as such.

Let me know if you don't have access to JRS; happy to send a PDF.

Comments

mauritsertsen.bsky.social•57 days ago

Ah, I know what I will be reading soon! 😉😃

quatrus.bsky.social•57 days ago

Well done! I wonder though, to what extent the Roman Empire really was 'agrarian', and to what extent we owe this idea to Marx/Polanyi/Finley's ideological constructs which ignore women/industry. If, as I would suggest, Roman Europe owed most of its wealth to exporting enslaved women and silver...

quatrus.bsky.social•57 days ago

(I wrote this when only halfway through reading, now continuing to read second part)

quatrus.bsky.social•57 days ago

Loving this one: 'Most empires operated as systems of power, wealth and honour in which a finely balanced calibration of interests between central and peripheral elites was essential...with ....some differences in the nature of the ‘bargain’ ... that would repay further comparative study.' Yes, yes!

quatrus.bsky.social•57 days ago

Also very much agree here: as "a large-scale network of various‘hot spots'... the Roman Empire (and other large, premodern empires) was more similar to the European colonial
empires than we have recognised." Colored maps misrepresent the situation.

quatrus.bsky.social•57 days ago

"women were active agents in the Roman imperial project in ways that do not seem to be paralleled in other empires." I agree this probably reflects other researchers not having looked much for women, or actively suppressing mentions of women.

quatrus.bsky.social•57 days ago

But if empires are 'inherently coercive and extractive... bad for the environment, and ...bad for human flourishing,' surely this implies that people are healthier and happier when they are *not* in an empire, which I can hardly see as an obvious truth?

carlosfnorena.bsky.social•57 days ago

I do wonder, though, if there are many good parallels for women as property owners and women as public benefactors. I just don't know enough to say...

ellakirsh.bsky.social•56 days ago

Congratulations! Such a fantastic piece

carlosfnorena.bsky.social•55 days ago

Thank you!

devoretext.bsky.social•55 days ago

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:olg4hyioakk3pvu2h5yrczxl/post/3lfqclhetw22h

nwitkowski.bsky.social•46 days ago

Thank you for this piece - using it to think about Indian empires!

komathere.bsky.social•57 days ago

I don't have access, could you also pass it along?

carlosfnorena.bsky.social•57 days ago

Happy to -- if you send me your email via DM, I'll send it to you.

javalac.bsky.social•55 days ago

srmeiners.bsky.social•57 days ago

📌

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•57 days ago

You know, you say no one disputes Rome's status as an empire and certainly Rome begins as an empire very early...but I wonder - and clearly need to read the relevant chapters - if we ought to understand it becoming somewhat less an empire over time, particularly post-212.

evanschultheis.bsky.social•26 days ago

This is my take but I would argue much closer to the end of the 4th century. Kaldellis argues that Rome is effectively no longer an Empire until the conquests of the late 10th-11th centuries.

gregorymitrovich.bsky.social•26 days ago

The fact that the Roman Empire survived the fall of Rome itself and the loss of its titular core, Italy, demonstrates how far the RE had transformed from “empire” in the traditional ways we understand them to —a nation state? How many empires throughout history could have done so.

evanschultheis.bsky.social•26 days ago

China certainly. Arguably Korea and Iran too.

gregorymitrovich.bsky.social•26 days ago

Did China, Korea, and Iran have such identifiable core areas as Rome was to its empire? Iran’s empire was defined by which region dominated it.

evanschultheis.bsky.social•26 days ago

I mean there's a reason we call it "China Proper." Although this obviously gets into the problem that for half its history Anatolia and Greece were Rome's core. Anatolia until the 1100s when the population migrated to the Balkans, then Greece.

evanschultheis.bsky.social•26 days ago

China is arguably similar. North China is dominant during the Han and then starting in the Three Kingdoms period you get a gradual population movement to the Yangtze that solidifies in the Late Tang/Early Song.

drdragases.bsky.social•57 days ago

If anything it became even more of an empire, particularly post-212.

carlosfnorena.bsky.social•57 days ago

Interesting! I think this particular question will hinge on what significance we assign to the specifically juridical mode of categorizing (and, indeed, probably interpellating) imperial subjects...

devoretext.bsky.social•56 days ago

I once loved to provoke a grad-school colleagues by telling that that Rome wasn't an empire after 212. The best responses, you might be interested to hear, were from the Byzantinists! (I'm curious to hear what you think of Kaldellis' rejection of the term "Byzantine Empire", btw.)

drdragases.bsky.social•55 days ago

If you got half an hour to spare, you can hear my answer here...

devoretext.bsky.social•55 days ago

Love your reference to my favorite, um, medieval Roman author, Anna Komnene!

markjmasterson.bsky.social•55 days ago

Excellent work! 👏

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•57 days ago

I am open to this idea but want to hear your explanation of it. Because you've got greater centralization, but at the same time, less obvious territorial subordination - there's centralization but no clear geographic 'center.'

carlosfnorena.bsky.social•57 days ago

A good point. In fact, and upon reflection, I probably could have added a paragraph on large-scale *decentralization* as another significant anomalous feature of the (later) Roman Empire (but I was already butting up against, and past, a word limit)...

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•57 days ago

Part of what makes Rome so fascinating to me is the drift where subjects begin to identify with the empire is so unusual, but its unusual nature makes a blur of our categories.

And Rome is unusual even in this because unlike other such assimilation-empires, it doesn't become a modern nation state.

devoretext.bsky.social•55 days ago

Start with the volume that just got a glowing BMCR review: https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2025/2025.01.22/

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•55 days ago

Yes, on my list of things to get to!