Author: Peter Spring Publisher: Pen and Sword ISBN: 1473853842 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 683
Book Description
Everyone has heard of the Great Wall of China and knows of Hadrian's Wall and the other barriers lining stretches of Rome's imperial frontiers. But Peter Spring's original new study demonstrates that far from being exceptional, the building of walls and other linear defences was commonplace among the peoples and states of pre-modern era. He finds examples virtually all across the globe and analyses their forms and strategic functions. He finds patterns for their distribution, an important recurrent theme being the divide between settled agriculture and nomads. The author argues that it is mistaken to view such undertakings as necessarily purely defensive measures that might be evidence of insecurity or a 'maginot line mentality', as they were in fact often about aggressive assertion of control over a region or strategic routes. This original and thought-provoking study brings new light and insight to a fascinating and neglected aspect of human political and military history. It The clear text is supported by numerous, specially drawn maps and photographs.
Author: Stephen Turnbull Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 1849080569 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 66
Book Description
The most famous example of fortification in the world, the Great Wall of China stretches for more than 6,000km across inhospitable terrain. Charting its development from its earliest origins in the 7th century BC through to the present day, this account reveals the true history of the wall, and explores the myths that surround it. Included are details of what it was like to live within the wall, how it was garrisoned and patrolled, and a discussion of how effective it was against attack. Through extensive examination of both ancient and modern sources, colour maps, artwork and photographs, this book illustrates why the wall is one of the great wonders of the world.
Author: Eberhard Sauer Publisher: Oxbow Books ISBN: 1789254639 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 1426
Book Description
Which ancient army boasted the largest fortifications, and how did the competitive build-up of military capabilities shape world history? Few realise that imperial Rome had a serious competitor in Late Antiquity. Late Roman legionary bases, normally no larger than 5ha, were dwarfed by Sasanian fortresses, often covering 40ha, sometimes even 125-175ha. The latter did not necessarily house permanent garrisons but sheltered large armies temporarily – perhaps numbering 10-50,000 men each. Even Roman camps and fortresses of the Early and High Empire did not reach the dimensions of their later Persian counterparts. The longest fort-lined wall of the late antique world was also Persian. Persia built up, between the fourth and sixth centuries AD, the most massive military infrastructure of any ancient or medieval Near Eastern empire – if not the ancient and medieval world. Much of the known defensive network was directed against Persia’s powerful neighbours in the north rather than the west. This may reflect differences in archaeological visibility more than troop numbers. Urban garrisons in the Romano-Persian frontier zone are much harder to identify than vast geometric compounds in marginal northern lands. Recent excavations in Iran have enabled us to precision-date two of the largest fortresses of Southwest Asia, both larger than any in the Roman world. Excavations in a Gorgan Wall fort have shed much new light on frontier life, and we have unearthed a massive bridge nearby. A sonar survey has traced the terminal of the Tammisheh Wall, now submerged under the waters of the Caspian Sea. Further work has focused on a vast city and settlements in the hinterland. Persia’s Imperial Power, our previous project, had already shed much light on the Great Wall of Gorgan, but it was our recent fieldwork that has thrown the sheer magnitude of Sasanian military infrastructure into sharp relief.
Author: Laura McAtackney Publisher: University of New Mexico Press ISBN: 0826361242 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 273
Book Description
Walls are being built at a dizzying pace to separate us, cocoon us, and exclude us. The contributors to this volume illuminate the roles and uses of walls around the world—in contexts ranging from historic neighborhoods to contemporary national borders. They argue that more and more walls are being built even though they are a paradox in a neoliberal world in which people, goods, and ideas are supposed to move freely. The walls examined in this volume do not share a common form or type, but they do share a common political purpose: they determine and defend racist definitions of social belonging by controlling access and movement. The contributors include archaeologists, anthropologists, geographers, and sociologists. They bring different perspectives and insights to the scale, form, and impact of this phenomenon of “walling in” and “walling out.”
Author: Mohammed Chaichian Publisher: BRILL ISBN: 9004260668 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 390
Book Description
Why do empires build walls and fences? Are they for defensive purposes only, to keep the ‘barbarians’ at the gate; or do they also function as complex offensive military structures to subjugate and control the colonized? Are the colonized subjects also capable of erecting barriers to shield themselves from colonial onslaughts? In Empires and Walls Mohammad A. Chaichian meticulously examines the rise and fall of the walls that are no longer around; as well as impending fate of ‘neo-liberal’ barriers that imperial and colonial powers have erected in the new Millennium. Based on four years of extensive historical and field-based research Chaichian provides compelling evidence that regardless of their rationale and functions, walls always signal the fading power of an empire.
Author: Robert Haug Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 178831722X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 311
Book Description
Transoxania, Khurasan, and ?ukharistan – which comprise large parts of today's Central Asia – have long been an important frontier zone. In the late antique and early medieval periods, the region was both an eastern political boundary for Persian and Islamic empires and a cultural border separating communities of sedentary farmers from pastoral-nomads. Given its peripheral location, the history of the 'eastern frontier' in this period has often been shown through the lens of expanding empires. However, in this book, Robert Haug argues for a pre-modern Central Asia with a discrete identity, a region that is not just a transitory space or the far-flung corner of empires, but its own historical entity. From this locally specific perspective, the book takes the reader on a 900-year tour of the area, from Sasanian control, through the Umayyads and Abbasids, to the quasi-independent dynasties of the Tahirids and the Samanids. Drawing on an impressive array of literary, numismatic and archaeological sources, Haug reveals the unique and varied challenges the eastern frontier presented to imperial powers that strove to integrate the area into their greater systems. This is essential reading for all scholars working on early Islamic, Iranian and Central Asian history, as well as those with an interest in the dynamics of frontier regions.
Author: Karima Kourtit Publisher: Springer Nature ISBN: 303048291X Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 572
Book Description
This handbook presents a collection of high-quality, authoritative scientific contributions on cross-border migration, written by a carefully selected group of recognized migration experts from around the globe. In recent years, cross-border migration has become an important and intriguing issue, from both a scientific and policy perspective. In the ‘age of migration’, the volume of cross-border movements of people continues to rise, while the nature of migration flows – in terms of the determinants, length of stay, effects on the sending and host countries, and legal status of migrants – is changing dramatically. Based on a detailed economic-geographical analysis, this handbook studies the motives for cross-border migration, the socio-economic implications for sending countries and regions, the locational choice determinants for cross-border migrants, and the manifold economic-geographic consequences for host countries and regions. Given the complexity of migration decisions and their local or regional impacts, a systematic typology of migrants (motives, legal status, level of education, gender, age, singles or families, etc.) is provided, together with an assessment of push factors in the place of origin and pull factors at the destination. On the basis of a solid analytical framework and reliable empirical evidence, it examines the impacts of emigration for sending areas and of immigration for receiving areas, and provides a comprehensive discussion of the policy dimensions of cross-border migration.
Author: Emanuele Intagliata Publisher: Oxbow Books ISBN: 1789253659 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 478
Book Description
The construction of urban defences was one of the hallmarks of the late Roman and late-antique periods (300–600 AD) throughout the western and eastern empire. City walls were the most significant construction projects of their time and they redefined the urban landscape. Their appearance and monumental scale, as well as the cost of labour and material, are easily comparable to projects from the High Empire; however, urban circuits provided late-antique towns with a new means of self-representation. While their final appearance and construction techniques varied greatly, the cost involved and the dramatic impact that such projects had on the urban topography of late-antique cities mark city walls as one of the most important urban initiatives of the period. To-date, research on city walls in the two halves of the empire has highlighted chronological and regional variations, enabling scholars to rethink how and why urban circuits were built and functioned in Late Antiquity. Although these developments have made a significant contribution to the understanding of late-antique city walls, studies are often concerned with one single monument/small group of monuments or a particular region, and the issues raised do not usually lead to a broader perspective, creating an artificial divide between east and west. It is this broader understanding that this book seeks to provide. The volume and its contributions arise from a conference held at the British School at Rome and the Swedish Institute of Classical Studies in Rome on June 20-21, 2018. It includes articles from world-leading experts in late-antique history and archaeology and is based around important themes that emerged at the conference, such as construction, spolia-use, late-antique architecture, culture and urbanism, empire-wide changes in Late Antiquity, and the perception of this practice by local inhabitants.
Author: David J. Betz Publisher: John Wiley & Sons ISBN: 1509544062 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 168
Book Description
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 came to symbolize the dawn of a new era of openness and connectivity. Yet today, the world is ever more divided, demarcated, and – quite literally – fortified. We are living in a guarded age. Why and how has this happened? Where will it take us? In this book, David J. Betz explores the expansion of fortified physical infrastructure at every level of the global political economy. In cities, where security is increasingly ‘designed in’ to public buildings and spaces as they are reshaped to mitigate mass terror attacks. Within corporations, who are burying their electronic assets in deep underground caverns and behind the leaded walls of ex-nuclear war bunkers against a range of threats and feared contingencies. In many urban areas, where the default condition of civil life is to be walled, gated, watched, and guarded. Year after year, hundreds of miles of linear obstacles – walls, ditches, and watchtowers – are added to national borders. Practically everywhere you look there are signs of innovative fortification, often designed to be overlooked. The Guarded Age reveals the barriers which most have observed but few – until reading this book – have truly seen.
Author: Peter Spring
Author: Stephen Turnbull
Author: Eberhard Sauer
Author: Georges Tamer
Author: Laura McAtackney
Author: Mohammed Chaichian
Author: Robert Haug
Author: Karima Kourtit
Author: Emanuele Intagliata
Author: David J. Betz