The Long Millennium

"This history of the 'long' first millennium CE, from the period of the Roman Empire to the beginning of the Colonial Age, takes a peripheral-centric approach, arguing that the rising chiefdoms of this period were key partners to urban-based civilizations. Their affluence is indicated by extensive investment in palaces, shrines and landscape transformations, and while much of this world is invisible in history since it is mostly oral in nature and many of its architectural works have been lost or destroyed, that should not lead us to underestimate its importance. In fact, by the end of first millennium CE, the chieftain world in its broadest sense, energized by the hundreds of chiefdoms that gave it its economic power, especially in the Global South, was so robust that in the subsequent centuries, it took the massive, globally-scaled efforts of colonialism, monotheism, nationalism and modernization to beat it back - and then only partially and inconclusively. The book raises a question that is not just historical, but also theoretical since the history of the long millennium directly implicates our understanding of the contemporary world. How do we write a history of today that accepts the irresolvable presences of survivals and revivals within what is left of the chieftain continuum?"--