Up to the mid-fourth century AD, the language of refuge regularly appears in Roman sources in the context of frontier management. It is employed both of high status individuals, but also – more strikingly – of very much larger groups: certainly several tens of thousands of individuals, and sometimes apparently a hundred thousand plus-strong. The basic political economy of the Empire – powered by unmechanised agricultural production in a world of low overall population densities – meant that there was always a demand for labour, and, in the right circumstances, refugees could expect reasonable treatment. Provided that their arrival posed no military or political threat to imperial integrity, refugees would receive not only lands to cultivate on reasonable terms, but might also be settled in concentrations large enough to preserve structures of broader familial and even cultural identity. In other circumstances, however, imperial control was enforced by direct military action and survivors were sold into slavery and might themselves redistributed as individuals in adverse socio-economic conditions over very wide geographical areas.

In the late fourth and early fifth centuries, a distinct change becomes apparent in imperial policy. Some very large refugee groups – particularly those that were Gothic – were granted lands within the Empire on terms which broke with long-established Roman norms. These groups were so large and retained so much autonomy that they posed a distinct threat to the continued integrity of imperial rule over the particular regions in which they were settled. Over time, some of the settlements eventually became the basis of independent successor kingdoms as the power of the west Roman centre unravelled. This transition poses an obvious question. Why did traditional Roman policy towards refugees change so markedly in the late imperial period?  

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Professor Heather joined the History Department at King's College London in January 2008 as the Chair of Medieval History. He was educated at Maidstone Grammar School, before moving to New College Oxford to complete his undergraduate degree and doctoral work. Prior to joining King’s, Peter Heather worked at University College London, Yale University and Worcester College, Oxford.

His research interests lie in the later Roman Empire and its successor states. He is widely published in these matters, with a focus on the Goth and Visigoth kingdoms of the Medieval period and publications including The Goths (Oxford, 1996) and (with D. Moncur), Politics, Philosophy, and Empire in the Fourth Century (Liverpool, 2001). In recent years, his research has looked at propaganda in the late Roman elite, and issues of migration and ethnicity among the groups who dismantled the western half of the Roman Empire. Future work is likely to centre on developing legal systems of the Roman Empire and its successor states, and the evolution of particularly Christian authority structures in the same contexts.

http://www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/events/refugees-and-the-roman-empire

Refugees and the Roman Empire | Professor Peter Heather

Episode 45: The Environmental History of Iron

AKA - No Sons Seeing my Shirtless Men

President Trump is mad at windmills and has seen "that movie." Two muscular brothers defend a buff and nude Mueller. Media's most preeminent treat boy attempts to secure his legacy. Even Baseball Crank is back. Today's episode is a grab bag overflowing with riches.

The book is finally out and in stores now!

Buy tickets for our Northeast Tour NOW!

http://chapotraphouse.com/tour/


(Chapo & The Wolf cold-open by Brendan James)

Chapo Trap House

Episode 238 - The Mueller's Tale (8/20/18)

New song by me featuring my friend Satica

Mango Love

iTunes

Mango Love (ft. Satica)

In this episode, we look at how the history of inequality affects the stories we tell about the Anthropocene.

Reading list:

Trevor Jackson on Inequality (https://jhiblog.org/2018/04/04/review-essay-after-piketty-sutch-scheidel-and-the-new-study-of-inequality/)

Lucas Chancel and Thomas Piketty, 2015. “Carbon and Inequality from Kyoto to Paris.”

Schiedl, Walter. 2017. The Great Leveler. Princeton University Press. Selections.

Duncan, Mike, This is How Republics End

McCarty, Poole and Rosenthal, Political Polarization and Income Inequality

Anthropocene 107: Income Inequality and Climate Change

for all the times i cried in 2018


written/recorded/edited by : me
produced by : unknown :(

making me cry

You HAVE to check the shownotes for this one. Go to https://www.historian.live/home/2019/4/17/episode-130-battle-raps-of-the-high-middle-ages RIGHT NOW

There? Good. Our guest today Dr. Jenna Phillips has been kind enough to give us a great series of musically accompaniments to today's talk.

Dr. Phillips tells us about a fascinating form of singing in the high middle ages that’s basically like medieval battle rap. Two singers debate a topic in song, and make appeals to two judges, who then declare the winner. It’s a great episode because it has everything. We discuss just what on earth the High Middle Ages are through talking about the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Then Jenna takes us into the world of popular singing: the troubadours and the crusaders. Finally we talk about one particular style of singing, the juex partis. Then, as an added bonus, Dr. Phillips talks to us about how an archival discovery let her understand how people actually sang the jeux partis back in the day.

Episode 130: Battle Raps of the High Middle Ages

In this episode I speak with PhD Candidate Soufu Yin about Chinese political culture. If you're anything like me, your idea of China is pretty monolithic: politics is all about emperors, bureaucrats, and the civil service examination. But Shoufu argues that much of this is a trick of perspective, and that when we look at Chinese political culture we find lots of examples of a very different kind of politics. In this episode we talk about medieval public opinion polls, and female military commanders.

135: Chinese Political Culture With Shoufu Yin

Jazz, in the style of Frank Sinatra & Ella Fitzgerald - Jukebox

So Much Better (Evan Scott Olson cover)

Episode 12: Police, Fascism, and Partisan Violence

A podcast exploring one graduate student's quest to study for his comprehensive exams in history.

135: Chinese Political Culture With Shoufu Yin

Making of a Historian

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