acase@tulane.edu / Scholarship on premodern ruling elites tends to minimize the complexity of ancient politics and to focus on the decisions of individual kings and their charismatic swaying of entire populations. This dissertation departs from this tendency by investigating the exercise of power by the governments of premodern complex societies, or how ancient politicians organized their institutions. I argue the politics of ancient civilizations may best be studied by focussing on their regime: the political community which coalesced when rulers assembled their allies within the seat of government. This approach emphasizes practices of communication between a ruling body and its political network, as reflected by the exchange of information and goods. Among premodern complex societies ruled by divine kingship, the regime is best described as a royal court, whose architectural institution corresponds to a regal palace. In order to address this anthropological political model, I examine the multi-dimensional archaeological record of the regal palace of La Corona, a small polity of northwest Guatemala that emerged during the Classic Period of Maya civilization (AD 250-950). I rely on an assemblage of complementary datasets – architecture, macro-artifacts, hieroglyphic monuments, micro-artifacts, geochemical elements, and macro-botanical remains – to study how the La Corona royal court exercised political power. I study the last three construction phases of the north section of the La Corona regal palace and their two-century-long occupation to address a set of pragmatic questions. By examining residences, political stages, passageways, administrative space, ancillary buildings, and middens, I seek to understand how Classic Maya politicians relied on economic and ritualized exchanges to effectively manage their regime. In addition, thanks to the rich historical record of La Corona and to a fine-tuned architectural sequence, I explore how the changing historical and geopolitical contexts of this polity transformed its government. Through this rich diachronic empirical case-study, I build upon and contribute to an anthropological archaeology of politics, to ancient political economy, and to Classic Maya historical archaeology. In addition, I wish to highlight why the study of ancient politics may be relevant for us today, and perhaps, our near future. / 1 / Maxime Lamoureux-St-Hilaire

Ph.D., Faculty of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, 2000.

Frank Dobbins in memoriam In 1976 Louise Litterick proposed that Cambridge, Magdalene College, Pepys Library MS 1760 was originally prepared for Louis XII and Anne of Brittany of France but was gifted to Henry VIII of England in 1509. That the manuscript actually was prepared as a wedding gift from Louis to his third wife Mary Tudor in 1514, however, is indicated by its decorative and textual imagery, which mirrors the decoration of a book of hours given by Louis to Mary and the textual imagery used in her four royal entries. Analysis of the manuscript’s tabula and texts suggests that MS 1760 was planned by Louis’s chapelmaster Hilaire Bernonneau (d. 1524) at the king’s behest. The new theory elucidates the content and significance of Gascongne’s twelve-voice canon Ista est speciosa, which appeared beneath an original portrait of Mary Tudor and was intended to mirror the perfection of the Blessed Virgin and her ‘godchild’ Mary.

Louis XIII's reign has long garnered historians' and popular interest. The king of Cardinal Richelieu and the three musketeers, Louis is traditionally viewed as having presided over the development of the French state and facilitated the rise of absolutism. Yet his court has received comparatively little attention. Traditionally understood as the reflection of its master, Louis XIII's court has been assumed to be backwards and inconsequential. On the contrary, this thesis contends that Louis's court experienced substantial institutional development and expansion over the course of his rule. Neither Louis nor Richelieu was the principal instigator of this growth. The main drivers were the courtiers themselves who sought to expand their prerogatives and to find new ways of profiting from their offices. The changes that were initiated from the top down were not determined by a broad, sweeping agenda held by Louis or his minister-favourites but rather by immediate needs and contingencies. Cardinal Richelieu, nonetheless, recognised that Louis's court really mattered for high politics in this period: the royal households produced key players for the governance of the realm, either gravitating from court office to broader governmental office, or holding both simultaneously. Furthermore, Louis's court helped to bind the realm together, not just because it acted as a hub attracting people from the provinces but also because of the time it spent in the provinces. Richelieu, however, struggled to control this court — so vital to the direction of the French monarchy in this period — because its members were so active and vibrant. They shaped the cultural and social environment surrounding and associated with the court because they were heavily invested in the court as an institution. Indeed, the court did not only serve the needs of the monarch: courts could only operate because a large group of people had a stake in ensuring that they functioned. By establishing the importance of Louis XIII's court for the direction of the French monarchy, and his courtiers' role in moulding it, this thesis seeks to throw light on humans' fundamental relationship with power.

This thesis studies the debts and claims of court servants in Stockholm from 1688 to 1708 as a case study of early credit markets, exploring the transition from pre-modern informal systems based on personal trust and peer-to-peer lending to modern institutional banking. The thesis shows that the court servants were prominent moneylenders with relatively little debt and argues that these characteristics were by influenced their greater access to cash through their wages from the court. Furthermore, institutional banking and formal credit instruments are shown to have been frequently used by court servants at the turn of the 18th century, bringing nuance the idea of linear progress from traditional systems of credit to modern banking.

De manière contradictoire, les maîtresses royales ont fait l’objet de nombreuses productions (historiques, littéraires, audiovisuelles et même musicales), mais dont la portée scientifique s’avère le plus souvent limitée. Ce travail se propose de remédier à cette lacune, en se focalisant sur une période politique charnière : les règnes des premiers rois Bourbons, d’Henri IV à Louis XIV. L’objectif est de comprendre comment, autant dans le fonctionnement de la machine monarchique qu’à travers les dynamiques inhérentes à la société nobiliaire, se construit et se déploie la faveur lorsqu’elle s’applique aux femmes et implique, donc, à la fois des limites et des ouvertures propres à cette dimension genrée. Pour mener à bien ce projet, plusieurs échelles d’analyse, sociales et chronologiques, seront adoptées. Il sera d’abord question de la maîtresse elle-même, et donc de la période de la faveur, de l’inclination à la distinction, pour saisir comment évoluent position sociale et fortune. Ensuite, sera considérée une temporalité plus longue, allant jusqu’au décès de ces dames, afin d’explorer leur action sur les différentes composantes sociales auxquelles elles se rattachent : parents, enfants, protégés et établissements religieux (entre autres). Enfin, sera prise en compte une chronologie plus vaste, correspondant au temps généalogique des maisons nobles, pour observer l’articulation entre passé familial, faveur féminine ponctuelle et devenir sur le long terme. / Contradictorily, royal mistresses are at the heart of many productions (history, literature, films and even music), but few of them have a real scientific significance. This thesis tries to fill this gap, focusing on a transition period in French history: the reigns of first Bourbon kings, Henri IV, Louis XIII and Louis XIV. The aim is to understand how, within the royal machine as much as within the aristocratic society, favour works and spreads out, especially when it concerns women and implies both limits and openings, proper to this gender dimension.To do so, social and chronological analysis scales have been chosen. First, I will focus on the royal mistress herself – and thus on the favour time, from attraction to distinction –, in order to grasp how social position and fortune develop. Then, I will study a longer temporality, going until the death of the protagonists, to examine their action on groups and individuals to who they are closely linked: kin, descendants, protégés and convents, in particular. Finally, I will look at an extensive chronology, that fits genealogical time of nobility, with the aim of observing the links between family past, temporary favour and long-term future.

Rachel Corrie was a young American woman who died at the age of twenty-three in Gaza in 2003. She was killed when an Israeli Occupation Force bulldozer ran over her while she was defending a Palestinian house from demolition. Her martyr's death, combined with the force of her descriptions of her experiences as an activist in Palestine, not only provoked response from other activists; it became material for a number of theatrical projects, among them productions by the Royal Court Theatre in London, Bread and Puppet Theatre in the US, and in a production I recently wrote and directed here in New Zealand. This thesis considers the example of Rachel Corrie's activism in Palestine and the theatrical performances it engendered in order to examine the role of theatre in and as an activist project. The theatre is an important component of the ongoing movement for social change. It assembles temporary communities and it portrays issues in ways that are both accessible and open to debate. But theatricality is just as often a key component of activist actions outside the theatre building: in street performances and demonstrations, and also in the way some activists can be seen to pursue their political objectives on a daily basis. Finally, the theatre is a material act of production which can challenge the dominant model of production and thus has the potential to be become an activist project as itself. As a result of my analyses of this material, I hope to provide a framework of understanding both for myself and others, of the likely role of theatre in and as an activist project, and this understanding will be of assistance in the cultural task of shifting beliefs in the movement for social change. The key theorists used in this thesis are Walter Benjamin and Raymond Williams.

The life of Joanna of Rožmitál (Rosenthal), who is mainly known as the wife of George of Poděbrady, was much more diverse and richer, than it could seem at first view. Being a noblewoman from a Catholic family, she married a "Calixtine."During her relatively short life, she managed to promote the succession of Jagiellonians to the throne, to participate in provincial diets, to resolve conflicts between Catholic and Calixtine noblemen and, after the death of her husband, to hold the highest office in the state. On the basis of extant sources and narrative literature I will try reconstructing Joanna's life, her court and heir governance along George's side and also after his death. Among other targets, the work will try to portray the life of a medieval noblewomen in a rather uneasy period.

This thesis discusses the personal composition of the Court of King Ladislav Pohrobek from the year 1452 until Ladislav's death in November 1457. The period of ruling of the last member of albert's line of the Habsburg dynasty has been treated mainly as a stage of political history of the 15. century, and emphasis was placed on the acts of the provincial administrator Jiří z Poděbrad. Preferably on the basis of the diplomatic work of the material, trying to assemble portraits of courtiers of the Czech Crown lands and both Austria and put them into a broader historical framework. The Royal Court and its components, in the case of the young King did not exceed in the late medieval manners. In addition to court officials a large group of people were members of the Royal Council. An important institution and instrument of the King's Government was the Royal Council, which was indispensable and whose staff traveled with the monarch. Low age of Ladislav allowed several of the King's counselors to get a strong influence on the King's personality, from which they could benefit in its favor at the expense of the monarch. These create a power factions, which were competing for the Ladislav's trust. The situation was complicated not only by the King's inexperience, but also by national and estates problems....

Diploma thesis Power of the First Generations of the Ronov Noble Family and Their Position Within Czech Mediaeval Society was dealing with the position and power of the first three generations of the representatives of Ronov noblemen in the direct line towards Hynek from Dubá. In the prosopographical part of the thesis the lines of testimony were analysed and these proved clearly that the maximum of their court career was occurring during the reign of Wenceslaus the First. This maximum is also reflected in the other part of the thesis - which is the analysis of possession- holding. At the age of Wenceslaus the First Ronov noblemen built up a vast area of their particular possessions in Northern Bohemia and gradually they were developing colonisation of this region. Even though Ronov noble family did not take up any posts at the court, the exception is the position of Budysin administrator, they created a very tight connection to Premyslid kings due to the common childhood with Wenceslaus the First and they also supported him politically and also militarily in his inner and foreign policy. After the death of Castoslov from Zitava the position of power in the direct family line began to deteriorate, the peak of power was now for Lichtenburg family. The minimum of the court career comes after their left the...