Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS

Federalism and Border Management in Greek Antiquity

Project description

How the Ancient Greeks successfully managed their borders

Federal (central) organisations alone – whether in ancient Greece or modern-day society – cannot limit or resolve conflict within and beyond borders. The EU-funded FeBo project is putting emphasis on how the Greek federal states tackled internal and external border issues. It will demonstrate that federal states carried out careful border management policies aimed at preserving a balance of power and stability rather than a peaceful coexistence. In addition, it will demonstrate that these strategies had to take into consideration economic, ethnic, cultural and religious networks to succeed.

Objective

"""Federation for Peace in Ancient Greece” is the title of a well-known article published by J.A.O. Larsen in 1944 (Classical Philology 39: 145-62). As the world was being ravaged by war, Larsen wondered about the potential of federalism as a means of conflict resolution. The subject of his study was federal organisations in a broad sense in ancient Greece, but the research clearly stemmed from a question that is today becoming increasingly topical: can federal organisations limit or even eliminate intra-federal war? The project ""FeBo: Federalism and Border Management in Greek Antiquity"" starts from the assumption that the question above, which continues to be asked by scholars, no longer makes sense. Despite romantic projections, federalisation processes do not guarantee peaceful coexistence, neither within the constituent federal organisations nor on their external borders. This is true for both ancient Greece and the contemporary world. As far as ancient Greece is concerned (and perhaps not only ancient Greece), the question should focus rather on borders: how did the Greek federal states deal with the problem of internal (intra-federal) as well as external borders? The aim of this project is to demonstrate that (a) Greek federal states implemented precise border management policies; (b) these policies did not aim at peaceful coexistence, but rather at maintaining a balance of power and stability; and (c) in order to be successful, these strategies had to take into account economic, ethnic, cultural and religious networks, i.e. there had to be a multi-level policy of border management. In order to prove these points, it will be necessary to adopt a holistic perspective that takes into account not only political borders, but also everyone and everything that crossed and animated these, giving rise in turn to economic/cultural/ethnic/religious networks or even communities of destiny, which were of crucial importance for the stability of a federal state. Politics was not enough. Much more was needed."

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Keywords

Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants

See all projects funded under this funding scheme

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) ERC-2021-COG

See all projects funded under this call

Host institution

UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI TRENTO
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 668 961,00
Address
VIA CALEPINA 14
38122 Trento
Italy

See on map

Region
Nord-Est Provincia Autonoma di Trento Trento
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 668 961,00

Beneficiaries (1)

My booklet 0 0