The Conqueror's Gift

"An account of the central role that ethnography played in the Roman empire and its transformation in Late Antiquity. Ethnography, broadly understood, is a key element in the toolkit of every empire, as important as armies, tax-collectors, or ambassadors. It helps rulers articulate cultural differences with outsiders and sometimes bridge them, and it lets the inhabitants of an empire, especially those who guide its course, understand themselves and their place in the midst of the enemies, allies, and friends who surround them. Whenever provinces are drawn, peace treaties and alliances framed, diplomats sent on mission, decisions taken to go to war, or simply life lived in the midst of unfamiliar voices, some kind of ethnographic vision must come into play. This ethnographic infrastructure, as ancient historian Michael Maas calls it, supports the empire's view of itself regarding the nations of the world, and it shapes and reflects actual interactions with them. Ethnography is not simply a reflection of changes. It also enables change by providing terms and concepts that give voice to the articulation of new circumstances. In this book, Maas argues that, to understand how the Roman Empire transformed in the crucial period of Late Antiquity, the empire's ethnographic underpinnings, especially as they were affected by Christianity, must be examined. As Maas demonstrates, Romans knew they lived in a world of great cultural diversity, movement, and instability. They believed that their empire imposed order upon it. Images of barbarians filled public spaces throughout the empire as reminders of Roman control. Writers likewise filled their pages with descriptions of foreigners in a wide variety of genres. These ethnographies, according to Maas, served three general functions. First, they described foreign peoples, placing them in established and accessible systems of knowledge. Second, they judged them on a register of distance from Roman norms, with "most like us" the best possible evaluation. Third, ethnography indicated explicitly or implicitly what the possibilities of participation within the imperial community might be. In other words, the gift of ethnography possessed for the conquerors a mechanism of imperial transformation"--