Servants of the Dynasty: Palace Women in World History

Anne Walthall

University of California Press, 2008 - History - 381 pages

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.

Contents

• Introducing Palace Women: 1
• 1 Women and the Performance of Powerin Early Modern Southeast Asia: 22
• 2 Women in Classic Maya Royal Courts: 45
• 3 Women and Power at the Byzantine Court: 65
• Ottoman Royal Women and the Exercise of Power: 81
• 5 Mughal Palace Women: 96
• Women and Seclusion at the Royal Courtof Benin Nigeria: 115
• Empresses Concubines and Aisin Gioro Daughters: 137
• 8 The Royal Women of Ivan IVs Family and the Meaning of Forced Tonsure: 172
• 10 Women of Versailles 16821789: 191
• Women and Weaving in Aztec Palaces and Colonial Mexico: 215
• 12 Women Royalty and Indigo Dyeing in Northern Nigeria circa 15001807: 232
• 13 Gender and Entertainment at the Song Court: 261
• The Anonymity of Texts and the Historicity of Subjects: 280
• The Case of Queen MarieAmélie: 299
• Bibliography: 327
• List of Contributors: 359
• Index: 363

About the author

Anne Walthall is Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine. She is author of Japan: A Cultural, Social, and Political History and The Weak Body of a Useless Woman: Matsuo Taseko and the Meiji Restoration, among other books.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Servants of the Dynasty: Palace Women in World History; Volume 7 of California world history library; “An” Ahmanson foundation book in the humanities
• Editor: Anne Walthall
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: University of California Press, 2008
• ISBN: 0520254449, 9780520254442
• Length: 381 pages
• Subjects: History / World; Political Science / Globalization; Social Science / Women's Studies