Imperial Designs: Comparative Dynamics of Early Empires
Date
Oct 24 - Nov 1, 1997Organized by
Susan Alcock, Terence D'Altroy, Kathleen Morrison and Carla Sinopoli,Location
Hotel Mijas, Mijas, SpainPublications
Empires (Susan E. Alcock, Terence N. D’Altroy, Kathleen D. Morrison, and Carla M. Sinopoli, Eds.), Cambridge University Press, 2001.Participants
- Susan Alcock University of Michigan, USA
- Thomas Barfield Boston University, USA
- Elizabeth Brumfiel Albion College, USA
- Terence D'Altroy, organizer Columbia University, USA
- Kathleen Deagan University of Florida, USA
- Francis Hayashida Technical University of Munich, Germany
- Amelie Kurht University College, London, UK
- Mario Liverani University of Rome, Italy
- Sabine MacCormack University of Michigan, USA
- John Moreland University of Sheffield, UK
- Robert Morkot University of Exeter, UK
- Kathleen Morrison, organizer University of Chicago, USA
- Katharina Schreiber University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
- Sydel Silverman Wenner-Gren Foundation, USA
- Carla Sinopoli, organizer University of Michigan, USA
- Michael E. Smith State University of New York, Albany, USA
- Sanjay Subrahmanyam École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, France
- Greg Woolf University of Oxford, UK
- Robin Yates McGill University, Canada
ORGANIZER’S STATEMENT: Seventeen scholars from the disciplines of cultural anthropology, anthropological archaeology, classical archaeology, and history came together at this symposium to assess recent research on premodern and early-modern empires in a comparative perspective. The participants examined political, economic, and ideological structures and practices in imperial states, relations between imperial subjects and rulers, and issues of historiography. While emphasizing a comparativist perspective, the conference also sought to address historical particularities and the unique trajectories of individual cases. To meet these goals, each participant prepared a paper dealing with a particular case in the context of pre-defined themes (concerning political, ideological, sociological or economic issues). Among the cases considered were the New World empires of Wari, Inka, Aztec, and 16th-century Spanish America, as well as Old World empires including the Assyrian and Achaeminid, Egypt and Nubia, the Romans, the Carolingians, early imperial China, nomadic empires of the Central Eurasion steppes, the Satavahana and Vijayanagara of South Asia, and the 16th-century Portuguese Estada da India. The discussions compared these cases around cross-cutting themes: sources of evidence and evaluation of normative models; imperial ideologies and cultures; relations between claims to imperial power and its actualization; imperial integration and competition; domination, assimilation and resistance; cultural and political contexts beyond imperial boundaries; and imperial legacies and historiography.
Wenner-Gren Symposium #122
