New Polities. Political thought in the first millennium

Introduction

In the history of political thought, Late Antiquity is usually considered the period when the city-state gave way to monarchy and the Bible and Qur’an took the place of Plato. With a focus on kingship and religion, late antique political thinking – so the story goes – represents the antithesis of modern republicanism and secularism.

Critique of Traditional Perspectives

For far too long, this teleological perspective has directed scholars toward a narrow range of topics and inhibited the recognition of different narratives and integration of non-Western traditions. Instead of seeing this period as the end of the paradigmatic ancient polity (namely the polis), New Polities proposes that it was a beginning: an age of new polities.

Emergence of New Communities

Indeed, it witnessed the spread and consolidation of new religious, ethnic, and political communities. Their use of ancient political language to describe themselves sparked a proliferation of political discourse into new contexts.

Research Expansion

To uncover the innovation and variety thus generated, New Polities expands the scope of research in a three-fold way:

1. It embraces the first millennium from the Roman Empire to the Abbasid, Byzantine, and Carolingian empires, when different traditions crystallised from a common pool of late antique material.
2. It shifts the focus away from classical treatises and languages (e.g., Augustine & Al-Farabi) to a wider array of sources in many more languages from a broader range of cultures (e.g., Syriac, Armenian, Hebrew). This enlarged corpus allows for the charting of a greater breadth of ideas and possible cross-cultural influences.
3. It introduces little-studied topics, such as oikonomia and the relation between human society and nature.

Conclusion

Breaking down disciplinary boundaries, New Polities not only recovers the formation, circulation, and adaptation of political ideas in the first millennium, but also foregrounds the importance of late antique and early medieval societies in the wider history of political thought.