Van Berkel Maaike, Duindam Jeroen (eds.) Prince, Pen, and Sword: Eurasian Perspectives

Brill, 2018. — 668 p.Prince, Pen, and Sword offers a synoptic interpretation of rulers and elites in Eurasia from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century. Four core chapters zoom in on the tensions and connections at court, on the nexus between rulers and religious authority, on the status, function, and self-perceptions of military and administrative elites respectively. Two additional concise chapters provide a focused analysis of the construction of specific dynasties (the Golden Horde and the Habsburgs) and narratives of kingship found in fiction throughout Eurasia. The contributors and editors, authorities in their fields, systematically bring together specialised literature on numerous Eurasian kingdoms and empires. This book is a careful and thought-provoking experiment in the global, comparative and connected history of rulers and elites.Maaike van Berkel, Ph.D. (2003), University of Amsterdam, is Professor of Medieval History at Radboud University in Nijmegen. She has published on communication, court culture, and urban organisation, including Crisis and Continuity at the Abbasid Court (2013).
Jeroen Duindam, Ph.D. (1992), Utrecht University, is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Leiden. He has published widely on courts, rulers, and dynasties, including Vienna and Versailles (2003) and Dynasties (2016).Notes on ContributorsRulers and Elites in Global History: Introductory Observations
Jeroen DuindamThe Court as a Meeting Point: Cohesion, Competition, Control
Jeroen DuindamNot of This World …? Religious Power and Imperial Rule in Eurasia, ca. Thirteenth – ca. Eighteenth Century
Peter RietbergenThe Warband in the Making of Eurasian Empires
Jos GommansThe People of the Pen: Self-Perceptions of Status and Role in the Administration of Empires and Polities
Maaike van BerkelThe Golden Horde, the Spanish Habsburg Monarchy, and the Construction of Ruling Dynasties
Marie Favereau Doumenjou and Liesbeth GeeversNarratives of Kingship in Fictional Literature
Richard van LeeuwenPrince, Pen, and Sword: Eurasian Perspectives
Jeroen Duindam