Excerpts on Rulership
All works cited in this section can be found on the Works Cited page. Also read my Book Recommendations.
- Assyrian Bureaucracy
- Birth of the Caliphate
- Birth of the Persian Empire
- Breeding Ground of Honor
- Chiefdoms Are Powerful But Fragile
- Codex Books Supplant Scrolls
- Condottieri Usurpation of the Princely States
- Confucian Mandate of Heaven
- Damascus
- Decline of Medieval Iraq
- Fear Was the Fountainhead of Government Control
- Fiefs Were Measured By How Much Food They Produced
- Flirting with Deification
- A God of the State Not the People
- Hard Bargaining Was the Essence of the Lord-Vassal Relationship
- Heroic Code Says the Younger Generation Is Inferior
- 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
- Insuperable Problems
- Japanese Clans as Primary Social Unit
- Justice with Common Sense
- 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
- Monastic Hospitality for Aristocratic Patrons
- Money in Medieval England and France
- Money in Ptolemaic Egypt
- A More Varied Diet Means a Healthier Population
- Nobles Had Little To Do With Their Children
- Of Its Kind, the Last
- Only Gentlemen Had Honor
- Ottoman Nobility: Pashas, Begs, and Beglierbegs
- Parthian Feudalism
- Patriarchal Olympian Dominance
- Patronage Was the Traditional Princely Activity
- Perpetuated Monopolies of the Aristocracy
- The Persian Court
- Persian Spirit, Skill, and Resourcefulness
- Pervasiveness of Warfare In Early States
- Princes and their Personal Realms
- The Rights-Based System of Medieval Society
- Rise and Fall of the Temple
- Roman Worldview
- Seljuk Fiefs Were Not Hereditary
- Silver and Gold Coinage
- Slavery in the East
- Slavery in the Ottoman Empire
- Successors to the Caliphate in Muslim Spain
- 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
- War As a Lawsuit Before the Gods
- A Weak King Was Not a King
- Written Language and Political Legitimacy