Excerpts on Rulership
All works cited in this section can be found on the Works Cited page. Also read my Book Recommendations.
- Ancient States Did Not Maintain Permanent Embassies
- Assyrian Bureaucracy
- Birth of the Caliphate
- Birth of the European Feudal Hierarchy
- Birth of the Persian Empire
- Blood of the Defenders Hallowed This Ground
- Chiefdoms Are Powerful But Fragile
- Codex Books Supplant Scrolls
- Condottieri Usurpation of the Princely States
- Confucian Mandate of Heaven
- Contracting an Assassin
- Damascus
- Decline of Medieval Iraq
- The Dream of Taliesin
- The Earliest Cities Were Independent States
- Effectiveness of English Royal Taxation
- Fear Was the Fountainhead of Government Control
- Fiefs Were Measured By How Much Food They Produced
- Flirting with Deification
- Gift Exchange Revolves Around Three Obligations
- Gifts of the Sumerians
- Give As Few Orders As Possible
- A God of the State Not the People
- Hard Bargaining Was the Essence of the Lord-Vassal Relationship
- Hatamoto
- Heroic Code Says the Younger Generation Is Inferior
- Heroic Temperaments Were Subject to Excesses
- High Social Status and the Right To Do Violence
- Hostage-taking As a Way of Forming Close Familial Bonds
- Hunting Served Several Social Functions
- Ideology Of Monarchy
- The Immense Wealth of the Persian Kings
- An Immoral Ruler Undermines His Own Legitimacy
- In Personal Terms Rather Than in Abstractions
- The Influence of the State Did Not Reach Into the Lives of Individuals
- Insuperable Problems
- It Is Never Too Early to Teach a Future King
- Japanese Clans as Primary Social Unit
- Justice with Common Sense
- A King Expects To Be Followed
- Kings Depended Upon Their Queens
- Kings Glorify State Gods by Conquering
- Landlords Were The Elite of the Preindustrial Elites
- Less a State Than an Estate
- Libraries as Vessels of Political Power
- Machiavelli on Princedoms
- Medieval English Currency
- Medieval People Were Particularly Vulnerable to Weather
- Men Who Lived Deeper in the Shadows
- Mnhei’sahe
- A Model For Anti-Prince
- Modern Secrecy of the Papal Election
- Monastic Hospitality for Aristocratic Patrons
- Money in Elizabethan England
- Money in Medieval England and France
- Money in Ptolemaic Egypt
- A More Varied Diet Means a Healthier Population
- Negoro-ji Temple and Its Warrior Monks
- Noble Retainers, Common-born Servitors, and Peasant Servants
- Of Its Kind, the Last
- Only Gentlemen Had Honor
- Only the Most Devious and Adept Players Survived
- Origins of European Feudalism
- Ottoman Nobility: Pashas, Begs, and Beglierbegs
- Parthian Feudalism
- Patience Means Restraining Yourself
- Patriarchal Olympian Dominance
- Patronage Was the Traditional Princely Activity
- Perhaps One In Six People Were Technically a Clergyman
- A Period In Which Politics Did Not Exist
- Perpetuated Monopolies of the Aristocracy
- The Persian Court
- Persian Spirit, Skill, and Resourcefulness
- Personal Honor As Instrument of Social Control
- Pervasiveness of Warfare In Early States
- Princes and their Personal Realms
- Putting Aside the Hurt of the Past
- Rajadharma
- Reasonableness and Force
- The Rights-Based System of Medieval Society
- Rise and Fall of the Temple
- Roman Worldview
- A Royal Household Was Portable
- Seljuk Fiefs Were Not Hereditary
- Silver and Gold Coinage
- Slavery in the East
- Slavery in the Ottoman Empire
- Spectacle in the Ancient World
- Successors to the Caliphate in Muslim Spain
- Sumer Was About the Size of Belgium
- The Temptation of Anakin Skywalker
- Theme of a Warrior Culture
- Three Checks to Autocracy
- Three-Fold Root of Monarchy
- Three-Tier System of Administration for Military Orders
- To Argue With Your King
- Transporteer
- Trying to Win Wars by Half-Doing
- Walls of Uruk
- War As a Lawsuit Before the Gods
- We’d Take the World Apart If She Asked Us To
- A Weak King Was Not a King
- Written Language and Political Legitimacy
