Bieral’s service in the Civil War, particularly at the Battle of Ball’s Bluff, transformed his public image from thug to hero. The chapter chronicles his bravery, injuries, and subsequent court martial, revealing tensions between his violent past and military discipline. Bieral’s postwar activities – supporting Reconstruction, working in customs, and engaging in political violence – illustrate the persistence of private coercion in public life. His association with figures such as Boss Tweed and involvement in the Erie Railroad wars underscore the continuity of corruption and brutality. The chapter situates Bieral within the contested terrain of postbellum governance and reform.

The altars Vasari built in the Pieve for the Aretine lawyer Onofrio (Nofri) Camaiani and the important local confraternity known as the Fraternita dei Laici count among his least known commissions. Both altar tabernacles were destroyed, and the Camaiani Altarpiece was removed along with the other works of art in the Pieve during the church’s renovation in the nineteenth century. There was no Vasari altarpiece to relocate from the Fraternita’s chapel, for although he designed the architectural aedicule that was to hold it, Vasari failed to complete its altarpiece before he died in 1574. This chapter substantially expands our understanding of the patronage, history, precedents, original appearance, and iconography of those altars. Despite their differences, the Camaiani and Fraternita altars were important elements of Vasari’s artistic and architectural vision for the Pieve and integral parts of its Marian decorative program.

Prior to the Pieve’s radical renovation in the nineteenth century, Vasari’s Albergotti altarpiece decorated an altar at the end of the church’s left aisle. Its main panel depicts the Coronation of the Virgin and was originally commissioned by the Florentine Filippo Salviati for the church of San Vincenzo in Prato. This chapter investigates that early commission and the painting’s subsequent purchase by the Aretine lawyer Nerozzo Albergotti, thus providing a deeper understanding of the Albergotti altarpiece’s conception and complicated patronage history, as well as of its iconography and the ways in which Vasari adapted it to the altar in the Pieve on which it was installed.

This chapter offers a survey of the jus gentium in South East Aasia between the fifteenth and the late eighteenth centuries. It starts by providing an overview of the region and elucidating the challenges inherent in its study. Subsequently, the examination follows three lines of enquiry: first, it explores basic values and principles governing inter-ruler and interpolity relations on the eve of European colonialism around 1450–1500 by discussing and problematising tributary relations. Second, it examines the uniqueness of these relations when juxtaposed with Europe, highlighting key facets such as hierarchy, the prioritisation of people over land, and the forging of alliances with communities of the sea and land. Finally, the chapter plots the transformative impact of European colonial policies and practices, such as the militarisation of maritime spaces, the use of sea passes and the introduction of written agreements and commercial treaties.

Chapter 4 explores Zambia’s transition to multiparty democracy and the consequent rise in political competition and regional favoritism, revealing a trend of diminishing accountability. Initially, under the United National Independence Party’s one-party rule led by Kaunda, favoritism was constrained by balanced leadership. However, the emergence of ethnic-based opposition post-1991 heightened pressures for patronage, leading to increased favoritism under subsequent regimes. Regional favoritism escalated under President Banda and peaked during the populist Patriotic Front (PF) government (2011–2021), which eroded checks and balances, appointed an ethnically imbalanced cabinet favoring Bembas and Nyanjas, and concentrated borrowed funds in strongholds. Legislative and judiciary institutions were also weakened, along with civil society organizations. Traditional financiers provided some constraints through conditionalities, while Chinese lenders aligned with elite interests, exacerbating the situation. Zambia demonstrates a case of democratization exacerbating ethnic patronage without sufficient accountability mechanisms.

This chapter aims to qualify any defined boundaries between educated Roman women and their political or public engagement. As one moves further into the post-triumviral period, women pursuing cultural and educational endeavours appeared to gain more acceptance and admiration. This observation is particularly applicable to the case of Octavia Minor, the sister of Octavian Augustus and the fourth wife of Marcus Antonius. This chapter explores instances of Octavia’s educational pursuits, such as her involvement in creating networks of philosophers and tutors to educate her son, Marcellus (Strabo), her patronage (Vitruvius and the Porticus Octaviae) and instances of speech crafted for the Plutarchan Octavia, which blend the political and private spheres and are interpreted as a suasoria (Plutarch). Through these examples, this study positions Octavia as a prominent figure who exemplifies how female political engagement and paideia could be reconciled during the triumviral period.

It has often been said Barbara Strozzi’s dedication of each of her printed books of music to a different patron demonstrates her lack of success in finding stable support. A careful examination of the system of dedications leads to a different conclusion. The main function of a dedication was to obtain the gradimento, or appreciation, of the dedicatee for the gift of the book, which would be expressed, almost always, in financial terms, as a gift to the author of cash or valuables. In agreeing to this exchange, the dedicatee also gained a reputation as a patron of the arts, but even more so as an exemplar of generosity. Strozzi’s dedications, therefore, demonstrate success in obtaining the approval of a series of important patrons.

The introduction sets out the book’s main arguments and interventions, methodology, and structure. It details how the book applies the concept of ‘active reading’ to classical translation while challenging the idea that translators had a unified political agenda that reflected that of their patrons. It also outlines how the book reinforces the centrality of the concept of counsel and the agency of translators in producing diverse interpretations and applications of ancient Greek and Roman texts. It draws on the concept of the public sphere to conceptualize the shared political import of classical translations. The book’s innovative methodology combines literary-textual, book historical, and historical-contextual approaches and expands the canon to bring out the full range of applications and interventions of early modern translations of the classics while connecting them to larger developments. It ends by explaining the organization of the book according to the main genres of ancient Greek and Roman prose in translation between 1530 and 1580: moral philosophy, history and biography, military manuals, and oratory.

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.