Based on a collaboration between historians of Chinese and European politics, Political Communication in Chinese and European History, 800-1600 offers a first comprehensive overview of current research on political communication in middle-period European and Chinese history. The chapters present new work on the sources and processes of political communication in European and Chinese history partly through juxtaposing and combining formerly separate historiographies and partly through direct comparison. Contrary to earlier comparative work on empires and state formation, which aimed to explain similarities and differences with encompassing models and new theories of divergence, the goal is to further conversations between historians by engaging regional historiographies from the bottom up.

Fourteenth Century England has quickly established for itself a deserved reputation for its scope and scholarship and for admirably filling a gap in the publication of medieval studies. HISTORY This collection represents the fruits of new research, by both established and young scholars, on the politics, society and culture of England and its dependencies in the fourteenth century. Drawing on a diverse range of documentary, literary and material evidence, the studies offer a range of methods, from micro-history and prosopography to the study of institutions, texts and events. The early fourteenth century provides a particular focus of interest, with studies contributing new reflections on the personnel of parliament, the household of Edward II, the politics of Edward III's minority, and reactions to the great famine of 1315-22 and the Black Death of 1348-9. The wars withScotland and France give the opportunity for significant new assessments of international diplomacy, the role of the mariner in the logistics of war, English loyalties in Gascony and the pious practices of medieval knights. Richlytextured with personal and local detail, these new studies provide numerous insights into the lives of great and small in this tumultuous period of medieval history. W. Mark Ormrod is Professor of Medieval History atthe University of York. Contributors: Benoit Grevin, Alison K. McHardy, J.S. Hamilton, Guilhem Pepin, Eliza Hartrich, Phil Bradford, J.S. Bothwell, Craig Lambert, Andrew Ayton, Graham St John, Christopher Phillpotts