Rolf Strootman
Rolf Strootman is an associate professor of World History and Ancient History at the University of Utrecht.
He studies the interconnection between imperialism and premodern globalization during the Persian and Hellenistic periods (ca. 550 BCE-70 CE). His research interests further include cultural esp. religious interactions, the image of the "Orient" in Western culture, the cultural history of warfare, the Silk Road, and the reception of the Ancient World in modern popular culture (especially cinema and fantasy).
Keywords: Global Antiquity, Ancient Globalization, Imperialism and Colonialism, Court Studies, Ancient Persia, Ancient Greece, Ancient Macedonia, Alexander the Great, Cleopatra, Hellenistic World, Seleucids, Ptolemies, Antigonids, Parthians, Silk Road
Supervisors: H. S. Versnel
Address: Utrecht University
Department of History and Art History
Drift 6
3512 BS Utrecht
The Netherlands
He studies the interconnection between imperialism and premodern globalization during the Persian and Hellenistic periods (ca. 550 BCE-70 CE). His research interests further include cultural esp. religious interactions, the image of the "Orient" in Western culture, the cultural history of warfare, the Silk Road, and the reception of the Ancient World in modern popular culture (especially cinema and fantasy).
Keywords: Global Antiquity, Ancient Globalization, Imperialism and Colonialism, Court Studies, Ancient Persia, Ancient Greece, Ancient Macedonia, Alexander the Great, Cleopatra, Hellenistic World, Seleucids, Ptolemies, Antigonids, Parthians, Silk Road
Supervisors: H. S. Versnel
Address: Utrecht University
Department of History and Art History
Drift 6
3512 BS Utrecht
The Netherlands
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Key Publications by Rolf Strootman
An analysis of the significance of Central Asia for the Seleucid Empire, as well as the geopolitical importance of Central Asia in the Hellenistic period from the perspective of world history. The importance of Central Asia as a hub of Eurasian connectivity and a source of military manpower, war horses and elephants for the Seleukids (and previously the Achaemenids and Argeads) is stressed. The chapter also gives an overview of the archaeology of the main Seleukid sites in Margiana, Arachosia, Baktria, and Sogdia.
This article argues that the Ptolemies in the third century BCE ran a vast, hegemonic empire whose maritime lines of communication united the eastern Mediterranean, and stretched into the Aegean, the Black Sea, the Red Sea and even the Indian Ocean. It was, in other words, an empire -- not a country ("Egypt") with "overseas possessions". I argue that the dynasty, and not the land, was the principal ideological focus of the Ptolemaic polity.
This empire, though military in nature, is defined more by its networks and personal relations than by territorial conquest per se. Universalistic imperial ideology and a cosmopolitan elite culture aimed at integrating the different cultural and linguistic elite groups within the Ptolemaic sphere of influence. Ptolemaic Alexandria was the empire's principal hub. The city was located, not "in" Egypt, but at the very heart of the Ptolemaic network empire, of which the Nile Valley was one of several constituents (albeit the most important one).
The article therefore also takes issue with the popular image of the Ptolemaic monarchy as "double-faced", i.e. Greek and Egyptian. Instead the multi-ethnic and multicultural nature is stressed of this empire, whose claims to hegemony included Greece, Karia, Lykia. Syria, Phoenicia, Palestine, Judea, Nabataea, Egypt, Libya, Nubia, and Ethiopia.
Papers by Rolf Strootman
How did premodern Afro-Eurasian empires anchor their rule in the past, and how did they position themselves vis-à-vis the empires they conquered or replaced? After an introductory discussion of the Roman appropriation of the figure of Alexander the Great, this paper aims to answer these questions through two case studies: (1) the Macedonian takeover of Babylon from the Persian Empire after 331 BCE, and (2) the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453. We end with a shorter discussion of the replacement of the Parthian Arsakid dynasty by the Sasanian kings in third-century CE Iran. It will be shown that in all these cases the conquerors employed a policy of “jumping over” their immediate predecessors in order to connect to a more distant past – a past that could be rewritten to resemble the post-conquest present. This enabled them to portray their precursors as unworthy, incompetent tyrants that had rightfully been removed from power to allow the return of a Golden Age.