Imperial Lineages and Legacies in the Eastern Mediterranean

The empires of Rome, Byzantium, the Ottomans and later the British, all sought to develop a common territorial base in the Eastern Mediterranean and all struggled to control the political and spiritual allegiances of the indigenous groups that were brought under their rule. This volume addresses the various dimensions of these successive empires’ attempts to achieve coherence and control through paired contributions that explore each particular empire’s style of rule and the nature of the compromises each unavoidably had to develop in such key issues as regional autonomy versus central control and toleration for cultural diversity versus the unachievable desideratum of cultural homogeneity.