GLOBAL HISTORY, ENTANGLED AREAS, CULTURAL CONTACTS –AND THE ANCIENT WORLD1

Raimund Schulz / Uwe Walter

University of Bielefeld

Intertwined Institutions: Slavery as an Example

While Global History and Entangled History are nowadays very much focused on modern times, there is a central area in which ancient history has set the pace for research since the 18th century: slavery. Slavery was common in many parts of the world up to the 19th century, it connected regions that were far apart, and it had drastic repercussions on both the “delivering” and the “receiving” areas. The Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mayence (Germany) has recently closed a research project on ancient slavery lasting 60 years; one of the main results is the Handw?rterbuch der antiken Sklaverei.2= Concise Dictionary of Ancient Slavery. Heinen and Dei?ler 2017. Most of the 855 articles are in German, some in English, French, Italian, or Spanish.

An equally authoritative work in English is the Cambridge World History of Slavery with one volume dedicated to antiquity.3Bradley and Cartledge 2011.To bring the ancient evidence into the larger stream of slavery-research in a global-historical perspective, the authors of the volume focus on chattel slavery in the Greek and Roman worlds instead of providing an overview of all phenomena related to slavery in ancient times. Chattel slavery is mainly understood in terms of the practice of warfare, i.e.,treating captives as persons without rights; hence the anthropological perspective that ancient slavery is a cultural manifestation reflecting the violence omnipresent in the societies of that age. The social relations on which chattel slavery rested,are characterized by absolute power of the master on the one hand, and the social death of the slave without any personal status on the other. This focus leads to a brief treatment (17 pages in the opening section) skipping across the various manifestations of slavery in the Ancient Near East. By contrast, for Greco-Roman times individual chapters are devoted to many topics, such as replenishing the supply of slaves, forms of resistance (escape, theft and sabotage, revolts), the importance of slavery for the economy, the role of slaves within the family, or the representation of slavery in literature. Other contributions sketch aspects of historical periods and phenomena, like slavery in Classical Athens, the helots of Sparta, slavery in Hellenistic times, coverage of slavery in the entire Roman era,in Jewish society, and in the rise of Christianity. The 21 chapters are written by leading experts in a discourse-oriented and source-critical way, supplemented with 50 pages of bibliography and extensive indices underlining the handbookcharacter of the volume.

However, it is surprising that a chapter on the history of research on slavery and its various shapes is missing. Since Johann Friedrich Reitemeier’s contribution Geschichte und Zustand der Sklaverey und Leibeigenschaft in Griechenland,4= History and Status of Slavery and Serfdom in Greece. The work can easily be accessed and downloaded via Google-books, see: https://books.google.de/books?id=OFQPAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=de&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false (28.12.2017).published in Berlin in 1789 (!) with its motto taken from Montesquieu that all human beings are born equal and thus slavery is against nature, research on ancient slavery has always been influenced by contemporary political and cultural viewpoints, such as abolitionism, neo-humanism, the Western debate about Marxist theories, Soviet research, and current post-colonial discourseformations.5Cf. e.g. du Bois 2009.However, the absence of this dimension is the only – though not trivial – deficit in an otherwise excellent and distinctive work.

This lack is partly compensated for in the proceedings of the closing conference of the aforementioned slavery-project in Mainz.6Heinen 2010.With his external perspective,Nial McKeown (“Inventing Slaveries: Switching the Argument;” pp. 39–60) does not directly attribute a belittlement of ancient slavery to the project organizers,but does testify that there was certainly a greater readiness to discuss virtually anything except conflict and abuse. The knowledge and competence of German researchers with respect to a command of the sources and a source critical analysis approach will generally outmatch English-speaking scholars. Yet the intensively examined inscriptions upon which the project centered would inevitably produce an image of ancient slavery which was slightly too positive simply by virtue of the focus on these epigraphic sources, e.g. funerary inscriptions documenting not only successful social progress and the close relations between masters and slaves, which frequently allowed liberation to follow co-operation,

Additionally, Johannes Dei?ler in his article on Moses I. Finley who criticized Joseph Vogt, the first and long-time head of the project, clearly and rightly emphasizes that slavery is not a part of German history in contrast to countries like England, France or the USA. Researchers in these countries could and do ask as well as examine questions through a lens which magnifies their own,well-documented past slavery: for instance, the sexual abuse within the stable structures of the “house” (where one can mention Thomas Jefferson’s “second family”), or the idea of interpreting a good relationship between master and slave not in terms of “humanity” but as a result of a multifaceted conditioning.Thus, the comparative research of slavery-systems from antiquity to modernity played, and plays, an important role in these countries while German scholars eventually took pains to separate slavery from other fields of society, and to set it as a negative point against the moral ideas of neo-humanism that were frequently projected on to antiquity.

The Handw?rterbuch der antiken Sklaverei tries to overcome some immanent shortcomings by not only dealing with the classical forms of slavery but also by taking other kinds of bondage into consideration in the fields dealt with in the traditional German sciences of Antiquity (“Altertumswissenschaften”), but also beyond them in the other ancient Mediterranean cultures like in the Ancient Near East, Egypt, Carthage, etc. Even forms of bondage and subjection in non-European civilizations like India, China, Japan or the Americas are included,however only for the purpose of comparison, and not as individual core areas worthy of independent attention. Furthermore, there are articles on the legacies of the ancient world as well as the history of science with regard to ancient slavery.7See also McKeown 2007.

Linked Mobility: Early Hellenes on the Way

Robin Lane Fox takes readers with him on a fascinating journey through the world of Homeric times that is described as a world full of mobile people and their founding narratives.8Lane Fox 2008.He tackles many locations along the coastlines of the Mediterranean Sea and therewith leads away from the warlike research debates about Troy. Without caring much about research fashions such as anti-eurocentric, anti-classical, post-colonial or multi-cultural discourses he emphasizes that Homer was the first “Greek wonder,” whom so many followed,up to the way of logical thinking and the duty of, as well as demand for, rational accountability. For him, nothing like that was possible in the societies of the Ancient Near East, not even in Judaea. He also refuses to search for foreign impulses in the foundation myths, and places common sense against claims of borrowed narratives. So, when the sons of Kronos drew lots for their portions of the world, Homer had no need to take this idea from an Akkadian epic: it was sufficient to have in mind the custom of Greek sons who cast lots for pre-assigned partitions. What is more, the model of eons connected with specific metals is first attested in Hesiod, so anyone claiming that he borrowed it from an older, foreign source is forced to hypothetically construct it without further evidence. By dynamically intertwining actors, routes, artefacts, skills and myths in a brilliant prose style, Lane Fox reveals claims of priority and models of cultural drift to be static and unidimensional. Instead he explores the stations and destinations of the mobile Greek adventurers, and the worlds, both in space and in mind,are huge so that even Homer’s Odyssey cannot fully make them accessible.He draws the bow from Sargon’s II grand residence Dur-Sharrukin (nowadays Khorsabad, Iraq) to Huelva on the Spanish Atlantic coast to the North of Cádiz,both where Phoenicians were active. The Greeks, travelling in the wake of the Phoenicians, came from Euboia and cannot be classified as mere merchants,settlers, mercenaries, craftsmen or adventurers, because they could be all or parts of all that, simultaneously and sequentially. From the early 9th century BC on,they ventured first into the dynamic triangle between Cilicia, Cyprus and Syria up to Gaza, all locations and regions that were virtually unknown to Homer, and then they gained ground on the Western coast of Italy by following the routes of Phoenician seafarers. So, Euboean drinking cups of the 8th century BC were found at a settlement on the mouth of the Tiber river as well as in two tombs at the Esquiline hill in Rome.9For a comprehensive study of ancient expeditions that takes the model of trans-Mediterranean mobility into account and covers the whole Eurasian area, see Schulz 2016.

The arrivals did not come to an empty space but encountered a network of emerging settlements; however, they brought with them remarkable innovations,first of all the shortly before adopted Phoenician scripture that was made suitable for everyday use by the addition of vowels. To integrate and understand the newly discovered regions, their names, traditions and remains, the newcomers’own mythical narratives with their flexibility formed a perfect pattern.

Within his work, Lane Fox discards the fashionable late date of Homer and his works in the early or even late 7th century BC, with good reasons. In “his” 8th century, much happens but he does not revive the old idea of a demographically caused renaissance that started different processes of formations on the Greek mainland, and the emergence of the polis. “His” Euboeans are too few, too curious and too unstable to be, or to be willing to be, the founding fathers of an organized political entity with equality. However, there were institutions that generated a higher form of sense out of collective experiences and memories: the Delphic Oracle where the Cretans worshipping their Apollo were present from the 8th century BC on, and the poet Hesiod who first sketched a framework of order by integrating gods, history and justice. What was “oriental” in his work did, however, not derive from contemporary Near Eastern texts but from oral traditions that had already gained their own perspective during the long way via Cyprus and Crete.

Entangled Regions: Sicily, Asia Minor, Syria – and Palmyra

A diachronic universal history (“Universalgeschichte”) of antiquity in a historicgenetic though not sense-presupposing way can be written if one takes regions into consideration where many cultures and “stories” interfered with each other.Sicily in the Western Mediterranean is such a region, which, despite its central location, was hitherto treated by researchers as separate from Greek history, or only as an “exotic” appendix. Franco De Angelis, who has already contributed several scholarly pieces on the Greek history of Sicily, programmatically places his new book as “a more comprehensive approach” against such a neglect;10De Angelis 2016, 24.for him, Sicily is “simultaneously part of both frontier and world history.”11Ibid.; cf. 320.His thorough synopsis of the archaeological and literary evidence provides a complex picture of Sicily that was, in contrast to the Greek mainland, a center of attraction for many and various groups of different origins from overseas due to its geographic position (as a way station to the ore zones and processing areas in Italy and Sardinia), accessibility and exceptional fertility. From the beginning,Greeks coming from the Greek peninsula or the Aegean Sea were competing with Phoenicians as well as Etruscans while confronted with finding a way to live with the natives who settled in the heartland for fear of pirates. Additionally,they had to find solutions on how to deal with, and utilize, the chances and risks of the nearly constant stream of new settlers. These exceptional “frontier circumstances”12Ibid., 220.led to “an oligarchic form of government” with wealthy families and family clans governing and controlling an ethnically very mixed population;there was no space for extravagant experiments like the Attic isonomia, so “the democratic interlude (…) appears to be more interlude than democratic.”13Cf. ibid., 322.In the big cities, powerful single or territorial rules developed out of the family-regimes,which the author describes as “political centralization.”14Ibid., 101, 180–221.These tyrants achieved to use the agrarian and economic attractiveness of the territory for newcomers efficiently, by building up huge mercenary-troops, by integrating them as workers into the prosperous agricultural economy, and thus increased the prosperity of their territory and simultaneously the fiscal profit through the extraction of taxes and dues. So, the poleis of Sicily, which were always oriented towards foreign trade, could supply grain for the Greek peninsula for several centuries. They developed into highly attractive contact- and trade-centers for long distancetraders from all over the Mediterranean Sea, from Massilia to Cyprus and the Levant, without direct engagement of the tyrants or the Greek elites in this seatrade. Throughout the work, only the question of what is the specific role of Sicily in the ancient “world history” in the view of the author, remains somehow open.15Cf. ibid., 24.Was Sicily ultimately a special (Greek) phenomenon of Mediterranean“interconnectedness,”16Ibid., 320.or were the Greeks only a part of the trans-regional mobility of different ethnic groups that connected the islands and coasts of the Mediterranean Sea with each other? Why did the Greeks and Phoenicians but not the Etruscans succeed then? And why was it that only in Sicily did the tyrant Dionysius establish “the largest territorial state Europe had seen until then,”17Ibid., 215.while this did not take place on other larger Mediterranean islands?

In the East, Asia Minor, i.e. the Anatolian peninsula, formed a totally different but historically nevertheless important entangled zone; it was, and is, not characterized by a central island-position but builds bridge between maritime and territorial connecting paths. Christian Marek has treated this region in a monumental monograph;18Marek 2016.the first chapter’s (“Anatolia Between East and West”)tagline is “Asia Minor and Ancient World History” and this rightly, because fundamental and universal-historically relevant phenomena like urbanity, trade,territorial empires, religious plurality, literature and the sciences appeared very early in this region, and many ethnic groups like Egyptians, Hittites, Urartians,Lycians, Carians, Phrygians, Lydians, Assyrians, Greeks, Persians as well as Romans lived therein, partly one after another, partly even together at the same time. Though a quarter of the volume is dedicated to pre-Hellenistic times,the vital element and writing of the author starts with the Hellenistic period.Marek draws a clear picture of this epoch and of the Roman rule – provincial government, cities, economy, religion and society –, and can rely on his deep knowledge of the rich epigraphic material, the research literature and particularly his surveys and familiarity of the area for decades. In a didactically skilled way,he puts concise chapters with overviews together with sections that present ancient evidence, to provide micro-historical access to affairs in politics,administration, religion, culture and different parts of daily life. From his modern point of view, he looks at Anatolia as bridge and melting pot with its changing orientations, amalgamation and transmission. He accentuates the first emergence of an international states-system during the Hittite period, and describes the battle of Kadesh (1285/1274 BC) between Hittites and Egyptians as the first battle of world history. Furthermore, he singles out the ensuing peace-treaty between Ramses II and Hattusili (1270 BC; a copy decorates the conference room of the United Nations in New York), the long-lasting effects of Persian rule, the central importance of the Mithradatic Wars for the history of Rome and Asia Minor, and the confrontation of the Roman and the Persian-Sassanid Empire as landmarks.By contrast, the bridge-building function, amalgamation and transformation are part of the pervasion of Asia Minor by the Greek-formed cities from the West;that was first promoted by the Hellenistic rulers, later by Pompey and the Roman emperors, and prevailed in the long term against the rule-model of territorial states. Further leitmotifs of the description are the mainly fruitful tensions between immigrants and autochthonous people, which he elaborates on with numerous examples. Marek ends his work in the year 300 AD; only briefly does he sketch the rich Christian evidence of a region attracting the apostle Paul and giving birth to frequent heresies; nor does the author touch the Byzantine period any further. For experts, more detailed source-references would have been useful.

Ancient History seeks, and finds, time and again points of contacts to current issues, for instance with regard to historically important and “difficult” regions.For war, destruction and eviction form stable elements of human history, and because they are all frequently and more than ever present in media, it was obvious that someone survey much suffering Syria in respect of its ancient heritage, before it will be forgotten again – or even totally annihilated. In his handy book, Michael Sommer does not proceed strictly systematically but offers a historic panoptic of the ancient area between the Levant and Mesopotamia,oriented on the grand lines of events, spectacular (urban) settings (e.g. Hatra,Palmyra and Antioch), and well- and less-known protagonists.19Sommer 2016.In doing so, his historic inspection of Syria in classical antiquity is neither effect-begging nor arbitrary but structured in clear categories which build a problem-oriented view on a chronological synopsis and depict Syria as a distinctive historical landscape.First and very well known to us, there is the imperial competition for power:Persia, Macedonia with Alexander the Great and the Seleucid successors, along with the Parthians and Romans, all of whom came from outside and gained influence in Syria, but had to compete with the claims of their rivals as well as contend with the will of local entities to survive.20See Sommer 2012; 2013; 2014.These struggles were a central source of political instability opening the way to that military conflict-potential,which is inherent to the Syrian region, dating from long before Ramesses and continuing up to now (providing the market for the book today). Secondly, there is the singular interplay, based on the ecological conditions, between residential,urban culture and mobile, nomadic life; however, this was far less of a tinder bow than has generally been assumed, as one finds stupendous evidence of the cooperation-will between different forms of life in Syria and beyond, each group still seeking its own advantage. Finally, there was the (nowadays often forgotten)cultural and intellectual tradition based on various myths, religions and forms of scientific questions, which all had to be constantly related to each other, adjusted and re-formulated in the Syrian melting pot of different and often changing ethnic groups.

The history of Syria from Persian rule to Late Antiquity shows that the aforementioned three levels were always entangled with each other, whereupon the author makes a rather positive account, suggesting that despite the frequent struggles of the great powers and except for the Jewish-Roman conflict driven by special conditions, peaceful resolution was the key. He argues that there must be reasons for the long-lasting wealthy, intellectually prosperous and in respect of urbanity and architecture innovative status of Syria among the world’s regions,which clearly left behind the West for a long time. As a matter of fact, Sommer rightly points out again in the end21Ibid., 181–182.that the rise of monotheistic religions in Syria were not the core of the permanent conflicts – as is usually claimed by some intellectuals and politicians –, because the religious landscape was so heterogeneous and traditionally embedded from its beginnings. Current problems are rather the fault of the 19th and 20th century European powers who arbitrarily drew borderlines and implemented frameworks of nation-state order that did not fit Syrian tradition. They thereby introduced a new factor, itself inextricably bound fast up to the present day, binding old elements of tribal, religious and imperial creative powers in a fatally antagonistic fashion. If one adds in the recent lust for destruction by inhuman and anti-cultural fanatics, as well as the actions of unscrupulous politicians and ruthless traders on the art markets, it is not only the author who would be tempted to think that the ancient system might well be preferable to the modern.22Ibid., 188. Therewith, he updates Theodor Mommsen who already stated in his regional description of the Roman Empire in 1885 (here quoted after the English translation of W. P. Dickson = Mommsen 1886, 5): “It is in the agricultural towns of Africa, in the homes of the vine-dressers on the Moselle,in the flourishing townships of the Lycian mountains, and on the margin of the Syrian desert that the work of the imperial period is to be sought and to be found. Even now there are various regions of the East, as of the West, as regards which the imperial period marks a climax of good government,very modest in itself, but never withal attained before or since; and, if an angel of the Lord were to strike the balance whether the domain ruled by Severus Antoninus was governed with the greater intelligence and the greater humanity at that time or in the present day, whether civilisation and national prosperity generally have since that time advanced or retro-graded, it is very doubtful whether the decision would prove in favour of the present.”

In another book, about the desert-city Palmyra,23Sommer 2017.Sommer, based on his own long-time research, argues against a wide-spread misunderstanding, i.e.,that globalization means uniformity and loss of ancestral tradition. In reality,amalgamation-processes mainly cause a bundle of very singular forms and identities, “l(fā)ocalizations” as Johann Gustav Droysen called them with regard to Hellenism. Above the instructive value of the work dealing with ancient entangled history, there is a tragic up-date of the description, because precious remains of the oasis-city in the Syrian Desert were destroyed by the furor of IS in summer 2015, commencing with the beheading of the old former director of the Department of Antiquities in front of the local museum, which he had managed for a long time.

Sommer narrates the history of Palmyra as a trade-center in the oasis Tadmur in the way of opposites: Occidentalism and Orientalism, nomads and city-dwellers,material-based versus theoretical research. He sees the historic chance of the city in its geographic location, which provided a key-position in the continental longdistance trade between the Mediterranean world and India. Comparatively late,a city was built, and the ruling sheikhs developed techniques of translation that enabled them to connect with the Roman world without giving up their traditional structures and way of living. For on the one hand, they used Hellenistic-Roman designs and vocabularies, e.g. for buildings, inscriptions and political institutions, but on the other hand they did not become urban-notability like elites as in many other regions. The core of their existence as well as economic and political success remained the “nomadic past and the tribal affiliation of most of the oasis-inhabitants.” Decisive was the ability of the Palmyrenes in building a wide-spread network of security and trust on the basis of tribal structures, which remained stable during the many changes in the imperial power – even in times when the Romans experimented with forms of direct and indirect rule in the East to stabilize their empire, or when they were confronted with their Eastern rivals, first the Parthians and later the Sassanians. The potentiality of Palmyra as a kind of “supernova” was shown best in the decade 260–270 AD, with the rule of Odaenathus and his wife as well as successor Zenobia who both took over the role of the Imperium Romanum as authority in the East, because the Roman emperors were incapable of action there in this period.

A New Comprehensive Concept: The Cambridge World History

Ancient History cannot close itself off from the trend of global-history research; however there are many and specific challenges if one deals with older periods of history. The starting point of all considerations is, and must be, the choice of relevant topics as well as objects, and their interrelation as well as their classification within a reasonable historical perspective and with a fruitful and sustainable research question. Hence, one has to permeate huge territorial spaces and extraordinary time-periods, and the tremendous temporal dimensions are accompanied by sparse and disparate source material. All this demands the intensive cooperation of many disciplines, from archaeology and historical linguistics via ethnology to the historical examination of greater areas and cultures. Primarily, one has to make precise conceptual preliminary considerations, clever deliberations and intensive arrangements among the participating researchers, and the will to arrange and accompany the once chosen way.

The Cambridge World History has mastered this task more convincingly than any comparable work.24Barker and Goucher 2015. For an intensive review, see Borgolte, Schulz and Stuchtey 2017.The volumes 2–4 cover the time from c. 12,000 BC to 900 AD. The editors and contributors do not put much emphasis on mobility,interdependence and interaction – the classical pivots of global history with all its variants – but to encompass the conditions, steps and phenomena of the early human history, particularly in respect of the emergence and further development of socio-political formations, to clarify the prerequisites and to point out the main concomitants and effects as well as consequences.

Thus, the second volume concentrates first of all on the question of the development of agriculture and agricultural societies between 11,000 and 5,000 BC in a worldwide context (Near East, China, North India, Central America,sub-Saharan Africa). There it becomes clear that the transition to agriculture was always only one alternative among many and was based on complex decisions that emerged from regional conditions and context, and caused a specific set of dynamic impulses on the further development. With the growing dependency on agrarian food supply, the responsibilities also changed, from the whole group to single families as actors. At the same time, competition over natural resources increased. Therefrom, social differentiations originated, whose conflictpotential one sought to stabilize by creating “communal” identities, cooperative activities and integrating ritual practices. The further development of more complex (political) organizations depended on the specific natural-climatic,economic and overall political contexts. The sub-Saharan agricultural settlements solved the problem of food supply through a cooperative distribution of tasks between specialists and smaller groups, without any ruling elite. In contrast, the agglomeration of agrarian urbanities within the Fertile Crescent together with supra-regional trade contacts provoked the formation of political hierarchies and monumental residences with fortresses. While the agrarian societies of Northwest and East India developed a complex set of hunting, animal breeding and vegetable food production that formed the basis of one of the densely populated regions of the world, in China, there was a strong interaction between agriculture, domestication of animals and wide-ranging trade contacts, which led to an exchange of economic plants all over the Eurasian continent. In Central America, on the other hand, crop-growing with lithic and wooden tools and through artificial irrigation was the dominant form of food production. And the European landscape experienced very heterogeneous and regionally different developments. Political hierarchies and institutionalized leaderships could barely be established, and where they emerged they caused the decline of former agricultural communities.

The third volume tracks the further development towards more complex citycultures from the 2nd millennium BC onwards. The main idea is what is usually called “central place function,” i.e. a bunch of phenomena and formations that is to a certain extent common to all urban configurations in spite of their specific political organization, and therefore particularly suitable for comparison in a cross-cultural way. At the beginning, there is the role of cities as centers of ritual performance, expressed in the layout of public space and monumental architecture for the sake of the stabilizing elite’s ruling hierarchies. Under these circumstances, the invention and spread of writing in the cities of the Near East testifies to the importance of the administrative basis of ruling powers. Writing was one device to stabilize and increase rule, both towards the inner and outer sphere. On the other hand, one of the main reasons for the success of early cities along the two main rivers in India, in the sub-Saharan settlements on the Niger(Jenne-jeno) and in the Greek poleis seems to have been precisely the lack of ritualized, institutionalized or religiously based ruling hierarchies. The abstinence from bureaucratic structures and institutionalized control allowed freedom to find flexible and special answers to the specific conditions in a complex political and economic environment.

The fourth volume focuses on the structure of bigger territorial units (“states and empires”) and the exchange-systems which were only gradually becoming more significant: the typical empires of the classical antiquity, compared with the nomadic forms of rule in the Northern hemisphere, and the formations of rule in North America and Australia. Several chapters are devoted to the macro-phenomena initiated by these formations of rule: monetization and tax-levies;changes within the societies, mainly in respect of gender-relations, marriage conditions and the role of women, the development of art in the context of imperial interests, the rise of slavery and the development of technology, science as well as forms of philosophical and religious coping with regard to secular problems. Additionally, the authors give again very instructive and different casestudies from Bactria via the Mediterranean world, Africa, East and Southeast Asia to the Americas. Therein, one finds the strength of the volumes. After the case-studies, there is always a comparative synopsis that does not proffer final answers but rather offers explanatory models worth discussing. Even if experts in the various fields will already be familiar with many of the issues and might note that some phenomena, theories and models are missing, nevertheless one must appreciate what the Cambridge World History achieves, informing us about the current state of the art regarding little or unknown phenomena as well as regions,by virtue of its structural chapters and case-studies. Furthermore, the description is composed and patient: authors and editors realize that it is neither possible nor necessary to do justice to every paradigm, to explain everything and all aspects;instead the goal was to let the differences and complexities of the early human development tell their own tales. That is much better than endlessly discussing and disputing different concepts of world and global history without venturing to use what we have, with respect to antiquity and beyond.25See also recently Gehrke 2017, with the reviews of Schulz forthcoming and Walter forthcoming.An English translation of the book will be published by Harvard University Press.

Narrating Global History for General Readers? A New Attempt

While the above-mentioned Cambridge World History aims at an academic readership, both in respect of volume and standard, some publishing houses target a broader public. A representative work is Ancient Worlds. A Global History of Antiquity, written by Michael Scott26Scott 2017.who contends that the Mediterranean countries and some regions behind these neighboring countries became involved in the power plays surrounding the emergence of the Roman Empire. This is not a very new idea, and Scott rightly quotes the key-word “interconnectedness” which was already used at the time by Polybius who termed this process symplokê (cf.Polyb. 1.4.11; 15.3 et passim; see the article of Houliang Lü in this issue). Of course, one can call this a global history. Yet if the Seleucid king Antiochus’s having received Hannibal, after he fled from his mother-city Carthage where he was no longer influential, is said to be the foundational act of a new, cross-Mediterranean partnership then the rhetoric of the book-title is stronger than a reasonable weighing and sifting of the historical facts would allow.

Scott seeks the global-historical agglomeration in events that form knots in the net of narrative historiography. In this respect, a typical dramatization is the year 191 BC when all the ruling parties, who had shaped the history of the Mediterranean and the Western part of central Asia for the preceding 30 years, converged in Greece, each with own motives and goals. What had begun as a series of conflicts on many frontiers and dispersed over immense distances had “been contracted to one seething, tumultuous hotspot, set to detonate outwards,” as Scott puts it.27Ibid., 204.To make his hypothesis of an entangled ancient world, including Middle Asia, India and China, more plausible, Scott uses the figure of synchronism that was already applied to single events by ancient historiographers, to confer higher significance to them. Furthermore,he adds parallel montages to this effective synchronism. However, one has to ask what could be concluded historically from the fact that young rulers came to power in Rome, in a Hellenistic kingdom and in ancient China, and sought to develop something, at roughly the same time? A deeper sociological insight into leadership that could be extracted from such constellations is not the main interest of the author. In fact, Scott clearly knows that new research on empires approaches the topic in the tradition of Max Weber by comparing typologies,and in respect of entangled history by searching for interactions between the empires. However, possibly either the author or the publishing house did not consider these approaches capable of carrying the narrative. Thus, there are often enigmatic but analytically less efficient statements like “Hannibal, Philip,Scipio – all young men who had led the charge during this era of change – were schooled in the fickle nature of fortune made even more unpredictable by the difficult and constantly changing world environment in which these leaders had to operate.”28Ibid., 211.

Likewise, the description of the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312 AD,which gave Constantine access to the great game of power, is written in the rhetorically exaggerating style of ancient historiography to make it suitable for a book focusing on global history. On the other hand however, the passages about the roughly simultaneous religious developments in India and China are quite informative.

Scott refers to the role of the unstable zones in between the major powers, e.g.Bactria (in today’s Afghanistan) as performing a “dovetailing of Eastern and Western Histories.”29Ibid., 213.However, what he has to say about the silk-road remains weak because he does not ask about the actors. Huge parts of the book deal with the religious transformations in the Roman Empire, Armenia, India and China,not least with the migration and metamorphoses of Buddhism. Here too, Scott narrates the stories in a colorful way, and concludes in the end that the problems and solutions or non-solutions were rather different. That is informative, and written in a good style but not global history.

Bibliography

Barker, G. and Goucher, C. (eds.). 2015.

The Cambridge World History. 7 Volume Set in 9 Pieces. vol. 2: A World with Agriculture, 12.000 BCE–500 CE. Ed. by G. Barker and C. Goucher; vol. 3:Early Cities in Comparative Perspective, 4000 BCE–1200 CE. Ed. by N. Yoffee;vol. 4: A World with States, Empires and Networks 1200 BCE–900 CE. Ed. by C.Benjamin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Borgolte, M., Schulz, R. and Stuchtey, B. 2017.

“Review of Barker and Goucher 2015. 7 vols.” Historische Zeitschrift 304/1:123–146.

Bradley, K. and Cartledge, P. (eds.). 2011.

The Cambridge World History of Slavery. vol. 1: The Ancient Mediterranean World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

De Angelis, F. 2016.

Archaic and Classical Greek Sicily. A Social and Economic History. Greeks Overseas. Oxford: University Press.

Du Bois, P. 2009.

Slavery: Antiquity & Its Legacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gehrke, H.-J. (ed.). 2017.

Die Welt vor 600. Frühe Zivilisationen. C.H. Beck & Harvard UP Geschichte der Welt. Munich: C.H. Beck.

Heinen, H. (ed.). 2010.

Antike Sklaverei: Rückblick und Ausblick. Neue Beitr?ge zur Forschungsgeschichte und zur Erschlie?ung der arch?ologischen Zeugnisse. Forschungen zur antiken Sklaverei 38. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.

Heinen, H. and Dei?ler, J. (eds.). 2017.

Handw?rterbuch zur antiken Sklaverei. 3 vols. Forschungen zur antiken Sklaverei, Beihefte 5. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.

Lane Fox, R. 2008.

Travelling Heroes. Greeks and Their Myths in the Epic Age of Homer. London:Allen Lane 2008.

Marek, C. 2016.

In the Land of a Thousand Gods: A History of Asia Minor in the Ancient World.In Colloboration with P. Frei. Transl. by S. Rendall. Princeton: Princeton University Press. (German original: Geschichte Kleinasiens in der Antike. Unter Mitarbeit von P. Frei. Munich: C.H. Beck, 2010)

McKeown, N. 2007.

The Invention of Ancient Slavery? Duckworth Classical Essays. London: Duckworth.

Mommsen, T. 1886.

The History of Rome: The Provinces from Caesar to Diocletian. vol. 1. Transl. by W. P. Dickson. London: MacMillan and Co.

Scott, M. 2017.

Ancient Worlds. A Global History of Antiquity. New York: Basic Books.

Schulz, R. 2016.

Abenteurer der Ferne. Die gro?en Entdeckungsfahrten und das Weltwissen der Antike. 2. Aufl. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.

—— forthcoming.

“Review of Gehrke 2017.” Historische Zeitschrift.

Schulz, R. and Walter, U. 2012–2018.

“Literaturbericht Altertum, Teil I–IX, Fortsetzung I–II.” Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 63/7–8: 481–507 (part I), 63/9–10: 611–634 (part II), 63/11–12: 730–758 (part III), 64/9–10: 618–635 (part IV), 64/11–12: 750–760 (part V), 65/1–2: 95–122 (part VI), 65/5–6: 382–396 (part VII), 65/7–8:501–514 (part VIII), 65/9–10: 625–637 (part IX), 67/1–2: 94–120 (continuation I),69/1–2: 103–119 (continuation II).

Sommer, M. 2012.

“Empire, Frontier and ‘Third Spaces’. The Near East under Roman Rule.” In: M.Cassia et al. (eds.), Pignora amicitiae. Scritti di storia antica e di storiografia offerti a M. Mazza. vol. 3. Catania: Bonanno, 123–138.

—— 2013.

“In the Twilight: Hatra between Rome and Iran.” In: L. Dirven (ed.), Hatra.Politics, Culture and Religion between Parthia and Rome. Oriens et Occidens 21. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 33–44.

—— 2014.

“Kontaktzone und Rezeptivit?t unter imperialem Vorzeichen – das Beispiel Rom. Eine Fu?note zur ‘komplexen Welt der Kulturkontakte’.” In: R. Rollinger and K. Schnegg (eds.), Kulturkontakte in antiken Welten. Vom Denkmodell zum Fallbeispiel. Proceedings des internationalen Kolloquiums aus Anlass des 60.Geburtstages von C. Ulf, Innsbruck, 26. bis 30. Januar 2009. Leuven: Peeters,203–214.

—— 2016.

Syria. Geschichte einer zerst?rten Welt. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.

—— 2017.

Palmyra. A History. Transl. by D. Sommer-Theohari. Cities of the Ancient World. London & New York: Routledge.

Walter, U. forthcoming.

“Review of Gehrke 2017.” Klio.