About the project

The Roman Empire has usually been understood in the light of later European state formation. But Europe seems unsuitable as a frame of reference for capturing the Roman experience. While European civilization developed on Roman foundations, it diverged decisively during the early modern period.

Indeed what seems most characteristic of post-medieval Europe is precisely the absence of an overarching empire. No new imperial power arose capable of subjecting the many and various monarchies of Europe to one universal centre. Not only does this make the sovereign states of Europe an inappropriate guide to understanding the Roman Empire, it has also distorted our view of the development of societal power in world history.

In many respects, Michael Mann's multi-volume and just recently completed work, The Sources of Social Power has revolutionized our understanding of this topic and it is by far the most sophisticated theoretical analysis on offer.

Yet, its account of societal power is weakened by one remarkable absence, namely the absence of empire between the fall of Rome and the rise of European colonialism. The explanation of this lacuna is Mann’s decision to exclude the non-European parts of the old world from his survey after the period of antiquity.

Such a narrowly conceived, even Eurocentric vision of the development of human collective organization and power could perhaps still pass muster as the basis for a universal theory in the early 1980s when Mann embarked on his endeavour. A generation later it is harder to justify.

In the meantime a vibrant discourse on world history has sprung up. Far from a spent force after the collapse of Rome, vast agrarian empires continued to set the tone across most of Eurasia for many centuries to follow. Rome, however, still needs to find its place within this new evolving historical framework. So far, the discourse has been centred on Central Asia, China and the significance of nomadic power (cf. Lieberman 2009).

The perspective offered by the new world history differs in significant respects from Mann's. Where Mann sees progressive development in post-Roman feudal Europe, the world historians tend to reintroduce the old, discredited, notion of the middle ages as a dark period where barbarian Europe has to catch up again with the other complex societies of Eurasia.

This view is no less problematic. Clearly, the two seemingly incompatible traditions need to be integrated and a common framework identified in order to produce a more satisfying account of social power over time.

The link may be provided by a focus on the formation of universal empires. Empire is commonly defined as the domination and effective control exercised by one metropolitan society over a number of subject societies (Doyle 1986; Scheidel 2013: 27-30). Following from this, the great cultural diversity and the lack of integration between metropole and subject communities generally receives emphasis (Runciman 2011; Burbank & Cooper 2010; Motyl 2001).

But empire in generic terms is too broad; it makes no distinction between European colonial empires and the vast agrarian empires of the premodern world. But for the purposes of this project that distinction is crucial. Colonial empires were constituted by sovereign, nation-states locked in competition within the European states-system, and overseas colonies.

An empire, like the Roman, had on the contrary risen to dominate its state-system and absorb most, if not all of its competitors in varying degrees of submission (cf. more generally Watson 1992). In fact, modern notions of statehood and sovereignty were developed in express rejection of such universal empire and are thus difficult to use in the analysis of these pre-colonial imperial entities (Bang 2014; Pagden 1995).

Universal empires normally combined the subjection of vast and diverse agrarian territories with a claim to rule the world. In practice, of course, such claims were unrealistic; but they reflected an attempt to structure and order hierarchically the system of states, the world from which the imperial metropole had emerged victorious as the hegemon.

Not all territories were equally subject to the imperial centre, but all of them ranked below it. Such aspirations to universal imperial rule were a significant force across pre-industrial Eurasia (Bang & Kolodziejczyk 2012) and represents the analytical glue that may help us bridge the rift between the sociology of Mann and the new disourse on world history.

Periods of strong, extensive empires can be seen alternating with phases of greater fragmentation, but usually within a framework where the symbolical heritage of one universal centre has been preserved. The European middle ages, with its lingering memories of Rome institutionalized in the papacy, the Holy Roman Empire and Byzantium, is just one example of this wider phenomenon. T

his project aims at developing a set of comparative studies, situating the Roman Empire and its more fragmented medieval successor phase within this wider Eurasian context of universal empires. In the process, it will show the way to the inclusion of the Roman experience within the new discipline of world history while at the same time filling the gap in our understanding of the development of "social power" left by Mann in his great work.

Prior history and project outline

Comparative study of ancient world empires is a fast evolving field. The project leader, Dr Peter Fibiger Bang, has been in the vanguard of a small group of historians that have pioneered comparisons between Rome and the vast empires of Asia. He has been a regular contributor to the Stanford project, comparing Han China and Rome (Scheidel 2009; Scheidel in press).

The other main imperial tradition to invite comparison is the complex of historically interlinked empires stretching from the Mediterranean to North India. From 2005-2009, Dr Bang was the founder and then chair of a COST network, to foster comparisons between the Roman, the Ottoman and Mughal empires (Bang & Bayly 2011; 2003).

It is to build on this network and consolidate its results that the present group will be formed.

Five monographic case studies have been designed to relate the Roman experience to the imperial tradition of the Mediterranean and Western Eurasia. The key question about universal empire is how extended conquests are consolidated into stable peace-time rule.

In the theory of Mann, this means focusing on organizational capacity; but since such agrarian universal empires had relatively limited bureaucracies, attention must be directed towards examining the forging of cosmopolitan networks of patrimonial elites and the formation of universalizing forms of high culture.

Read about the sub-projects.