Philip J. Stern
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195393736
- eISBN:
- 9780199896837
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195393736.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, World Early Modern History, British and Irish Early Modern History
This book rethinks the nature of the early English East India Company as a form of polity and corporate sovereign well before its supposed transformation into a state and empire in the mid-eighteenth ...
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This book rethinks the nature of the early English East India Company as a form of polity and corporate sovereign well before its supposed transformation into a state and empire in the mid-eighteenth century. It explores the Company’s political and legal constitution as an overseas corporation and the political institutions and behaviors that followed from it, from tax collection and public health to war-making and colonial plantation. This book also traces the ideological foundations of those institutions and behaviors, revealing how Company leadership wrestled with typically early modern problems of governance, authority, jurisdiction, and sovereignty. the book thus reframes some of the most fundamental narratives in the history of the British Empire, questioning traditional distinctions between public and private bodies, “commercial” and “imperial” eras in British India, a colonial Atlantic and a “trading world” of Asia, European and Asian political cultures, and the English and their European rivals in the East Indies. At its core, the book offers a view of early modern Europe and Asia, and especially the colonial world that connected them, as resting in composite, diffuse, hybrid, and overlapping notions of sovereignty that only later gave way to more modern singular, centralized, and territorially- and nationally-bounded definitions of political community. Given growing questions about the fate of the nation-state and of national borders in an age of globalization, this study offers a perspective on the vitality of non-state and corporate political power perhaps as relevant today as it was in the seventeenth century.Less
This book rethinks the nature of the early English East India Company as a form of polity and corporate sovereign well before its supposed transformation into a state and empire in the mid-eighteenth century. It explores the Company’s political and legal constitution as an overseas corporation and the political institutions and behaviors that followed from it, from tax collection and public health to war-making and colonial plantation. This book also traces the ideological foundations of those institutions and behaviors, revealing how Company leadership wrestled with typically early modern problems of governance, authority, jurisdiction, and sovereignty. the book thus reframes some of the most fundamental narratives in the history of the British Empire, questioning traditional distinctions between public and private bodies, “commercial” and “imperial” eras in British India, a colonial Atlantic and a “trading world” of Asia, European and Asian political cultures, and the English and their European rivals in the East Indies. At its core, the book offers a view of early modern Europe and Asia, and especially the colonial world that connected them, as resting in composite, diffuse, hybrid, and overlapping notions of sovereignty that only later gave way to more modern singular, centralized, and territorially- and nationally-bounded definitions of political community. Given growing questions about the fate of the nation-state and of national borders in an age of globalization, this study offers a perspective on the vitality of non-state and corporate political power perhaps as relevant today as it was in the seventeenth century.
Saliha Belmessous (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- December 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199391783
- eISBN:
- 9780190213213
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199391783.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, World Early Modern History, Social History
This book is part of an intellectual project aimed at including indigenous voices in the debate over European appropriation of overseas territories. It is concerned with European efforts to negotiate ...
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This book is part of an intellectual project aimed at including indigenous voices in the debate over European appropriation of overseas territories. It is concerned with European efforts to negotiate with indigenous peoples the cession of their sovereignty through treaties. To grasp the extent of European legal engagement with indigenous peoples, the book examines the history of treaty making in European empires (Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and British) from the early 17th to the late 19th century, that is, during both stages of European imperialism. While scholars have often dismissed treaties, assuming that they would have been fraudulent or unequal, this book argues that there was more to the practice of treaty making than mere commercial and political opportunism. Indeed treaty making was also promoted by Europeans as a more legitimate means of appropriating indigenous sovereignties and acquiring land than were conquest or occupation, and therefore as a way to reconcile expansion with moral and juridical legitimacy. As for indigenous peoples, they engaged in treaty making as a way to further their interests even if, on the whole, they gained far less than the Europeans and often less than they bargained for. The vexed history of treaty making presents particular challenges for the great expectations placed in treaties for the resolution of conflicts over indigenous rights in postcolonial societies. These hopes are held by both indigenous peoples and representatives of the post-colonial state and yet, both must come to terms with the complex and troubled history of treaty-making over 400 years of empire.Less
This book is part of an intellectual project aimed at including indigenous voices in the debate over European appropriation of overseas territories. It is concerned with European efforts to negotiate with indigenous peoples the cession of their sovereignty through treaties. To grasp the extent of European legal engagement with indigenous peoples, the book examines the history of treaty making in European empires (Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and British) from the early 17th to the late 19th century, that is, during both stages of European imperialism. While scholars have often dismissed treaties, assuming that they would have been fraudulent or unequal, this book argues that there was more to the practice of treaty making than mere commercial and political opportunism. Indeed treaty making was also promoted by Europeans as a more legitimate means of appropriating indigenous sovereignties and acquiring land than were conquest or occupation, and therefore as a way to reconcile expansion with moral and juridical legitimacy. As for indigenous peoples, they engaged in treaty making as a way to further their interests even if, on the whole, they gained far less than the Europeans and often less than they bargained for. The vexed history of treaty making presents particular challenges for the great expectations placed in treaties for the resolution of conflicts over indigenous rights in postcolonial societies. These hopes are held by both indigenous peoples and representatives of the post-colonial state and yet, both must come to terms with the complex and troubled history of treaty-making over 400 years of empire.
Richard Bowring
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- December 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780198795230
- eISBN:
- 9780191836534
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198795230.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, World Early Modern History, History of Ideas
In Search of the Way is a history of intellectual and religious developments in Japan during the Tokugawa period, 1582–1860. It begins with an explanation of the fate of Christianity, and goes on to ...
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In Search of the Way is a history of intellectual and religious developments in Japan during the Tokugawa period, 1582–1860. It begins with an explanation of the fate of Christianity, and goes on to cover the changing nature of the relationship between Buddhism and secular authority, new developments in Shintō, and the growth of a consciousness of ‘being Japanese’; but the main emphasis is on the process by which Neo-Confucianism from Song and Ming China captured the imagination of the intellectual class and informed debate throughout the period. The narrative is divided into three sections, breaking at 1680 and 1786, each section prefaced with an essay that provides the historical, political, social, and economic background to the intellectual and ideological discussions that follow. The narrative aims, as far as possible, to show how one set of concerns led to another with some interesting digressions on the way. This period is treated as being important in its own right, not merely as a backdrop to the events of the Meiji Restoration.Less
In Search of the Way is a history of intellectual and religious developments in Japan during the Tokugawa period, 1582–1860. It begins with an explanation of the fate of Christianity, and goes on to cover the changing nature of the relationship between Buddhism and secular authority, new developments in Shintō, and the growth of a consciousness of ‘being Japanese’; but the main emphasis is on the process by which Neo-Confucianism from Song and Ming China captured the imagination of the intellectual class and informed debate throughout the period. The narrative is divided into three sections, breaking at 1680 and 1786, each section prefaced with an essay that provides the historical, political, social, and economic background to the intellectual and ideological discussions that follow. The narrative aims, as far as possible, to show how one set of concerns led to another with some interesting digressions on the way. This period is treated as being important in its own right, not merely as a backdrop to the events of the Meiji Restoration.
Amy G. Remensnyder
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199892983
- eISBN:
- 9780199388868
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199892983.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, World Medieval History, World Early Modern History
This book brings together medieval Iberia, colonial Mexico, and colonial New Mexico through the largely unexplored history of the Virgin Mary as a figure of warfare and cross-cultural encounter. ...
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This book brings together medieval Iberia, colonial Mexico, and colonial New Mexico through the largely unexplored history of the Virgin Mary as a figure of warfare and cross-cultural encounter. Beginning around 1000, Mary was drawn into warfare between Muslims and Christians in Iberia, emerging as an icon of the so-called Christian reconquest, which ended in 1492. In the process, rulers of Castile and Aragon developed a Marian sense of monarchy and Mary helped define the manliness of Christian men of war. In the religiously–mixed polities of high medieval Castile and Aragon, Mary became a key figure through which Muslims, Christians, and Jews negotiated their relationships with each other, and articulated identities. Mary also became central to the Christian view of the conversion of Muslims and Jews. The Spaniards who established colonies in the Caribbean and Mexico brought with them these medieval understandings of Mary. In the New World, the conquistadors both used her in the conquest of indigenous peoples and held her out to these people in evangelical efforts, influencing how some indigenous eventually appropriated her as their own military icon. Legends about her role in the conquest of Mexico became repositories of colonial identities, Spanish and indigenous. These legends inspired men involved in the founding of seventeenth-century New Mexico. There, Mary figured prominently in how colonists, friars, and Pueblos viewed the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 and the re-establishment of the Spanish colony in the 1690s. Her role in colonial New Mexico reverberates in the state’s contemporary ethnic politics.Less
This book brings together medieval Iberia, colonial Mexico, and colonial New Mexico through the largely unexplored history of the Virgin Mary as a figure of warfare and cross-cultural encounter. Beginning around 1000, Mary was drawn into warfare between Muslims and Christians in Iberia, emerging as an icon of the so-called Christian reconquest, which ended in 1492. In the process, rulers of Castile and Aragon developed a Marian sense of monarchy and Mary helped define the manliness of Christian men of war. In the religiously–mixed polities of high medieval Castile and Aragon, Mary became a key figure through which Muslims, Christians, and Jews negotiated their relationships with each other, and articulated identities. Mary also became central to the Christian view of the conversion of Muslims and Jews. The Spaniards who established colonies in the Caribbean and Mexico brought with them these medieval understandings of Mary. In the New World, the conquistadors both used her in the conquest of indigenous peoples and held her out to these people in evangelical efforts, influencing how some indigenous eventually appropriated her as their own military icon. Legends about her role in the conquest of Mexico became repositories of colonial identities, Spanish and indigenous. These legends inspired men involved in the founding of seventeenth-century New Mexico. There, Mary figured prominently in how colonists, friars, and Pueblos viewed the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 and the re-establishment of the Spanish colony in the 1690s. Her role in colonial New Mexico reverberates in the state’s contemporary ethnic politics.
Sue Peabody
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190233884
- eISBN:
- 9780190233914
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190233884.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, World Early Modern History, European Early Modern History
This book explores the hidden history of a family in slavery and freedom in the Indian Ocean empires of France and Britain during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A tale of legal intrigue, ...
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This book explores the hidden history of a family in slavery and freedom in the Indian Ocean empires of France and Britain during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A tale of legal intrigue, this biography uncovers the family lives of slaves and free people in two islands, Réunion (Isle Bourbon) and Mauritius (Isle de France). Madeleine, a girl from Bengal, entered the service of a French mistress in Chandernagor in the 1750s and accompanied her to France, where she became the slave of a planter couple who brought her to Isle Bourbon. Madeleine’s three children — Maurice, Constance, and Furcy — survived monsoons, famine, and the French Revolution. At the heart of the story is Furcy’s legal struggle to free himself from his putative master, Joseph Lory, a case that was ultimately decided by the Royale Court (Cour royale) of Paris in 1843. A meticulous work of archival detective work, Madeleine’s Children investigates the cunning, clandestine, and brutal strategies that masters devised to keep slaves under their control while painting a vivid picture of the unique and evolving meanings of slavery and freedom in the Indian Ocean world.Less
This book explores the hidden history of a family in slavery and freedom in the Indian Ocean empires of France and Britain during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A tale of legal intrigue, this biography uncovers the family lives of slaves and free people in two islands, Réunion (Isle Bourbon) and Mauritius (Isle de France). Madeleine, a girl from Bengal, entered the service of a French mistress in Chandernagor in the 1750s and accompanied her to France, where she became the slave of a planter couple who brought her to Isle Bourbon. Madeleine’s three children — Maurice, Constance, and Furcy — survived monsoons, famine, and the French Revolution. At the heart of the story is Furcy’s legal struggle to free himself from his putative master, Joseph Lory, a case that was ultimately decided by the Royale Court (Cour royale) of Paris in 1843. A meticulous work of archival detective work, Madeleine’s Children investigates the cunning, clandestine, and brutal strategies that masters devised to keep slaves under their control while painting a vivid picture of the unique and evolving meanings of slavery and freedom in the Indian Ocean world.
Philip J. Stern and Carl Wennerlind (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199988532
- eISBN:
- 9780199369997
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199988532.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, World Early Modern History, History of Ideas
From schoolbooks to scholarly monographs, mercantilism has come to be synonymous with early modern political economy, though it is just as often criticized as inadequate, incomplete, or incoherent as ...
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From schoolbooks to scholarly monographs, mercantilism has come to be synonymous with early modern political economy, though it is just as often criticized as inadequate, incomplete, or incoherent as both a theory and a set of policies. This book takes a new approach to this problematic subject by rethinking its broad foundations. From a variety of perspectives, its authors situate mercantilism against the backdrop of wider transformations in seventeenth-century Britain, Europe, and the Atlantic, from the scientific revolution to the expansion of empire. Not seeking to offer yet another definition or critique of mercantilism, this book instead reappraises its value in light of new approaches and understanding of the core characteristics and objects with which it has been traditionally associated: population, money, commodities, markets, merchants, institutions, warfare, and, of course, the state. In so doing, it offers a new narrative of early modern political economy that neither abandons nor assumes the use and validity of mercantilism but rather situates it in its various political, scientific, intellectual, social, and cultural contexts.Less
From schoolbooks to scholarly monographs, mercantilism has come to be synonymous with early modern political economy, though it is just as often criticized as inadequate, incomplete, or incoherent as both a theory and a set of policies. This book takes a new approach to this problematic subject by rethinking its broad foundations. From a variety of perspectives, its authors situate mercantilism against the backdrop of wider transformations in seventeenth-century Britain, Europe, and the Atlantic, from the scientific revolution to the expansion of empire. Not seeking to offer yet another definition or critique of mercantilism, this book instead reappraises its value in light of new approaches and understanding of the core characteristics and objects with which it has been traditionally associated: population, money, commodities, markets, merchants, institutions, warfare, and, of course, the state. In so doing, it offers a new narrative of early modern political economy that neither abandons nor assumes the use and validity of mercantilism but rather situates it in its various political, scientific, intellectual, social, and cultural contexts.
Saliha Belmessous (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199794850
- eISBN:
- 9780199919291
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199794850.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, World Early Modern History, World Modern History
This book shows that from the moment European expansion commenced through to the 19th century, indigenous peoples from America, Africa, Australia and New Zealand drafted legal strategies to contest ...
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This book shows that from the moment European expansion commenced through to the 19th century, indigenous peoples from America, Africa, Australia and New Zealand drafted legal strategies to contest dispossession. Colonisation was countered not only by force but also by ideas. Indigenous peoples made claims to territory using legal arguments drawn from their own understanding of a law which applies between peoples: that is, a kind of law of nations which was comparable to that being developed by Europeans. Confronted by indigenous claims, Europeans were forced to make rival claims. The story of indigenous resistance to European colonisation is, of course, well known. But legal resistance has been wrongly understood to be a relatively recent phenomenon. In the face of indigenous legal arguments, European justifications of colonisation should be understood not as an original and originating legal discourse but, at least in part, as a form of counter-claim. Indigenous claims show that a dialogue was being held between colonisers and colonised which can only be restored by staging all the participants and showing how they dealt with and reacted to each other. By enlightening the history of indigenous legal opposition to dispossession from the beginning of colonisation, this book will provide the general community with a means of engaging with the political challenges and responses posed by legal conflicts with indigenous peoples over the question of land.Less
This book shows that from the moment European expansion commenced through to the 19th century, indigenous peoples from America, Africa, Australia and New Zealand drafted legal strategies to contest dispossession. Colonisation was countered not only by force but also by ideas. Indigenous peoples made claims to territory using legal arguments drawn from their own understanding of a law which applies between peoples: that is, a kind of law of nations which was comparable to that being developed by Europeans. Confronted by indigenous claims, Europeans were forced to make rival claims. The story of indigenous resistance to European colonisation is, of course, well known. But legal resistance has been wrongly understood to be a relatively recent phenomenon. In the face of indigenous legal arguments, European justifications of colonisation should be understood not as an original and originating legal discourse but, at least in part, as a form of counter-claim. Indigenous claims show that a dialogue was being held between colonisers and colonised which can only be restored by staging all the participants and showing how they dealt with and reacted to each other. By enlightening the history of indigenous legal opposition to dispossession from the beginning of colonisation, this book will provide the general community with a means of engaging with the political challenges and responses posed by legal conflicts with indigenous peoples over the question of land.
José Rabasa, Masayuki Sato, Edoardo Tortarolo, and Daniel Woolf (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199219179
- eISBN:
- 9780191804267
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199219179.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, World Early Modern History
Volume III of this series contains chapters on the writing of history globally during the early modern era, from 1400 to 1800. The volumes proceed in geographic order from east to west, beginning in ...
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Volume III of this series contains chapters on the writing of history globally during the early modern era, from 1400 to 1800. The volumes proceed in geographic order from east to west, beginning in Asia and ending in the Americas. It aims at once to provide a selective but authoritative survey of the field and, where opportunity allows, to provoke cross-cultural comparisons. This is the third of five volumes in a series that explores representations of the past from the beginning of writing to the present day, and from all over the world.Less
Volume III of this series contains chapters on the writing of history globally during the early modern era, from 1400 to 1800. The volumes proceed in geographic order from east to west, beginning in Asia and ending in the Americas. It aims at once to provide a selective but authoritative survey of the field and, where opportunity allows, to provoke cross-cultural comparisons. This is the third of five volumes in a series that explores representations of the past from the beginning of writing to the present day, and from all over the world.
Colin Newbury
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199257812
- eISBN:
- 9780191717864
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199257812.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, World Early Modern History
This book applies a patron-client model to case studies of imperial over-rule to examine the political relationships between administrative and indigenous hierarchies derived from existing social ...
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This book applies a patron-client model to case studies of imperial over-rule to examine the political relationships between administrative and indigenous hierarchies derived from existing social structures and surviving into the period of decolonization. It goes beyond classification of administration as ‘direct’ or ‘indirect’, and rejects the notion that imperial rule was simply maintained by threat of force. From the range of cases presented it is argued that there was a continuity between pre-colonial regimes and succeeding European hierarchies that incorporated indigenous leaders. There are common themes in the initial dependency of European agencies (evangelical, commercial, official) on the patronage of indigenous rulers in states and reversal of this status at the onset of colonial rule. Remarkably few indigenous governments disappeared; and most subordinated leaders accommodated willingly or unwillingly within a new hierarchy deficient in resources and administrative personnel. In short, Europeans became imperial patrons and brokers between a distant metropolis and local systems of government in ways that were symbiotic, rather than hegemonic, subject to compromise beneath the rhetoric of colonial policies.Less
This book applies a patron-client model to case studies of imperial over-rule to examine the political relationships between administrative and indigenous hierarchies derived from existing social structures and surviving into the period of decolonization. It goes beyond classification of administration as ‘direct’ or ‘indirect’, and rejects the notion that imperial rule was simply maintained by threat of force. From the range of cases presented it is argued that there was a continuity between pre-colonial regimes and succeeding European hierarchies that incorporated indigenous leaders. There are common themes in the initial dependency of European agencies (evangelical, commercial, official) on the patronage of indigenous rulers in states and reversal of this status at the onset of colonial rule. Remarkably few indigenous governments disappeared; and most subordinated leaders accommodated willingly or unwillingly within a new hierarchy deficient in resources and administrative personnel. In short, Europeans became imperial patrons and brokers between a distant metropolis and local systems of government in ways that were symbiotic, rather than hegemonic, subject to compromise beneath the rhetoric of colonial policies.
Michael Hope
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- October 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780198768593
- eISBN:
- 9780191821981
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198768593.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, World Early Modern History, Political History
This study provides a new interpretation of how political authority was conceived and transmitted in the Early Mongol Empire (1227–59) and its successor state in Iran, the Īlkhānate (1258–1335). ...
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This study provides a new interpretation of how political authority was conceived and transmitted in the Early Mongol Empire (1227–59) and its successor state in Iran, the Īlkhānate (1258–1335). Authority within the Mongol Empire was intimately tied to the character of its founder, Chinggis Khan, whose reign served as an idealized model for the exercise of legitimate authority amongst his political successors. After Chinggis Khan’s death in 1227 two distinct political traditions emerged in the Mongol Empire, the collegial and the patrimonial, each representing the political and economic interests of different social groups within the Mongol polity. These two groups formed competing ideas on how legitimate authority should be exercised in the Mongol Empire based upon Chinggis Khan’s legacy. The present study documents the emergence of these two streams of political authority and assesses their impact upon the constitution and character of the Early Mongol Empire and the Īlkhānate. In doing so, this book provides a more comprehensive account of how power was conceived and exercised in the Mongol Empire, particularly amongst the noyat (military aristocracy), whose contribution to the Mongol polity has traditionally received little attention.Less
This study provides a new interpretation of how political authority was conceived and transmitted in the Early Mongol Empire (1227–59) and its successor state in Iran, the Īlkhānate (1258–1335). Authority within the Mongol Empire was intimately tied to the character of its founder, Chinggis Khan, whose reign served as an idealized model for the exercise of legitimate authority amongst his political successors. After Chinggis Khan’s death in 1227 two distinct political traditions emerged in the Mongol Empire, the collegial and the patrimonial, each representing the political and economic interests of different social groups within the Mongol polity. These two groups formed competing ideas on how legitimate authority should be exercised in the Mongol Empire based upon Chinggis Khan’s legacy. The present study documents the emergence of these two streams of political authority and assesses their impact upon the constitution and character of the Early Mongol Empire and the Īlkhānate. In doing so, this book provides a more comprehensive account of how power was conceived and exercised in the Mongol Empire, particularly amongst the noyat (military aristocracy), whose contribution to the Mongol polity has traditionally received little attention.
Justice and Legitimacy in Upbringing
Clausewitz's Puzzle
International Legitimacy and World Society
Multicultural Nationalism
Levelling the Playing Field
The Politics of Public Service Bargains
Corporate Governance, Competition, and Political Parties
The European Union and the People
Citizenship and the Environment
