Classical Greece in the European Imperial Imagination, 1500-1700
Date of Award
Spring 2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
History
First Advisor
Gordon, Bruce
Abstract
This dissertation provides the first book-length study of how early modern European thinkers drew upon the history and literature of ancient Greece in constructing imperial ideology. By focusing on the importance of Greek reception for ideas of empire, this dissertation overturns two dominant scholarly narratives. First, it challenges the idea that the connection between classics and empire in the early modern world was primarily about Rome. Second, it expands our knowledge of the role of Greece in early modern political thought by showing that Greece was understood as an empire, adding to existing narratives that highlight Greece as a model for republicanism and mixed constitutions. European thinkers used Greek ideas to shape imperial ideology around three major themes: Maritime empire, expansion and colonialism, and racial hierarchy. Greece was a crucial source for creating ideologies of maritime empire through deep meditations on Thucydides, Polybius, and Athenian thalassocracy. Athens and Sparta also provided negative models of imperial expansion based on conquest and domination, which highlighted the strengths of Roman incorporation. Greek history also offered ideas of colonialism as a means to erect defensive barriers, manage demographic problems, and impose the culture of the metropole upon the colonized. Finally, Europeans transformed the Greek-barbarian dichotomy, viewed through the ancient descriptions of the Scythians, to create racial hierarchies that pitted civilized Europeans against barbaric peoples on the borders of their empires. In highlighting how Europeans used Greek sources to create ideologies of maritime empire, colonization, and race, this dissertation expands our understanding of the importance of the classical tradition in the early modern world.
Recommended Citation
Batson, Alexander, "Classical Greece in the European Imperial Imagination, 1500-1700" (2024). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 1367.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/1367
