Imperial borderlands to the north and to the west of the Black Sea (c. 500 to c. 620) By Florin Curta

https://www.academia.edu/164588159/Imperial_borderlands_to_the_north_and_to_the_west_of_the_Black_Sea_c_500_to_c_620_?email_work_card=title Imperial Borderlands to the North and to the West of the Black Sea (c. 500 to c. 620) Historians of the modern world writing in English are quite familiar with the borderlands of empires, a notion that is embedded in post-colonial theory. 1 As such, it is rarely, if ever, employed by historians of the more distant past. The borderlands of medieval Europe were in the east, but also in-between. 2 However, they are never associated with empires, even when described from imperial perspectives. 3 Similarly, among archaeologists dealing with Late Antiquity or the early Middle Ages, "borderlands" is a noun rarely, if ever, modified by an imperial quality. 4 Of course, empires have borders and borderlands. 5 Nonetheless, the tacit assumption seems to be that the closer one is to the border, the weaker the imperial power. The Late Roman and early Byzantine empire certainly regarded lands beyond the frontiers as "borderlands" that were monitored, controlled, and used as buffer zones for provinces next to the border. 6 The Roman lands in the ...