Table of Contents

1. 'Elephant of India' - universal empire through time and across cultures Peter Fibiger Bang with Dariusz Kołodziejczyk; Part I. Eurasia - Antiquity till Early Modernity: 2. Propaganda and practice in Assyrian and Persian imperial culture Gojko Barjamovic; 3. Between Aśoka and Antiochos - an essay in world history on universal kingship and cosmopolitan culture in the Hellenistic ecumene Peter Fibiger Bang; 4. The making of Oriental Rome: shaping the Trojan legend Rolf Michael Schneider; 5. Pseudo-Aristotelian politics and theology in universal Islam Garth Fowden; 6. The Christian imperial tradition, Greek and Latin Judith Herrin and Dimiter Angelov; 7. Khan, Caliph, Tsar and Imperator: the multiple identities of the Ottoman Sultan Dariusz Kołodziejczyk; 8. How the Mughal Padshahs referenced Iran in their visual construction of universal rule Ebba Koch; 9. Ideologies of state building in Vijayanagara and Post-Vijayanagara South India: some reflections Velcheru Narayana Rao and Sanjay Subrahmanyam; 10. Sons of Heaven: the Qing appropriation of the Chinese model of universal empire Evelyn S. Rawski; Part II. Contrasting Universalisms - Old and New World: 11. Aztec universalism: ideology and status symbols in the service of empire-building Justyna Olko; 12. From empire to Commonwealth(s) - orders in Europe, 1300–1800 Peter Haldén; 13. Imperial universalism - further thoughts John A. Hall.

Promotional Information

This book explores the aspiration to universal, imperial rule across Eurasian history from antiquity to the eighteenth century.

About the Author

Peter Fibiger Bang is Associate Professor of History at The Saxo Institute, University of Copenhagen and holds a doctorate from the University of Cambridge. He is a Roman historian interested in comparative and world history. From 2005 to 2009 he was Chair of the European research network, Tributary Empires Compared, funded by COST (http://tec.saxo.ku.dk) and has been a Visiting Professor at the Universities of Tübingen and Heidelberg. He has authored, edited or co-edited seven other volumes, most importantly The Roman Bazaar: A Comparative Study of Trade and Markets in a Tributary Empire (Cambridge, 2008), and The Oxford Handbook of the Ancient State (2013) with Walter Scheidel. Dariusz Kołodziejczyk is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Warsaw and at the Polish Academy of Sciences. He has published extensively on the Ottoman Empire, the Crimean Khanate and international and intercultural relations in Eastern Europe. He is currently Vice-President of the Comité International des Études Pré-ottomanes et Ottomanes (CIEPO) and has been a Visiting Professor at the Collège de France, University of Notre Dame and Hokkaido University. His most important publications include Ottoman-Polish Diplomatic Relations (15th–18th Century): An Annotated Edition of 'Ahdnames and Other Documents (2000), The Ottoman Survey Register of Podolia (c.1681): Defter-i Mufassal-i Eyalet-i Kamaniçe (2004) and The Crimean Khanate and Poland-Lithuania: International Diplomacy on the European Periphery (15th–18th Century): A Study of Peace Treaties Followed by Annotated Documents (2011).

Reviews

'… this volume has much to offer to ancient historians.' Rolf Strootman, Bryn Mawr Classical Review