Abstract
Jeroen Duindam, Dynasties: A Global History of Power, 1300–1800, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2016; 435 pages, 8 b/w illus., 60 colour illus., 3 maps; £59.99, 9781107060685 (hbk); £19.99 9781107637580 (pbk)
Jeroen Duindam and Sabine Dabringhaus, eds, The Dynastic Centre and the Provinces: Agents and Interactions, Brill: Leiden, 2014; 242 pages, 8 b/w illus., 6 colour illus., 5 maps; 9789004251489, €124.00 (hbk); 9789004272095, €25.00 (ebook)
Silvana Seidel Menchi, ed., Marriage in Europe, 1400–1800, University of Toronto Press: Toronto, 2016; 424 pages, 6 b/w illus., 1 map; 9781442637504, $80.00 (hbk); 9781442625495, $80.00 (ebook)
Comparison helps historians better understand social structures and processes in different societies and across time. The similarities between case studies situated in different societies and time periods, or indeed the differences between these cases, allow the discovering of connections and offer generalizations, or identify the particular. With the rise of transregional, transnational, and global histories, comparative method has become a staple in the historian’s toolbox. However, this method also presents difficulties for the historian. The two perhaps most prominent hurdles are related to the selection of case studies, often conditioned by the availability of sources and the linguistic skills of the historian, as well as the need to avoid assuming that one of the cases represents the norm against which the others are measured and thus choosing variables that help to avoid such bias. The books considered in this review highlight the successes, and the pitfalls, of comparative history for historians who seek to examine social structures and processes transregionally and across the longue durée. Comparison shows itself to be an effective method of historical analysis, but also a complex tool to master and to contain.
The volume The Dynastic Centre and the Provinces: Agents and Interactions studies the connections between dynastic centres and their territories in Late Imperial China and early modern Europe. The figure of the viceroy dominates the first part of the volume, which opens with Jürgen Osterhammel’s historiographical study of the top echelon of peripheral governance in empires from Rome and Britain to China up until the early twentieth century. On the one hand, the viceroys and other top regional administrators represented the ‘king’s living image’ in the periphery; on the other hand, these representatives fostered and maintained active relationships with local elites and took their own initiative in provincial governance. The chapters that follow examine the changing provincial governance in the Ottoman Empire (Metin Kunt), detail the careers of an official and an imperial commissioner in Qing China (Kent Guy and Yingcong Dai), explore the ceremonial interactions between Spanish viceroys and local nobility in Valencia, Naples, and México (Christian Büschges), and study the role of resident ministers in Tibet in Qing China (Sabine Dabringhaus). Together, the six chapters highlight the importance of personal skill and personal interactions to the careers of imperial agents and underscore a constant exchange of power, a give-and-take, between the dynastic centres and their peripheries in early modern Europe and late Imperial China.
The second part of The Dynastic Centre and the Provinces considers rulers’ visits to provinces and the representations of such visits in a range of literary and visual media. Patricia Ebrey opens this part with an analysis of the rhetoric of austerity and moderation in Chinese critiques of royal extravagance and pleasure-seeking. Ebrey argues that scholars must consider this rhetoric when they examine the actions of rulers and, in particular, contemporary representations of these actions. Ebray sets the tone for the further four chapters in this second part of the book, which comprise an introduction to printed records of early modern European festivals (Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly); analyses of the interplay between towns and their rulers on the occasions of ceremonial entries in late medieval and early modern France (Neil Murphy) and the Low Countries (Margit Thøfner); and a study of historical narratives of a Qing emperor’s visit to southern China as means of political participation and negotiation of diverse actors (Michael G. Chang). As with the chapters in the first part of The Dynastic Centre and the Provinces, the second part similarly highlights constant negotiation between dynastic centres and peripheries. Local elites as well as commoners engaged with the ruler and legitimized, or challenged, the ruler’s power in the periphery. Nevertheless, and in contrast to the first part of the book, the chapters in the second part examine in depth the sources that allow historians to approach and analyse such negotiations.
As a work of comparative history, The Dynastic Centre and the Provinces successfully highlights common themes in the relationships between dynastic centres and the provinces across both Europe and China. The volume remains, however, uneven. The chapters in the second part of the volume all grapple with the relationship between text, image, and materiality, and accordingly complement and build upon one another as they consider representations of rulers’ visits to provinces. That said, in the first part of the volume, the scales of comparison do not match equally well. Chapters, for instance, move from considering the courtly ceremonies of Spanish viceroys to the career paths of Chinese officials while leaving the reader struggling to compare the role of viceroys and other representatives in early modern Europe and late Imperial China. In his conclusion, Jeroen Duindam notes that the editors did not provide a comparative framework for the individual authors. The laconic role of the editors also shows itself in the uneven use of terminology across chapters that detracts from the cohesiveness of the volume. Even though the chapters in The Dynastic Centre and the Provinces are strong and thought-provoking individually, they mostly stand alone and do not benefit from sitting beside one another in a single volume or build upon one another. The reader learns a lot about the relationships between dynastic centres and peripheries in early modern Europe and in late Imperial China, but struggles to gain a transregional view of these relationships.
A strong editorial presence is evident, on the other hand, in Marriage in Europe, 1400–1800, which brings together 11 specialists to tease out what constituted marriage and how marriage changed in late medieval and early modern (western) Europe.
The first chapter provides the reader with an overview of European marriage law and lays the foundations of Marriage in Europe. Charles Donahue Jr examines both canon law as well as the laws that emerged across Europe in the aftermath of the Reformation. He highlights a European-wide conversation on marriage that displayed substantial continuity from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century. The key focus of that conversation was to establish the moment when marriage was contracted. Donahue’s study of the legal frameworks is followed by eight chapters that explore marriage in defined politico-cultural contexts. First, Heidi Wunder (Holy Roman Empire), Daniela Lombardi (Italy), and Richard H. Helmholz (England) highlight continuities and changes in marriage between the fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries. Late medieval marriage formation could take a number of forms: from an exchange of a promise to a simple exchange of consent between the betrothed to a publicly contracted marriage involving families and friends. By the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, marriage formation had become subjected to rules, controls, and registration. In the Holy Roman Empire, this control resided with the state, and marriage became a fundamental institution both of society and state building. In Italy, the regularization of marriage formation came under ecclesiastical control. In England, where canon law on marriage remained untouched by the Reformation, changing social attitudes still affected marriage. After the Reformation, however, flexibility did not disappear from marriage formation completely. In the section entitled “Licit and Illicit”, Manon van der Heijden (the Netherlands), Susanna Burghartz (Germany and Switzerland), Jesús M. Usunáriz (Spain), and Mia Korpiola (Sweden) draw on records from marriage courts to highlight a continuous interplay between custom and changing legal norms. These four chapters consider marriage through the lens of sexual relationships. The ever-more-restrictive marriage laws in the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries legitimized some sexual relationships but, at the same time, rendered many other illicit. Marriage formed a fundamental institution of society, central to both social cohesion and discipline. A difference can be observed, however, between the sexual and the social order. If sexual relations violated social order, they were impermissible; if, on the other hand, the social order was upheld, then illicit sexual relationships were tolerated. Hierarchies of class and gender were central to defining the sexual and the social orders. These arguments resurface in Anne Lefebvre-Teillard’s chapter on France and in Cecilia Cristellon’s chapter on mixed marriages, both of which highlight an early-modern view of marriage as a tool of social cohesion and a foundation of civil society. Marriage in Europe ends with two concluding chapters by Silvana Seidel Menchi, in which she underscores the flexibility of marriage in early-modern Europe and proposes marriage as a workshop for the development of Church–state relationships, social tolerance, and the rights of the individual.
The single chapters in Marriage in Europe draw on a wide range of material and offer deep analyses of sources. The authors carefully balance prescriptive sources with documents of practice that shed light on the lived experience of pre-modern marriage. Matrimonial trial records prove particularly fruitful in this regard. Silvana Seidel Menchi strongly frames the individual contributions in her panoramic introduction while the two concluding chapters bring the volume together in a history of marriage that highlights both continuities across (western and Latin-Christian) Europe and reveal the mutability of marriage over time. Seidel Menchi draws attention to three continuities in particular: the principle that marriage must be free, the attempts to enforce uniformity on marriage formation, and the repression of extra-marital sexuality through the policing of women. Another continuity that emerges strongly in the volume is that marriage was a fundamental institution of early-modern society, while the regulation of marriage proved vital to early-modern state building. Marriage was a privilege that bestowed upon both spouses authority and respectability that each would otherwise have lacked. However, marriage also changed over time. Marriage in Europe draws attention in particular to the shifting meaning of marriage between a sacrament and a contract, the shifting relationships between Church and state in regulating marriage, and the changing role of women in the planning and management of marriage. In addition to Seidel Menchi’s introduction and conclusions, which encourage readers to approach the volume not only chapter by chapter but also to consider transversal links between chapters, the periodization-based structure of individual chapters (all have sections that cover c. 1400 to 1500, c. 1500 to 1600, c. 1600 to 1800) facilitates comparisons between chapters and geographic regions. Marriage in Europe is a true feat of comparative history in which each chapter introduces the reader to the history of marriage in one early-modern (western) European state, and together the chapters highlight continuities and change across regions, confessional lines, and time periods. Marriage in Europe unequivocally establishes that marriage has a history and anyone interested in this history should refer first to this volume.
Jeroen Duindam’s Dynasties: A Global History of Power, 1300–1800 constitutes another tour de force in comparative history writing. While Marriage in Europe and The Dynastic Centre and the Provinces highlight the central role of the editor in framing a successful comparative volume, Duindam’s examination of dynastic power underscores the importance of the careful selection of case studies for an effective comparison. Duindam considers dynastic power across the globe on four levels: ruler, dynasty, court, and realm. On every level, he highlights commonalities across geographic regions and time, but also draws attention to fundamental differences in the exercise of dynastic power in different parts of the globe. The first chapter examines the tensions between the ideal of kingship and the lived experiences of kings. Even though regional traditions and religions shaped the ideal of kingship, a belief in rulers’ celestial connection and a stress on their key role in ensuring social harmony, justice, and protection of the weak underpinned dynastic power everywhere. Conflict between the ideal of kingship and the challenges of day-to-day government often caused the separation of these two roles and rendered rulers dependent on regents, advisors, and courtiers. The second chapter focuses on the dynastic group that surrounded the ruler. It is here that Duindam finds agency for women in the predominately manly enterprise of dynastic power. The patrilineal dynastic systems in Europe and Asia, where women usually rose to dominance as consorts or dowagers, contrast with the matrilineal or dual male–female dynastic structures in Africa, Oceania, and South Africa. However, if dynastic survival appeared threatened, female heirs and rulers were installed both in Europe and Asia. The third chapter further expands the circle around the ruler and examines the ruler’s household or court. Royal households formed not only centres of power but also production centres, with workshops situated within royal compounds. Yet, the ruler was usually physically or symbolically separated from the household in an effort to denote special status. Finally, in the fourth chapter, Duindam moves to consider rulers’ relationships to their realms. Representatives of the dynastic ruler in the provinces were key to tying the distant corners of the realm to the dynastic centre. Rituals, ceremonies, and festivals fulfilled a similar duty as they emphasized the position of the ruler at the helm of the realm.
Duindam systematically examines the four levels of dynastic power drawing on a rich array of examples from both the secondary literature and contemporary accounts. By piling up examples, he reveals both the commonalities as well as the fundamental differences in the nature and exercise of dynastic power. The success of Duindam’s use of the comparative approach rests on his careful selection of cases. Duindam limits the time period under consideration, with most examples dating to the sixteenth through to the early nineteenth centuries. Moreover, even though examples from France, China, Japan, and the Ottoman and the Mughal empires dominate, Duindam draws on an array of secondary literature to include examples from Africa, Oceania, and the Americas for a global analysis of dynastic power. Duindam is careful about detecting viewpoint bias in his sources, particularly so when approaching accounts produced by European missionaries, diplomats, and merchants. He rejects European dynastic power as the point of reference against which to compare other dynasties. In many regards, in fact, European dynasties emerge as the exception to the norm; for example, monogamous dynastic marriages prevailed only in Europe and rulers elsewhere relied on harems and other types of female (or indeed male) households in their court to find consorts and tie the key families of the realm to the dynasty. Lest the examples of European difference lead readers to assume European exceptionalism, Duindam confronts the narrative of exceptionalism head on and rejects simplistic accounts of ‘the rise of the West’. Divergent practices from different parts of the world emerge, instead, as part of the same phenomenon, and Duindam argues that dynasties were cultural constructs.
The three books show the effectiveness of comparison when examining historical phenomena and processes transregionally and globally. However, in order to succeed, a comparative approach must include a clear analytic framework and a careful selection of case studies. As Jeroen Duindam shows in Dynasties, a single historian can write an expansive global history of a historical phenomenon. However, Duindam’s use of sources (as well as his acknowledgements) underscore that such an endeavour necessarily builds upon the scholarship of others. The two edited volumes also highlight the power of collective work and the importance of specialists building upon the work of each another. Both books result from international research networks and indeed evidence the direction that research is taking in the current funding climate, which often prefers large, international, and interdisciplinary projects. While Marriage in Europe underscores the benefits of such large-scale collaborations between historians by providing a cohesive and authoritative history of marriage in early-modern Europe, The Dynastic Centre and the Peripheries brings into focus some of the drawbacks of such work. In order to succeed, collaborative projects between specialists must be carefully framed – and so need a strong principal investigator/editor or a carefully planned collaborative decision-making process – and build upon a thought-through selection of case studies and variables for comparison. Only then does the work of the individual scholars come together and allow for conclusions that the single contributions alone do not permit. Comparison is an effective but also a complex method of historical analysis, but one which the historians working transregionally and globally must master.