Antikkens Globale Verden

by Eivind Heldaas Seland

I år 166 etter vår tidsregning nådde en gruppe menn fram til Luoyang, hovedstaden i det kinesiske Han-riket. Der fikk de tre fram for keiser Huan, som til tross for at han bare var 34 år allerede hadde styrt det veldige landet som "himmelens sønn" i 20 år. Mennene fortalte at de kom som utsendinger fra Andun, kongen av riket Da Qin. "Da Qin" var kinesernes navn på Romerriket og "Andun" må ha vært Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, som styrte fra 161-180. Utsendingene hadde seilt over Det indiske hav og hadde nådd den kinesiske keiserens rike via dagens Vietnam. De romerske handelsfolkene som besøkte den kinesiske keiserens hoff representerer en ubetydelig historisk episode, men den forteller at rundt år 160 var verden knyttet sammen på en slik måte at folkene som levde over hele Europa og Asia hadde kunnskap om hverandre, stod i kontakt med hverandre, og at utviklingen i en del av verden kunne påvirke det som skjedde på helt andre steder. Målet med denne boka er å nettopp å fortelle historien om hvordan menneskelige samfunn har utviklet seg og forandret seg i kontakt med hverandre, fra de første moderne menneskene for omtrent 100.000 år siden til framveksten av islam midt på 600-tallet. Hovedvekten ligger på det som gjerne kalles den antikke perioden, fra cirka 750 før til 650 etter vår tidsregning.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Ancient History

237 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Eivind Heldaas Seland er professor i historie
ved Universitetet i Bergen. Han har antikkens
historie og eldre globalhistorie som sine fagfelt.

Reviews

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

This certainly has merit as a world history of the ancient period, roughly from about 3,000 BCE to the rise of Islam in the 7th century CE. Eivind Heldaas Seland is a professor of ancient history at the University of Bergen in Norway. And this is the English translation of the book that he published in Norwegian in 2008, but which has since been revised three times. “The aim of this book is to relate the story of how societies have evolved and changed in contact with each other.” He also involves non-Western societies, and in doing so he moves away from the classical image that mainly focused on Greco-Roman history as the source of Western civilization. The emphasis is on global interaction, but in the first chapters that I read it does not really come into its own: Seland simply places the different civilizations that we know next to each other. Also, this booklet is so brief (barely 140 pages of text) that it necessarily remains superficial. More about that in my History account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Sense of History]

Seland (professor of ancient history, University of Bergen, Norway) has quite some ambition: “This book is an attempt to combine traditional ancient history with what we call global history. Global history is a narrative about the past that emphasizes unifying and common developments and the importance of connections across political and cultural boundaries. A main distinction is between processes that are common to all or most societies, and developments that come about as a result of interaction.” That Global History approach has only flourished quite recently, especially for history after 1500 CE; it is therefore commendable that Seland also tries to take on ancient history in this way.

This has one advantage: the classical approach is to treat the earliest civilizations and cultures as separate containers (the Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Indian, Chinese, Greek, Roman, etc.), barely looking over the wall, and looking at cross-connections. I have lately read quite a few books and studies about those civilizations and was almost always displeased at how myopic archaeologists and ancient history specialists are: they mostly act as if the small sub-area they are investigating was completely separate from the rest of the world. William H. McNeill (1917-2016) was one of the first to systematically attempt to map the sometimes intense interaction between civilizations and cultures (in his 1963 published The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community, an unfortunate title he later distanced himself of). But after him it took almost half a century before that trail was also followed for ancient history, and this booklet is the fruit of that. It is modest in size: barely 140 pages, covering almost 4 millennia of history (from 3000 BCE to about 700 CE).

I especially appreciated the theoretical introduction in the 2nd chapter, in which Seland focuses on models of growing social complexity of civilizations. He rightly adds nuances to the classic scheme band-tribe-chiefdom-state. But due to its brevity, this explanation remains rather superficial. Unfortunately, this also applies to the subsequent, chronological chapters, which often get stuck in generalities and in the classic 'container'-like treatment of history. So, this is a worthwhile first introduction, unfortunately too short (a guide for further reading is clearly lacking). There surely is more work to be done!

[Lena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hvem var så slem med illustratøren at denne lagde så grusomme infografer?