Servants of the Dynasty

Anne Walthall

• Éditeur: University of California Press
• Année: 2008
• ISBN:
  9780520941519
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Histoire
• Sous-sujet: Histoire du monde

Mothers, wives, concubines, entertainers, attendants, officials, maids, drudges. By offering the first comparative view of the women who lived, worked, and served in royal courts around the globe, this work opens a new perspective on the monarchies that have dominated much of human history. Written by leading historians, anthropologists, and archeologists, these lively essays take us from Mayan states to twentieth-century Benin in Nigeria, to the palace of Japanese Shoguns, the Chinese Imperial courts, eighteenth-century Versailles, Mughal India, and beyond. Together they investigate how women's roles differed, how their roles changed over time, and how their histories can illuminate the structures of power and societies in which they lived. This work also furthers our understanding of how royal courts, created to project the authority of male rulers, maintained themselves through the reproductive and productive powers of women.

Table des matières

• CONTENTS
• List of Illustrations
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Introducing Palace Women
• 1. Women and the Performance of Powerin Early Modern Southeast Asia
• 2. Women in Classic Maya Royal Courts
• 3. Women and Power at the Byzantine Court
• 4. Beyond Harem Walls: Ottoman Royal Women and the Exercise of Power
• 5. Mughal Palace Women
• 6. Politics in an African Royal Harem: Women and Seclusion at the Royal Courtof Benin, Nigeria
• 7. Qing Imperial Women: Empresses, Concubines, and Aisin Gioro Daughters
• 8. The Royal Women of Ivan IV’s Family and the Meaning of Forced Tonsure
• 9. Servants of the Inner Quarters: The Women of the Shogun’s Great Interior
• 10. Women of Versailles, 1682–1789
• 11. Concubines and Cloth: Women and Weaving in Aztec Palaces and Colonial Mexico
• 12. Women, Royalty, and Indigo Dyeing in Northern Nigeria, circa 1500–1807
• 13. Gender and Entertainment at the Song Court
• 14. The Vanished Women of Korea: The Anonymity of Texts and the Historicity of Subjects
• 15. The Perils of the Sentimental Family for Royalty in Postrevolutionary France: The Case of Queen Marie-Amélie
• Bibliography
• List of Contributors
• Index