1st Edition

Military Diasporas Building of Empire in the Middle East and Europe (550 BCE-1500 CE)

Edited By Georg Christ, Patrick Sänger, Mike Carr Copyright 2023
416 Pages 1 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

416 Pages 1 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

416 Pages 1 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

Military Diasporas proposes a new research approach to analyse the role of foreign military personnel as composite and partly imagined para-ethnic groups. These groups not only buttressed a state or empire’s military might but crucially connected, policed, and administered (parts of) realms as a transcultural and transimperial class while representing the polity’s universal or at least... Read more

Preface

Introduction

Georg Christ and Patrick Sänger

1 Military Diasporas in an Achaemenid Perspective

Hilmar Klinkott, Kiel

2 Immigrant Soldiers and Ptolemaic Policy in Hellenistic Egypt (Late Fourth Century–30 BCE): Reflections on a Military Diaspora and Its Components

Patrick Sänger

3 Syrian Recruits and Units in the Roman Army: A Military Diaspora?

Nathanael Andrade

4 Participants in the Emperor’s Glory: The Statues for Generals in Late Antique Rome

Mariana Bodnaruk

5 The Persian and Arab Occupations of Egypt in the Seventh Century

Lajos Berkes

6 Alexios, Emperor of the Diasporas? Komnenian Revolt of 1081 and the Foreign Military Groups in Byzantium
Roman Shliakhtin

7 The Catalan Company as a Military Diasporic Group in Medieval Greece

Mike Carr & Alasdair Grant

8 Christian Expatriates in Muslim Lands: The Many Roles of Aragonese Mercenaries in Medieval Northern Africa

Nikolas Jaspert

9 Professional Turks or Military Diaspora? The Mamluks and Dynamics of Ethnicity in Late Medieval Egypt and Syria

Julien Loiseau

10 Stradioti: A Balkan Military Diaspora in Early Modern Europe

Nicholas C. J. Pappas

11 Military Auxiliaries in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Hungary: Nomads vs. Crusader Knights

László Veszprémy

12 Medieval Queens and the Diaspora of Escort, Conquest, the Crusades and Military Orders

Christopher Mielke

13 Encountering the Heathen on the Baltic Frontier: The Order of the Sword Brethren and the Teutonic Order in Thirteenth-Century Livonia

Verena Schenk zu Schweinsberg

14 A Military Diaspora in Medieval Christendom: The Teutonic Order

Mark Whelan

15 The Cold Winter Campaign of 1511: Swiss Military Autonomy and Heteronomy during the Transalpine Campaigns

Anna Katharina Weltert and Georg Christ

 

Biography

Georg Christ is a senior lecturer in medieval and early modern history at the University of Manchester, UK, and a general staff officer in the Swiss Army. His work focuses on relations between Venice and the Mamluk Empire including the role of diasporas in transmediterranean connectivity.

Patrick Sänger is professor of ancient history at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany. His research focuses on the administrative, legal, and social history of the Hellenistic and Roman world with a specific interest in Egypt and in migration and integration issues.

Mike Carr is a lecturer in late medieval history at the University of Edinburgh, UK, and a leading specialist on the history of papal trade policies and crusading in the late medieval Mediterranean.