Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Gibbon and the later Roman Empire: causes and circumstances
- 2 Gibbon and Justinian
- 3 Gibbon and the middle period of the Byzantine Empire
- 4 Byzantine soldiers, missionaries and diplomacy under Gibbon's eyes
- 5 Gibbon and the later Byzantine Empires
- 6 Gibbon and the Merovingians
- 7 Gibbon, Hodgkin, and the invaders of Italy
- 8 Gibbon and the early Middle Ages in eighteenth-century Europe
- 9 Gibbon and the ‘Watchmen of the Holy City’: revision and religion in the Decline and fall
- 10 Gibbon and international relations
- 11 Gibbon's Roman Empire as a universal monarchy: the Decline and fall and the imperial idea in early modern Europe
- 12 The conception of Gibbon's History
- 13 Winston Churchill and Gibbon
- Epilogue
- Index
Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Gibbon and the later Roman Empire: causes and circumstances
- 2 Gibbon and Justinian
- 3 Gibbon and the middle period of the Byzantine Empire
- 4 Byzantine soldiers, missionaries and diplomacy under Gibbon's eyes
- 5 Gibbon and the later Byzantine Empires
- 6 Gibbon and the Merovingians
- 7 Gibbon, Hodgkin, and the invaders of Italy
- 8 Gibbon and the early Middle Ages in eighteenth-century Europe
- 9 Gibbon and the ‘Watchmen of the Holy City’: revision and religion in the Decline and fall
- 10 Gibbon and international relations
- 11 Gibbon's Roman Empire as a universal monarchy: the Decline and fall and the imperial idea in early modern Europe
- 12 The conception of Gibbon's History
- 13 Winston Churchill and Gibbon
- Epilogue
- Index
Summary
This book began in January 1994 as a conference under the auspices of the Royal Historical Society as part of the bicentenary celebrations of the death of Edward Gibbon. We wish to express our warmest thanks, first of all, to all who participated in the discussions at that gathering of late antique, medieval and modern historians, and most particularly to the contributors to this volume. We are, moreover, especially grateful to Rees Davies, President of the Royal Historical Society, and the Fellows for making the conference possible, and to Joy McCarthy for all her cheerfully efficient organization. The work of preparing the typescript for publication benefited from the assistance of Sheila Willson in the History Faculty Office, University of Cambridge, and the staff of the Cambridge University Library. We are indebted to William Davies and the staff of Cambridge University Press for seeing the book through the press, and most particularly to Katy Cooper for her meticulous copy-editing. We should also like to thank Alice Prochaska and her colleagues in the British Library for mounting the Bicentenary Exhibition of Gibboniana in January 1994.
It afforded particular pleasure that the conference was held in Magdalen College, Oxford, Gibbon's own college (despite his opinion of it). We shall long treasure the beautiful image of Magdalen meadow transformed into a lake, with the snow deep upon the ground. We are indebted to the President and Fellows of Magdalen College for their hospitality, and to Janie Cottis the College Archivist and Gerald Harriss for providing an exhibition of Magdalen Gibboniana while we were there.
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- Information
- Edward Gibbon and Empire , pp. xiii - xivPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996