Based on a collaboration between historians of Chinese and European politics, this volume offers a first comprehensive overview of current research on political communication in middle-period European and Chinese history. The chapters present new work on the sources and processes of political communication in European and Chinese history partly through juxtaposing and combining formerly separate historiographies and partly through direct comparison. Contrary to earlier comparative work on empires and state formation, which aimed to explain similarities and differences with encompassing models and new theories of divergence, the goal is to further conversations between historians by engaging regional historiographies from the bottom up.
- Cover
- Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Hilde De Weerdt and Franz-Julius Morche
- Part I: Communication and the Formation of Polities
- 1. Towards a Comparative History of Political Communication, c.1000-1500
- Hilde De Weerdt and John Watts
- 2. Administrative Elites and Political Change
- 2.1 Fragmentation and Financial Recentralization
- The Emergence of the Four General Commands (1127-1165)
- Christian Lamouroux
- 2.2 Administrative Elites and the ‘First Phase of Byzantine Humanism’
- The Adoption of the Minuscule in Book Production and the Role of the Stoudios Monastery
- Filippo Ronconi
- Christian Lamouroux and Filippo Ronconi
- 3. Language and Political Communication in France and England (Twelfth to Fifteenth Centuries)
- Part II: Letters and Political Languages
- 4. Political Communications, Networks, and Textual Evidence
- A Cross-Cultural Comparative Approach to Written Sources using Letter Collections
- Julian Haseldine
- 5. Latin and Classical Chinese Epistolographic Communication in Comparative Perspective
- Beverly Bossler and Benoît Grévin
- 6. Yao Mian’s Letters
- The Epistolary Networks of a Late Song Literatus
- Beverly Bossler
- Part III: Communication and Political Authority
- 7. Communication and Empire
- Byzantium in Perspective
- Mark Whittow (†)
- 8. Giving the Public Due Notice in Song China and Renaissance Rome
- Patricia Ebrey and Margaret Meserve
- 9. The Printers’ Networks of Chen Qi (1186–1256) and Robert Estienne (1503–1559)
- A Micro-Comparative Approach to Political Dependence and Censorship
- Chu Ming Kin and Franz-Julius Morche
- Part IV: Memory and Political Imaginaries
- 10. Letters and Parting Valedictions
- Zhang Yu and Political Communication in Mid-Eleventh-Century Sichuan
- Chen Song
- 11. Yue Fei and Thomas Becket
- Elite Masculinities in Comparison
- Bernard Gowers and Tsui Lik Hang
- 12. Imaginaries of Empire and Memories of Collapse
- Parallel Narratives in Southern Song and Byzantine Commemorations of Conquered Capitals
- Ari Daniel Levine
- Epilogues
- 1 Communication Breakthroughs
- Conditions and Consequences
- Wim Blockmans
- 2 Thoughts on the Problem of Historical Comparison between Europe and China
- List of Contributors
- Index
- List of Figures and Tables by Chapter
- Figure 2.2.1 Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, PSI XII 1266.
Official letter of Helladios to the pagarch, in the name of the topotērētēs (seventh century).
- Figure 2.2.2 Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, PSI XII 1267.
Letter of Theodoros to the pagarch (seventh century).
- Figure 2.2.3 Examples of the linking of subsequent letters and words.
Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, PSI XII 1266 (see Figure 2.2.1).
- Table 4.1 Some possible transactions and groupings of transactions which might be developed for the cross-cultural comparative analysis of letter collections.
- Figure 4.1 Peter the Venerable.
- Figure 4.2 Bernard of Clairvaux, all letters.
- Figure 4.3 Bernard of Clairvaux, corpus epistolarum.
- Figure 4.4 Bernard of Clairvaux, epistolae extra corpus.
- Figure 4.5 Peter of Celle, all letters.
- Figure 4.6 Peter of Celle, early letters.
- Figure 4.7 Peter of Celle, late letters.
- Figure 4.8 Anselm, Prior of Bec.
- Figure 4.9 Anselm, Abbot of Bec.
- Figure 4.10 Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury.
- Figure 4.11 Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury.
- Figure 4.12 Gilbert Foliot, Abbot of Gloucester.
- Figure 4.13 Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of Hereford.
- Figure 4.14 Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of London.
- Table 5.1 An example of the influence of the summae dictaminis (compendia of prose compositions created on the basis of collected chancery letters) of the thirteenth century on the political art of writing during the late Middle Ages. An official letter
- Table 5.2 Formulaic composition and rhythmical ornament in the letters of the papal chancery during the thirteenth century: a billet from the compendium of Cardinal Thomas of Capua (ThdC I, 62) progressively created in the papal chancery around 1220–1268
- Figure 9.1 Networks of the ‘five victims’ — networks of the five primary victims of the Poetry Case (green dots), which show that nine individuals were linked to both Chen Qi and Liu Kezhuang (i.e. the nine names clustered between Chen and Liu). Those wh
- Table E1.1 Number of people per newly produced manuscript book.
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