Medieval Dynasties, University of Birmingham, May 25–26, 2018
Although we all use the term, the idea of dynasties is part of the scholarly furniture that has escaped rigorous interrogation. From Ancient Egypt to China, from the Carolingian Empire to the Umayyad Caliphate, or from the Byzantine-Roman Empire to the Bulgarian Khanate, ‘dynasty’ is fundamental to our conceptions of power and to the discourse of political history. The term is almost synonymous with the concepts of ‘kinship’, ‘heredity’, and ‘rulership’, and with the periodisation of history itself. As a result, rulers in the ancient and medieval world have been viewed not simply as individuals but as agents of a larger entity, namely ruling bloodlines to whose interests they were invariably in service.
But it could be that modern thinkers and historians have engineered this state of affairs, conceptualising dynasties as a method of exercising power where no such concept existed for the rulers and people of the age. Did newly victorious kings or emperors like Hugh Capet for the Capetians of France, or Alexios I for the Komnenoi of Byzantium, actually seek to establish their own dynasty? Is this idea just a handy tool for our study which unnecessarily colours our view of the period, or is there some deeper truth at the heart of the issue?
This workshop addresses the aforementioned questions. It will clarify what range of meanings ‘dynasty’ holds in modern scholarship and explore how these meanings correspond to, or differ from, conceptions seen in late antique and medieval thought, and in actual practice. Speakers including Robert Bartlett, Ilya Afanasyev, Arezou Azad, Anthony Kaldellis, María del Mar Marcos, Shaun Tougher, Roberta Cimino, Christopher Markiewicz, and Christopher Wright, will present papers on cases drawn from across late antique and medieval Europe and the Middle East. All attendees are invited to contribute to roundtable sessions and informal discussions. Ultimately, over the course of a two-day workshop we intend to propose some answers to the most essential question: what was a ‘dynasty’?
Advance registration is required.