Political Communication in Chinese and European History, 800-1600

Based on a collaboration between historians of Chinese and European politics, Political Communication in Chinese and European History, 800-1600 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.

Hilde De Weerdt is Professor of Chinese History at Leiden University. She authored an intellectual history of the civil service examinations (Competition over Content, 2007) and a monograph on the question of how the ideal of a unified territorial state took hold in Chinese society (Information, Territory, and Networks, 2015). She has been involved in several comparative and global historical projects. Franz-Julius Morche is a research associate at the Chair of History of the Later Middle Ages and the Italian Renaissance, University of Basel, and Honorary Fellow at the Department of History, Durham University. He was previously a member of the ERC research team 'Communication and Empire: Chinese Empires in Comparative Perspective' at King's College London and Leiden University.

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 (Christian LAMOUROUX and Filippo RONCONI), 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), 3 LANGUAGE AND POLITICAL COMMUNICATION IN FRANCE AND ENGLAND (TWELFTH TO FIFTEENTH CENTURIES) (Jean-Philippe GENET), 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 (Robert HYMES), INDEX