Chapter 1 describes Gao Pian’s personal background and sketches the salient traits of his multi-faceted character. “Ancestral Geography” traces the clan history of the Bohai Gao to the Hebei-Manchurian borderlands and the northeastern Tang prefecture of Youzhou. “Military Men of Letters” outlines Gao Pian’s family legacy as a poet-general, giving particular attention to the example of his grandfather Gao Chongwen. “Patterns of Patronage” discusses the late Tang shift of the patronage system from the imperial court and the households of the central elite to the military headquarters of regional potentates. Gao Pian’s patronage of technical, religious, and literati retainers, among them several distinguished poets and authors, exemplifies this process. The section “Worldly Recluse” focuses on the religious dimension of Gao’s personality as a lay adept drawn to Daoist military strategy, alchemy, and the esoteric arts. Gao’s Daoist poetry shows how the upheavals of the period were reflected in lay religious experience and how Daoists sought to sublimate its violent conclusion.

The entanglement of genre and gender in the theories and practice of French art song shaped women’s creative engagement with the mélodie. They were active as composers and poets, as well as performers, hostesses, singing teachers, and muse; yet they faced gendered prejudice. Closer examination of songs by Pauline Viardot and Augusta Holmès reveals markedly different strategies by female composers when addressing gender in their settings. Some female poets (such as Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, Anna de Noailles, and Renée Vivien) gained visibility in French art song. One poet is particularly notable: Cécile Sauvage whose poetry was set both by her son, Olivier Messiaen, and by his wife, Claire Delbos. Patrons like Marguerite de Saint-Marceaux, Winnaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac, and Marie Vasnier proved equally as important to the genre as such professional musicians as Jane Bathori and Claire Croiza. In effect, salon and concert hall overlapped in repertoire and audience.

The vast Prose Brut tradition, derived as it is from Galfridian pseudo-history, but with the continuations found in the Anglo-Norman, Latin and then Middle English chronicles, benefits from the integration of Arthurian pseudo-history and some elements of romance into the history of the ‘English nation’. It becomes the bestselling English history in the Middle Ages, attesting to the enormous popularity of Arthur’s reign not just among those interested in the chivalric ethos and courtly love, but in how the land was governed through the centuries. The Prose Brut was copied anonymously for the vast majority of the extant corpus across the three languages of medieval England, but even more importantly, was owned and read by a cross-section in society, enjoyed among the middle classes, and clearly produced, at least in part, commercially. It was one of the first texts printed by William Caxton and went through seventeen editions in the first few decades of the printing press in England.

I demonstrate the analytical value of socially and historically embedding corruption through a case study of corruption in the Cambodian land market. I proceed by taking three types of corruption commonly associated with the formal process of land registration by scholars and civil society groups – the violation of regulations and procedures (a corruption of the rules), patronage practices (a corruption of politics), and rent-seeking (a corruption of bureaucracy) – and embed these practices in the processes and situations in which they take shape. I then discuss the difference embedding makes compared to a utilitarian account of corruption (the one that scholars and civil society groups writing about the case tend to deploy). Embedding changes how we understand corruption: We see corruption as an emergent practice as opposed to being a universal one. We see that, in Cambodia, corruption is systemic as opposed to being isolated to certain individuals or agencies. We see that corruption can be a way of building bureaucratic capacity as opposed to being purely self-interested and anti-organizational.

This chapter studies the controversy that led to the founding of East India Company College as a training institute for future administrators of British India. Governor-General Richard Wellesley’s unilateral decision in 1798 to establish a mandatory training college at Fort William, Calcutta, for all new recruits of the East India Company precipitated a conflict that embroiled the Court of Directors of the Company and the parliamentary Board of Control. I show that the language of corruption in this imperial context was transformed from accusations of personal enrichment to questions regarding procedural propriety, institutional overreach, and cultural difference. The Court of Directors could not refute Wellesley’s claim that Company civil servants were poorly trained. Nor did they wish to lose control over their prerogative of hiring personnel or determining the ideal qualities of an effective imperial administrator. They resolved instead to found East India College at Haileybury, formalizing a new imperial bureaucracy.

This essay explores the Inquisition’s persistent interest in converts, and descendants of converts, from Judaism to Catholicism. Spanish inquisitors believed those converts, called conversos, were prone to the heresy of Judaizing, which was continuing to follow Mosaic Law despite Christian baptism. The essay addresses the ambiguity of defining who exactly was a converso, and examines the kinds of accusations made against Jewish converts to Christianity and their descendants in the first four decades of the Spanish Inquisition’s activity, from approximately 1484 to 1525. It considers the gendered nature of those accusations as well as the potential motivations of accusers. After weighing the veracity of inquisition records about Judaizing, the essay moves to a comparison of trials from earlier and later periods of inquisition history, from the mid sixteenth century onward. These trials demonstrate the complicated, ongoing interactions among Jews, New Christians, and so-called “Old Christians” throughout the Spanish empire and around the world.

The first set of chapters operates at the level of patrons and their communities—imperial and local—to grapple with architectural rebuilding as a mechanism through which shared pasts, presents, and futures were articulated and substantiated. Chapter 1 examines architectural rebuilding as an ideological virtue. In particular, it looks to evidence from Roman and late antique histories, coins, and inscribed statue bases to chart the place and shape of architectural rebuilding (in comparison with and juxtaposition to new construction projects) within the broader commemorative landscape of honor and virtue in cities across the Mediterranean.

In every human relationship there is a tension, or perhaps better say a dynamic, between what is and what is desired by the parties involved, and in this the relations between medieval kings and the upper nobility were no different. When these factors coincided, the relationship tended to work well; when they did not, it could break down. To understand how this relationship played out between medieval English kings and their nobilities, we first need to understand how the structure of that relationship evolved. We can then examine how it manifested itself in areas such as the king’s role in maintaining the nobility, in service and cooperation between kings and his nobles, the interplay of ideas of wealth and power, favouritism, political instability and in some cases the removal of monarchs.

This chapter examines how the head of the Safavid order, originally a Sufi master, came to acquire the mantle of kingship. Using sociolinguistics to analyze the political language, the chapter explores how the Safavid leader maintained his ties with the Qizilbash tribal chiefs. Their power dynamic was underpinned by a set of moral codes, with the concept of shukr al-niʿma (obligation of gratitude) being central. The chiefs viewed their loyalty as a debt owed to the Safavid leader, who provided them with both material and spiritual benefits.

By tracing the origin and evolution of the Safavid order, the book offers fresh insights into how religious and sociopolitical forces merged to create a powerful Shiʿi empire. Iran remains the only Shiʿi nation in the world today. Ideal for readers interested in Middle Eastern history, religious studies, and political thought, Mantle of the Sufi Kings is essential for anyone seeking to understand the complex roots of Iran’s identity.

‘Mayors’ and village chiefs figure prominently in the iconographic and administrative record of ancient Egypt as key representatives of the pharaonic authority. Moreover, there also existed other local actors (wealthy peasants, ‘great ones’, etc.) whose occasional appearance in the written and archaeological record points to the existence of paths of accumulation of wealth and power that crystallised in the emergence of potential local leaders who owed little (or nothing) to the state in order to enhance their social role. The aim of this contribution is to explore how mayors and informal leaders ‘built’ their prominent local position in ancient Egypt, how it changed over time (especially in periods of political turmoil) and how they mobilised their contacts, family networks, wealth and official duties in order to consolidate and transmit their privileged position to the next generations. Inscriptions from Elkab, Akhmim and elsewhere, references in administrative texts and archaeological evidence (houses, etc.) related to a ‘middle class’ provide crucial clues about these themes.

Chapter 3 tests the book’s theory in Brazilian mayoral elections, drawing on evidence from fieldwork, secondary sources, and administrative data. Consistent with theoretical expectations for a setting with wide scope and low capacity, Brazilian incumbents suffer from a large incumbency disadvantage. While fiscal institutions structurally condition incumbent capacity and generate persistent levels of incumbency bias, exogenous shocks to capacity lead to changes in incumbency bias over time and across subnational units. This chapter illustrates that changes in fiscal transfers lead to variations in incumbency bias. It also exploits Brazil’s Fiscal Responsibility Law of 2000 as a natural experiment to determine how institutional shocks shape capacity. Using a differences-in-differences design,it demonstrates that incumbency disadvantage only emerged in municipalities running deficits – where the law was binding. This appears to reflect changes in public goods spending rather than in personnel spending – a proxy for patronage. The chapter also establishes that term limits increase incumbency disadvantage by attenuating performance voting and increasing costs of ruling.

Chapter 5 examines incumbency bias in settings where incumbents have high capacity: Argentina and Brazil. Though governors wield high levels of responsibility, they do so with far less severe fiscal restrictions than Brazilian mayors. In both cases, revenue flows are fairly stable and fund a high proportion of spending. At the same time, Argentine governors reportedly often win elections by disbursing patronage and buying votes, making them a least likely case for my theory. However, the analysis indicates that in both cases, spending on public goods is just as effective as spending on personnel for building an incumbency advantage. The contrast between Brazil and Argentina also helps examine the theory’s predictions regarding how party organizations affect the type of incumbency bias. While strong yet nonprogrammatic parties allow parties and candidates to benefit from incumbency advantage in Argentina, high levels of personalism restrict Brazilian candidates’ incumbency advantage. Lastly, the chapter shows that in Argentina public goods spending has a stronger effect on incumbency bias that proxies for patronage and clientelism.

Chapter 6 investigates a setting with a narrow policy scope and low expectations. Unlike their Brazilian counterparts, Chilean mayors are not expected to implement important policies; the national government controls most public goods provision. Consistent with the book’s theory regarding settings with low expectations, mayors in Chile enjoy an incumbency advantage. The chapter also establishes that the ayors’ ability to obtain a return from holding office hinges on fiscal transfers and public goods spending. Chile also offers a natural experiment for examining theoretical expectations about the sources of personal versus partisan incumbency bias. During the most recent electoral cycle, some mayors were subject to term limits, while others were allowed to seek reelection. The chapter analyzes the impact of this institutional change using a differences-in-differences design. The results suggest that Chilean mayors’ incumbency advantage is strictly personal, as the theory predicts for settings with personalistic parties.