Actions for Rome, China, and the barbarians : ethnographic traditions and the transformation of empires

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Rome, China, and the barbarians : ethnographic traditions and the transformation of empires / Randolph B. Ford, State University of New York, Albany

Author
Ford, Randolph B., 1976-
Published
Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2020.
Copyright Date
©2020
Physical Description
1 online resource (xx, 369 pages) : maps
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Contents
Cover -- Half-title -- Title page -- Copyright information -- Dedication -- Contents -- List of Maps -- Acknowledgments -- A Note to the Reader -- Introduction -- Comparative History of Greece-Rome and China -- Roman Late Antiquity and Early Medieval China: Brief Historical Background -- Primary Questions and Approaches -- Chapter 1 Ethnography in the Classical Age -- The Greco-Roman Ethnographic Tradition -- The Chinese Ethnographic Tradition -- Explanatory Paradigms in the Greco-Roman and Chinese Traditions -- Genealogy -- Geography, Climate, and Astrology -- History/Historical Change
Summary
"This book addresses a largely untouched historical problem: the fourth to fifth centuries AD witnessed remarkably similar patterns of foreign invasion, conquest, and political fragmentation in Rome and China. Yet while the western Roman empire was never re-established, China was reunified at the end of the sixth century. Taking a comparative approach to the study of the broader historiographical and ethnographic traditions in the classical Greco-Roman and Chinese worlds, the book turns to the late antique/early medieval period, when the western Roman Empire "fell" and China was re-constituted as a united empire after centuries of foreign conquest and political division. Analyzing the discourse of ethnic identity in the original texts, with translations by Dr Ford, it explores the extent to which notions of Self and Other, of "barbarian" and "civilized," help us understand both the transformation of the Roman world as well as the restoration of a unified imperial China"--
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ISBN
9781108601405 (electronic bk.)
1108601405 (electronic bk.)
9781108564090 electronic book
1108564097 electronic book
Bibliography Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Endowment Note
Steighton (Steve) A. Watts, Jr. Endowment
View MARC record | catkey: 32855017