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Western Republicanism and the Oriental Prince
The East/West divide seems to be as old as history itself, the roots of Orientalism and anti-Semitism lying far beyond the origins of modern Western imperialism. The very project of Western classical republicanism had its darker to purloin the legacy of the Greeks, distancing them from Eastern systems deemed "despotic" and "other."
Western Republicanism and the Oriental Prince is a thoroughly revisionist book, challenging both the West's comfortable view of its own political evolution and its negative stereotypes of non-Western systems. Not only did these stereotypes serve to legitimate early modern European nation-states struggling for an identity, but they also served to justify slavery and other forms of domination over subject peoples.
Drawing upon archaeological and epigraphic evidence, Springborg discusses the Mesopotamian and ancient Egyptian contribution of political forms and cultic institutions to classical Greco-Roman civilization, an Eastern legacy to the West that has long been obscured for political reasons. A different reading of the foundation myths of Athens and Rome and of certain texts of Plato and Aristotle, as well as the writings of Herodotus, Isocrates, Plutarch, and Diodorus Siculus, permits us to restore possible lines of affiliation. Springborg demonstrates that Renaissance thought, long believed to have ushered in the Western classical republican tradition, demonstrates a curious ambivalence toward powerful Eastern systems, which it viewed with fascination as much as fear. The great divide between Western democracy and Oriental despotism, which post Reformation thought has set in stone, was not yet sedimented in the Renaissance.
This major new study will be of interest to students of political history and theory, Middle Eastern studies, and East-West relations.
Western Republicanism and the Oriental Prince is a thoroughly revisionist book, challenging both the West's comfortable view of its own political evolution and its negative stereotypes of non-Western systems. Not only did these stereotypes serve to legitimate early modern European nation-states struggling for an identity, but they also served to justify slavery and other forms of domination over subject peoples.
Drawing upon archaeological and epigraphic evidence, Springborg discusses the Mesopotamian and ancient Egyptian contribution of political forms and cultic institutions to classical Greco-Roman civilization, an Eastern legacy to the West that has long been obscured for political reasons. A different reading of the foundation myths of Athens and Rome and of certain texts of Plato and Aristotle, as well as the writings of Herodotus, Isocrates, Plutarch, and Diodorus Siculus, permits us to restore possible lines of affiliation. Springborg demonstrates that Renaissance thought, long believed to have ushered in the Western classical republican tradition, demonstrates a curious ambivalence toward powerful Eastern systems, which it viewed with fascination as much as fear. The great divide between Western democracy and Oriental despotism, which post Reformation thought has set in stone, was not yet sedimented in the Renaissance.
This major new study will be of interest to students of political history and theory, Middle Eastern studies, and East-West relations.
351 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1992
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