The Development of Byzantine Archaeology and Historiographical Tradition in Colonial Palestine, 1800-1948 - Hold the Line

This book examines the relationship between the emergence of Byzantine archaeology and British colonialism during the period of the British Mandate in Palestine. Taking a single case study, the Negev Desert (now in southern Israel), this study explores how the development of Byzantine archaeology and historical enquiry in the region after 1800 provided the British government with a political and economic blueprint to secure its strategic interests over the Suez Canal. Several excavations of Byzantine sites during the British Mandate were utilised as an historic proof of concept for scientific programmes of desert greening , and to advocate for the displacement of Arab populations in favour of British economic development and town planning. Invariably, such contemporary concerns to secure British access to the Suez after 1869 shaped the interpretation of Byzantine history. Ideas of the Negev as a timeless frontier zone , which benefitted from the imposition of a central imperial government and increased economic immigration from a Hellenised western Europe, gained a historical precedent in an imagined Byzantine past.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Ch 1: Hold the Line: Byzantine Palestine and the postcolonial fray.- Ch 2: Drawing lines: Byzantium and the historicization of the Negev frontier.- Ch 3: Making deserts bloom: Britain, Byzantium, and agriculture in the Negev.- Ch 4: Conclusion: holding the line between past and present.

Über den Autor / die Autorin

Daniel Reynolds is Associate Professor in Byzantine History at the University of Birmingham, UK.

Produktdetails

• Autoren: Daniel Reynolds
• Verlag: Springer, Berlin
• Sprache: Englisch
• Produktform: Fester Einband
• Erscheint: 08.11.2025
• EAN: 9783032037831
• ISBN: 978-3-0-3203783-1
• Seiten: 100
• Illustration: Approx. 100 p. 10 illus.
• Serie: New Approaches to Byzantine History and Culture
• Themen: Geisteswissenschaften, Kunst, Musik > Geschichte > Regional- und Ländergeschichte; Naher Osten, Kolonialismus und Imperialismus, Geschichte allgemein und Weltgeschichte, History, Postcolonialism, Europäische Geschichte: Mittelalter, Geschichtsschreibung, Historiographie, Middle East, Archaeology, World History, Global and Transnational History, Historiography and Method, Imperialism and Colonialism, History of the Middle East, History of Medieval Europe, byzantine studies, Byzantine History, Theories of History, Byzantine Levant, Byzantine Israel, medieval Middle East