Jon Berquist's "The Shifting Frontier: The Achaemenid Empire's Treatment of
Western Colonies" is the most recent article to be published in the Journal
of World-Systems Research.
Here is the Abstract of this excellent contribution:
Frontiers operate as loci for interaction between different cultures. In
instances of colonialization, the organizational differences between
societies allows one society to reorganize the other to the advantage of the
former, involving processes such as secondary state development and
intensification. During the Achaemenid dynasty's rule of the Persian Empire
(538-332 BCE), the empire's western border created a frontier of colonial
interaction with societies such as Egypt and Judah. However, Achaemenid
Persia did not simply expand through a frontier; its borders moved back and
forth over its two centuries, exerting varying degrees of influence
over these colonies. This paper will examine this more complex case of a
shifting frontier, with a focus on the colonial experience of domination,
autonomy and redomination.
The whole text of this article is available free from the Journal of
World-Systems Research. The address is
csf.colorado.edu/wsystems/journals/
or on the World Wide Web http://csf.colorado.edu/wsystems/jwsr.html
The Berquist article is Number 17 in Volume 1.
Prof. Chris Chase-Dunn
Department of Sociology
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, MD. 21218 USA
tel 410 516 7633 fax 410 516 7590 email chriscd@jhu.edu