Monday Methods|Applying Modern Terminology to the Past

[u/Commustar]

Thanks to /u/cordis_melum for suggesting this topic.

Periodically, AskHistorians will get a question like "Were the ancient Egyptians Black?" or "Did ancient greeks really have permissive attitudes about homosexuality?"

Often what follows are explanations and discussions about how "blackness" and racial theory are comparatively recent concepts, and ancient Egyptians would not understand these concepts in the way we do. Ditto, how the sexual orientation as a durable identity is a recent concept, and ancient Greeks would not understand the concept of "homosexuality" in the way we understand it.

With those examples in mind:

• Are there cases where applying modern terms to historical societies can be useful/illustrative?

• Or, does applying concepts (like racial theory, or homosexual identity, or modern medical diagnoses) anachronistically lead to presentism, giving the false impression that modern categorization is "normal"?

• Can modern medical diagnoses be applied to the past? And can these diagnoses ever be certain?

[u/bitparity]

"The state." Lets just accept that for the modern western word that it is, and not try to project it backward.

Also "Empire."

[u/[deleted] → u/bitparity]

Also "Empire."

I'm a bit confused about this. Does "empire" not mean what we think it does in the past?

[u/bitparity → u/[deleted]]

cracks knuckles AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH. This is going to be good times. (some of the people on this forum are already familiar with my argument, so apologies for the repetition)

No, it does not. The word "empire" as it stands now is one of the most convoluted concepts in the english language. You can see its complexity by noticing the variable conditions in which something can be called an empire, or imperial.

For example, you have the Roman Empire. Then you have the Athenian Empire (which never called itself anything like that because they didn't have that word or concept). You have the Korean Empire, which was literally just the country of Korea in the 19th century trying to compete with the Chinese Empire. Then you have people who call America "an empire." You have business empires. You have criminal empires. You have capitalism as an empire and you have imperialism as a concept.

Considering the vast assortment of ways empire can be used, how exactly would you define it? I have come up with a rough definition, "any political entity that is identified (whether by themselves or by others) as aspiring to hegemony."

Because, like the "Athenian Empire," you have situations where we in the modern world call something in the past an empire because it has traits of what WE think is an empire, even though they had no such concept.

Empire, the word, derives from Imperium, which is a latin word that means "command" or "authority", deriving from the latin verb imperare, which means "to command." In a way, I've been telling people that the more accurate translation of Imperium Romanum is "The Roman Commanderie."

This as you can tell, is way more vague than the modern word for empire.

Compare too, the Greek word that's often used in translation, basileia, which translates loosely to "kingdom", but which has a more ruler-based focus of supreme authority than imperium.

Then of course, we get into the east asian translations, which don't really have quite the same concept. You have tianxia (all under heaven) which is more an understanding of "the civilized world" and zhongguo (central/middle state(s)/kingdom(s)) which is more... i'd say geographic than political. The west says China has an empire because it has an emperor, thus emperor->empire. But as we see from the above examples of contemporary descriptions of ancient civilizations understanding of their own political existence, this phrase does not really line up.

Thus, it is a perfect example of our theme for the day, "applying modern terminology to the past."

[u/aviewfromoutside → u/bitparity]

I've been telling people that the more accurate translation of Imperium Romanum is "The Roman Commanderie."

So like a club of CEO, rich, and powerful? Sort of what might be called the 'elite' in the current age?