Globalisation may be falling out of favour among electorates, but it continues to advance in ancient studies. A growing number of institutional initiatives seek to bring together relevant area specialisms. What will wider vistas deliver for Roman studies?
Seland (S.) and Schulz (Sch.) have produced two ‘global histories’ of antiquity that differ in terms of scope, volume, ambition and style; yet their projects have much in common. Both grapple with the challenges of negotiating wide stretches of history that far exceed the expertise of any individual scholar in ways that give their audience a sense of the most salient developments and the overall contours of change. Both mix old and new perspectives: old in their measurable privileging of Greco-Roman matters, their almost or entirely complete exclusion of the New World, and (in one case) the limitation to sedentary societies; new in their experimentation with identifying noteworthy themes, contrasts and similarities, and (in the other case) the embrace of the early history of the steppe. In all these respects their work exemplifies familiar strategies and deficits and reminds us of how much work that still needs to be done to globalise our engagement with the ancient world.
S.’s concise survey ranges from the Middle Palaeolithic to the seventh century c.e. His authorial vantage point remains ill defined, adopting as he does a Western stance on periodisation while critiquing the notion that Greece and Rome is ‘our history’ (2–3). S. focuses on common and unifying developments as well as connectivity; the latter necessarily privileges Afroeurasia (4). He proceeds chronologically except for two thematic chapters (chs 2 and 6), stressing four main themes — what happened, its influence on later developments, the nature of institutions and the emergence of networks (4). The modest length of an opening chapter devoted mostly to the onset of farming, sedentism and urbanism is emblematic of the widespread professional habit of giving short shrift to developments in preliterate Holocene societies that were truly foundational to everything that has happened since, much of which is best understood as an elaboration of these original transformative innovations. Rather than manufacturing an ever-longer ‘long late antiquity’, scholars might want to expend greater effort on ensuring that the ‘long early antiquity’ of village communities finally receives the attention it deserves.
In the second chapter, S. covers ecology, demography, societal complexity, state formation and social relations. Ch. 3 surveys metal use and the early complex societies of the Bronze Age, taking us from Mesopotamia and Egypt to the Indus Valley civilization and Shang China and then back to the eastern Mediterranean. Here and in later chapters, S. presents trade as one of the most important drivers of historical development, to an extent that occasionally stretches plausibility: for example, why should it be ‘natural to assume’ that long-distance trade with Mesopotamia ‘was a strong integrating factor’ for the Harappan cities (37)? He makes no attempt to gauge the relative significance of farming and commerce in sustaining early societies (41, 46). A short fourth chapter covers the crisis of the Early Iron Age and subsequent recovery: two pages on West, South and East Asia (48–50) are followed by a more detailed discussion of Greece (50, 52–4).
S.’s survey of city-states and empires from the eighth to the late fourth centuries b.c.e. in ch. 5 is highly imbalanced. While Phoenician trade and settlement claim less than a page, the Greeks are granted five times as much space; the Achaemenid empire scores a single page compared to five on Athens and Sparta plus Greek coinage, slavery and the debate about ‘the ancient economy’. The section heading ‘Urbanization and complex societies outside the Greek area’ (67) is quite revealing, as is the single page devoted to them. But all is well: after all, Greece occupies ‘a special position’ due to a wealth of evidence that lets it serve ‘as a case study for more general processes’ and also thanks to its impact on later developments ‘in the Western world’ (67). By contrast, Spring and Autumn China — deemed ‘somewhat similar to the Greek city-state system’ (69) — and India have to make do with cramped synopses.
S. doubles down on the proto-West in ch. 6 where he lavishes considerable attention on Athenian democracy, Spartan oligarchy and the mixed system of the Roman Republic (75–88). Other parts of the world merely warrant ‘side glances’ (88), such as southern Arabia (88–90) and ‘Germanic tribal communities’ as portrayed by Caesar and Tacitus (90–1). In ch. 7, ‘the empires strike back’ from 335 b.c.e. to 200 c.e. (92). Alexander the Great and his successors share the spotlight with Rome; there is even room for a series of vignettes of Roman emperors down to 235 c.e. (104–6). Other empires of the period bring up the rear: Parthians, Maurya, Kushan and Qin-Han. The curtain falls in ch. 8 amidst crisis, consolidation and collapse, as growing challenges to the great powers precipitated centralisation, militarisation and ideological control (122). Short looks at China and India are followed by longer discussions of the Sasanians and especially the later Roman Empire. The weight accorded to the rise of Christianity stands in stark contrast to a single sentence on the spread of Buddhism in post-Han China (123). S.’s antiquity ends with the disappearance of self-governing city-states in the Mediterranean and West Asia, affirming once again that part of the world as the story’s centre of gravity (142).
Even more striking than this familiar slant is S.’s utter neglect of non-sedentary societies even as they grew to massive scale and prominence. In so far as they are mentioned at all, nomads, duly relegated to ‘the margins of the agricultural areas’, feature only as a source of ‘tensions’ (144): thus, ‘China’s big problem was its northern neighbors, nomadic peoples’ who remain nameless (114). The so-called ‘shadow empires’ of the steppe such as the Xiongnu are conspicuous by their absence.
The contrast to Sch.’s approach could hardly be more dramatic. He takes the ‘nomadic adventure’ (25) as his starting point, acknowledging it in a rich opening chapter that builds and expands on recent efforts to upgrade the role of the steppe in premodern history. Starting with the Sintashta culture of the southern Urals with its chariots and kurgans, his account ranges widely across Eurasia, from the self-styled Aryans of Iran and India to Hurrians, Hyksos, Cimmerians, Sakas, Scythians and Medes. Determined to rectify the outmoded image of predatory and primitive nomads, Sch. describes their massive infrastructural projects and effective systems of political and economic control. Moreover, pastoralism and its consequences appear time and again throughout his volume — even if sometimes to excess: what are we to make of the observation that the 50 oarsmen on a Greek ship matched the putative size of ‘Indo-European warrior bands’ (111)?
Sch. sets out his structuring principles with great clarity: a focus on the two principal lifeways of nomadism and farming (and their interpenetration), alongside urbanism, empire-building, trade and the evolution and dispersion of belief systems from c. 1200 b.c.e. to c. 300 c.e. Expressly confining his narrative to Eurasia (plus Egypt) as a massive ‘interaction space’, he is nevertheless (and rightly) wary of fashionable exaggerations of connectedness and interdependence (13–20).
The second chapter discusses cities as focal points of bundled energy. Ranging from Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Aegean to India and China, Sch. contrasts modes of autonomous urban governance with the development of cities as instruments of royal rule. Empires represent the next step in societal scaling-up (ch. 3). A red thread that runs through his survey is empire formation in response to crisis experiences, from Assyria to Media, Macedon, Rome and Qin, as well as for Scythians and Xiongnu (though fifth-century b.c.e. Athens, a quintessential example, is not viewed from that angle); this neatly illustrates how a broad perspective can pay off. The Roman experience, defined by initial atomisation, military alliance-building and extensive cooptation is well contextualised: note Sch.’s comparison between Han Wudi’s operations in the steppe and Augustus’ expansion into Europe’s interior, or of their and Ashoka’s regrets about overextension (223).
The fourth chapter on the economy identifies agriculture, commerce and state initiatives as the main drivers of development. Sch. works out differences among Greeks, Romans, Kushanas and Chinese, observing that relatively low levels of agricultural productivity released Italian manpower for military purposes and singling out Republican Rome for its stunted fiscal structures and the disproportionate importance of enslavement (255–8). The final thematic chapter, on ‘paths to happiness’, features Sch.’s broad perspective at its most ambitious and ingenious: he argues that nomadism influenced Hindu, Zoroastrian and Hebrew beliefs, compares the effects of shifts toward universal deities and stark contrasts in the evaluation of the human body across Eurasia, and highlights parallels between the Jesus movement and the expansion of Buddhism and Daoism in China with reference to their openness and emphasis on charity. Christianity’s novel intolerance for other creeds marks the end of his version of antiquity (374–5).
Far-ranging cross-cultural observations and conjectures add up to a thought-provoking concluding ‘balance sheet’ (377–403). Mobility and adaptation are the central themes. The former manifested in the form of nomads moving into settled zones, of urbanism generating migration and of denser connections of trade and information exchange underwriting socio-cultural evolution. Adaptation is visible in the parallel and causally related rise of early Iron Age empires and confederations of nomadic horse warriors; in the elaboration of different modes of imperial control in the context of different ecologies, such as the local delegation model of the Mediterranean as opposed to models of centralisation in the Ganges basin or northern China; and in the processes whereby the elevation of universal deities in the Early Iron Age prompted the later upgrading of Vishnu, Shiva, Buddha, Laozi and Jesus as more accessible figures of worship.
How ‘global’ are these two accounts? Two metrics seem especially germane: balance — among different parts of the ancient world — and scope — what constitutes that ‘world’. Notwithstanding some excursions beyond the Old World, S.’s coverage is more uneven. The subject of 59% of about 90 pages that cover particular regions in chs 3 to 8, Greeks and Romans take up three times as much space as the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region (20%) and more than three times as much as South Asia (8%) and East Asia (9%) combined. Meanwhile, reference to the Americas (at a little over two pages) remains tokenist and Central Asia is virtually invisible. The marginalisation of ancient China, which is considerably better documented and researched than early South Asia, is particularly hard to explain — the former’s total score of eight pages is dwarfed by 53 pages on Greece and Rome.
Sch. does better. In his five thematic chapters, almost 40% of the space that is devoted to specific regions (which is almost all of it) is taken up by the western Mediterranean, the Greeks, the Roman Empire and Christianity. One-fifth is committed to Egypt and West Asia, while the remaining 40-odd per cent are fairly evenly divided among South Asia, East Asia and the Eurasian steppe and its extensions from Ukraine to Mongolia. However, whereas pastoralists are rescued from neglect, Africa gets short shrift even when it could have productively contributed to Sch.’s favourite topic of nomad–farmer interaction. Nubia receives but a single mention as a target of failed Roman aggression, while the Garamantes do not appear at all. Besides, among the ‘usual suspects’ of sedentary cultures, the extent of coverage of the Greco-Roman sphere comes close to matching the sum total for South Asia, East Asia and Egypt-cum-West Asia excluding the Hebrews.
In sum, although both authors privilege the Greco-Roman Mediterranean over other regions, S. goes much farther than Sch. While both pay equal attention to MENA, S. is less interested in South and East Asia. Central Asia is central to Sch.’s presentation but effectively missing from S.’s vision of what the ‘ancient world’ was all about.
These observations are not meant (only) as criticisms: above all, they remind us how hard it is for any one scholar to balance different elements. And who is to say what the ‘right’ balance is? A strict quota system would go too far: after all, scholars — especially those of single-authored works like these — are bound to be constrained by the limits of their personal expertise and by differences in the volume and accessibility of ancient evidence and modern scholarship for various regions. Which of these factors play a greater role in shaping what we perceive as relevant or influential — and hence as worthy of attention — is certainly a question worth pondering. In the end, scholars have to decide whether to lean into or struggle against conventional emphases and prioritisations. In that regard, Sch. deserves recognition for giving non-sedentary societies their due, even as significant imbalances in coverage remain — which is unsurprising and perhaps inevitable for an expert in ‘Western’ antiquity.
Then again, what is the ‘ancient world’? In a last-minute intervention that obscures Sch.’s careful spatial and temporal framing of his account, his publisher cut his precise original subtitle — Eine Globalgeschichte Eurasiens in der Antike (ca. 1200 v.Chr. – 300 n.Chr.) — to a putatively more marketable ‘global history of antiquity’. Whether that should be considered a problem or not depends entirely on how one chooses to define ‘global’: as encompassing a figurative ‘world’ constructed from and circumscribed by connectivity — the default justification for Afroeurasian ‘global ancient studies’ — or as a literal world made up of the entire planet. Only in the latter case is the omission of the Americas in particular (alongside Australia, Oceania and de facto sub-Saharan Africa) a cause for concern. S.’s coverage falls between two stools: while his subtitle defines the ‘global’ as Afroeurasian, he touches on developments ‘occasionally also in the Americas’ (144; see 10–11 on farming, 43–4 and 72 on the Olmec and 139–40 on Teotihuacan and the Early Classic Maya). This neither-fish-nor-fowl approach is likely to disappoint adherents of either one of the aforementioned definitions of the ‘global’.
Can we transcend such limitations? Existing attempts to globalise are constrained by the fetishisation of connectivity and the tyranny of synchronicity, of periodisation determined by absolute chronology that assigns antiquity specific start and end dates. Both preferences render meaningful planet-wide ancient studies impossible. Then again, the alternative option of categorising ‘ancient’-ness on the basis of developmental attributes opens a can of worms, not only by destabilising time-honoured frameworks and disciplinary conventions, but also by raising the spectre of a revival of outmoded stage models and their toxic baggage. But as I argue in What Is Ancient History? (2025), it ought to be possible to overcome these problems even if it takes some effort (53–8): there may be no better way to extend our reach into Sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas.
Finally, what do historians of ancient Rome stand to gain from globalisation, however defined? Sch.’s emphasis on pastoralist influences offers a good example. Rome was unusual among large traditional empires for its lack of substantial exposure to the steppe; while the latter played a role in the demise of the western half of its empire, it did not shape its emergence or maintenance. Only systematic comparative study reveals how rare this was: sedentary–nomad interactions were intimately associated with empire-building in much of premodern Afroeurasia (P. Turchin, J. Global History 4 (2009), 191–217). This is easy to miss if we look just at Rome instead of surveying the history of Iran and northern India and China. It serves as a reminder to Romanists not to take a given environment for granted and to consider how the relative weakness of an otherwise common factor might affect their understanding of their own case.
By contrast, Rome was not alone in confronting the considerable challenge of how to reach beyond territories that had developed in familiar ways to those that had not: the same was true of Maurya and Gupta state formation outside the Ganges basin, or the expansion of Han power into the subtropical south or the northern frontier zones. Others, such as the Western Zhou or later the Aztec Triple Alliance, shrank from such efforts, accepting internal gaps in their domains. A comparative perspective is essential for illuminating the relative weight of specific factors and their impact on observed developmental dynamics and imperial strategies. The same applies to the question of when and why conquest precipitated culture change or even epistemicide: experiences varied widely from Achaemenids and Maurya at one end of the spectrum to China and Rome at the other. Belief systems are another promising terrain. In his conclusion, Sch. evocatively sketches out differences and similarities between major culture zones: features such as ruler sacralisation, the spread of transcendent religions and states’ conflict-cooptation response to novel creeds such as Christianity and Buddhism all call for comparative assessment or at least cross-cultural awareness.
For the two books under review, embedding Rome in a bigger picture is not the main point of the exercise. Romanists need to go a step further than such synthetic surveys by explicitly relating ‘their’ case to others. Peter Bang’s forthcoming The Roman Empire and World History in CUP’s ‘Key Themes in Ancient History’ series illustrates this approach. Meanwhile, one-on-one comparative studies of Rome and XYZ keep proliferating. Whatever the chosen format or design, the globalising contextualisation of Roman history is here to stay. The biggest challenge will be to normalise this process for the kind of tightly focused, detail-oriented work that most ancient historians do most of the time. For global perspectives to become a routine feature of the professional mainstream, they will need to secure a solid presence in the technical articles and monographs as well as in the lectures and seminars that are the bread and butter of Roman studies.
