Shopping Cart : is empty
Home   |    Greek History  

The First European: A History of Alexander in the Age of Empire

by: Briant, P.

Price: 31,80 EURO

(in stock)
 
Category: Greek History
Code: 22417
ISBN-13: 9780674659667 / 978-0-674-65966-7
ISBN-10: 067465966X / 0-674-65966-X
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Publication Date: 2017
Publication Place: Cambridge, Massachusetts
Binding: Cloth
Pages: 482
Book Condition: New

 The exploits of Alexander the Great were so remarkable that for centuries after his death the Macedonian ruler seemed a figure more of legend than of history. Thinkers of the European Enlightenment, searching for ancient models to understand contemporary affairs, were the first to critically interpret Alexander?s achievements. As Pierre Briant shows, in the minds of eighteenth-century intellectuals and philosophes, Alexander was the first European: a successful creator of empire who opened the door to new sources of trade and scientific knowledge, and an enlightened leader who brought the fruits of Western civilization to an oppressed and backward “Orient.”

In France, Scotland, England, and Germany, Alexander the Great became an important point of reference in discourses from philosophy and history to political economy and geography. Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Robertson asked what lessons Alexander?s empire-building had to teach modern Europeans. They saw the ancient Macedonian as the embodiment of the rational and benevolent Western ruler, a historical model to be emulated as Western powers accelerated their colonial expansion into Asia, India, and the Middle East.

For a Europe that had to contend with the formidable Ottoman Empire, Alexander provided an important precedent as the conqueror who had brought great tyrants of the “Orient” to heel. As The First European makes clear, in the minds of Europe?s leading thinkers, Alexander was not an aggressive militarist but a civilizing force whose conquests revitalized Asian lands that had lain stagnant for centuries under the lash of despotic rulers.

Preface to the English-Language Edition
Introduction: Fragments of European History
I. A Critical History
1. History, Morals, and Philosophy
2. Alexander in Europe: Erudition and History
II. The Conqueror-Philosopher
3. War, Reason, and Civilization
4. A Successful Conquest
5. Affirming and Contesting the Model
III. Empires and Nations
6. Lessons of Empire, from the Thames to the Indus
7. Alexander in France from the Revolution to the Restoration
8. German Alexanders
IV. The Sense of History
9. After Alexander?
10. Alexander, Europe, and the Immobile Orient
Conclusion
Bibliography
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index

 
  Already viewed

The First European: A History of Alexander in the Age of Empire

by: Briant, P.

  • ISBN-13: 9780674659667 / 978-0-674-65966-7
  • ISBN-03: 067465966X / 0-674-65966-X
  • Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2017

Price: 31,80 EURO

(in stock)