Women’s Movements and Challenges to Neopatrimonial Rule: Preliminary Observations from Africa

Women’s movements in Africa represent one of the key societal forces challenging state clientelistic practices, the politicization of communal differences, and personalized rule. In the 1980s and 1990s we have witnessed not only the demise of patronage‐based women’s wings that were tied to ruling parties, but also the concurrent growth of independent women’s organizations with more far‐reaching agendas. The emergence of such autonomous organizations has been a consequence of the loss of state legitimacy, the opening‐up of political space, economic crisis, and the shrinking of state resources. Drawing on examples from Africa, this article shows why independent women’s organizations and movements have often been well situated to challenge clientelistic practices tied to the state. Gendered divisions of labour, gendered organizational modes and the general exclusion of women from both formal and informal political arenas have defined women’s relationship to the state, to power, and to patronage. These characteristics have, on occasion, put women’s movements in a position to challenge various state‐linked patronage practices. The article explores some of the implications of these challenges.     

On the Uniformity of Design and Purpose,in the Works and Customs of the Earliest Settlers in Britain,Evidenced by Comparative Archaeology

Abstract

Within the building and grounds of the Bell Inn, Alveley (Shropshire) there is preserved a group of sculptures, the style of which is unmistakably that of the Herefordshire School. Thought to derive from a 12th-century church in Alveley, the group is the product of at least two hands and includes zoomorphic interlace and other interlace, together with figural scenes of ‘Samson and the Lion’, ‘St Michael and a Serpent’, and a ‘Man in Foliage’. The sculpture is indicative of a lavish decorative scheme at Alveley, in a style that was vigorous, striking and readily associated with the needs of seigneurial patronage.

The sculpture may be dated to the period 1155-early 1160s, a chronology determined not only by stylistic comparisons, but also independently by a detailed examination of the patronage context. In the discussion of the patronage, Guy Lestrange, sheriff of Shropshire, is identified as the likely patron, and as being fairly typical of the kind of patron who generally supported the work of the School. It is further argued that the role of aristocratic affinities in artistic patronage has been over-emphasised and that, as in other aspects of aristocratic activity, neighbourhood was a more influential factor.     

Patronage revisited: The dynamics of information and reputation

Recent revelations of corruption in Italy have encouraged speculation about its social foundations. This article addresses the specific issue of the relations between patronage and corruption, drawing attention to their common basis in control over the circulation of information. Examination of patronage from this perspective suggests some weaknesses in the conventional accounts of its distribution, organization and consequences. Since bureaucracies are the principal modern agencies for the collection and storage of information, changes in the relations between and within bureaucracies, political and administrative, can be expected to provoke changes in the structure and stability of patronage networks. That dynamic of patronage, shifting its basis from status to contract, is illustrated in the context of Italian politics in the 1980s.     

Does Patronage Still Drive Politics for the Rural Poor in the Developing World? A Comparative Perspective from the Livestock Sector

Is the analysis of patron–client networks still important to the understanding of developing country politics or has it now been overtaken by a focus on ‘social capital’? Drawing on seventeen country studies of the political environment for livestock policy in poor countries, this article concludes that although the nature of patronage has changed significantly, it remains highly relevant to the ways peasant interests are treated. Peasant populations were found either to have no clear connection to their political leaders or to be controlled by political clientage. Furthermore, communities ‘free’ of patron–client ties to the centre generally are not better represented by political associations but instead receive fewer benefits from the state. Nonetheless, patterns of clientage are different from what they were forty years ago. First, patronage chains today often have a global reach, through trade, bilateral donor governments and international NGOs. Second, the resources that fuel political clientage today are less monopolistic and less adequate to the task of purchasing peasant political loyalty. Thus the bonds of patronage are less tight than they were historically. Third, it follows from the preceding point and the greater diversity of patrons operating today that elite conflicts are much more likely to create spaces in which peasant interests can eventually be aggregated into autonomous associations with independent political significance in the national polity. NGOs are playing an important role in opening up this political space although at the moment, they most often act like a new type of patron.     

Reconsidering reputation through patronage: Cardinal Napoleone Orsini and Angelo Clareno at the Avignonese papal court

The changeable politics of Cardinal Napoleone Orsini (c.1262/3–1342), negotiator and pope-maker, have been explained for over a century as the expression of his independent character and antagonistic relationships. Significant moments in his early career are interpreted as deliberate opposition to his own family's policies. This generalisation does his political acumen and familial loyalty a disservice. In particular, the rationale for his political decisions has previously been relied upon in explanations for his support of the Spiritual Franciscans, reformers and sometime separatists within the Franciscan Order. The cardinal's impact on the group has likewise been understated, as scholars have largely focused on their spokesmen's intellectual output, with limited investigation of the political support that enabled their survival. Orsini was connected to the group's spokesmen at the papal court at Avignon, including the prolific author Angelo Clareno (c.1250–c.1337). Close examination of Clareno's letters allows for a reinterpretation of the relationship. Orsini family documents reframe the relationship as part of an established familial tradition of Franciscan patronage. In this larger picture, the impetus for the cardinal's idiosyncratic patronage of the Spirituals becomes, instead, a small strand in the much larger network of familial obligations and patronage responsibilities. This also sheds further light on the fourteenth-century papal curia.     

The founding of the Edinburgh medical school

This article seeks to show that the usual accounts of the founding of the Edinburgh Medical Faculty in 1726 give undue prominence to John Monro, an Edinburgh surgeon, and to George Drummond, later Lord Provost of Edinburgh. They do so because their authors have ignored the ways in which patronage appointments, such as medical professorships, were and had been dispensed in the city of Edinburgh and in its university. There the Town Council was only nominally independent when it came to making professors. Medical historians have been equally cavalier in their treatment of the roles of leading politicians, especially of Archibald Campbell, first Earl of Ilay and later third Duke of Argyll, who was the most important Scottish politician working between c. 1716 and his death inl 1761. A more realistic view of the history of Scottish medicine would not ignore the realities of politics and the relation of these to institutions, such as the Edinburgh Medical Faculty.     

The Life and Career of Sir William Plumpton from 1404 to 1480

Abstract

Plumpton, an ardent Lancastrian, received protection and patronage from the Percies and was loyal to them throughout his life. He enjoyed exceptional local power from 1438 to 1460 as steward of the Honour of Knaresborough. He served as a JP, an MP, sheriff, and steward of Northumberland's Spofforth and other estates in Yorkshire, as well as overseeing his own lands in four counties. Detailed study of the Knaresborough court rolls and Duchy of Lancaster records led to a re-examination of the dating and interpretation of his officeholding and career, particularly in the 1460s and 1470s. He did not regain the stewardship in 1460s, as was believed, but was re-instated in 1471; he was replaced within a few years, probably because of corruption. Principal officeholders at Knaresborough, 1438–1500, are listed, and further unpublished material includes cases which the litigious Plumpton initiated in King's Bench from 1461. His attitudes, often cheating and ruthless, to friends and family, are examined, and his career compared with those of other members of the gentry; Plumpton's status is examined, this being aided by the findings from a rare unpublished fifteenth-century subsidy roll.     

Music,antiquity and self-fashioning in the Accademia dei Lincei

The members of the Accademia dei Lincei are known chiefly for their achievements in early modern science, most notably supporting and funding Galileo’s projects. Their investigations of the natural world using both microscope and telescope were ground breaking, but potentially heretical. This article investigates aspects of their interest in the music of antiquity and its place in early modern Rome and Naples, presenting Fabio Colonna’s book La Sambuca lincea as a case study. The timing of the Lincean musical activities is juxtaposed with other significant events such as the injunctions against Galileo, throwing into relief some curious coincidences. The antique on the one hand evoked classical authority and was afforded due reverence, but could on the other, also provide the means of fashioning an outward identity different from internal intent. It will be suggested that elements of this antiquarian heritage are reflected in the patronage and cultural politics of the Accademia dei Lincei, whose participation in musica erudita, as evidenced in the work of Colonna, may have been part of a tacit display of corporate self-fashioning.     

James Arbuckle and Dean Swift: cultural politics in the Irish confessional state

James Arbuckle, born a Presbyterian in Belfast, educated at Glasgow University, moved to Dublin under the patronage of the radical Whig Viscount Molesworth. He arrived at the time of Swift's triumph as ‘The Drapier’. Writing under the name ‘Hibernicus’, he produced a series of essays in the style of Addison's Spectator (1725–26). They can be read as a ‘polite’ Whig critique of Swift's Irish writing, particularly on confessional division. Arbuckle was clearly identified as a political opponent of Swift in a series of lampoons from Swift's circle. He wrote more incisively against the confessional state in his 1729 work The Tribune, lost to historians because of a mistaken attribution to Swift's friend Delany. This article will study Arbuckle's critique of Swift, aiming to give an insight into cultural conflict, both Whig/Tory and Anglican/Presbyterian in a period when both Whig and Presbyterian views have generally been overlooked.     

The Shifting Fortunes of War: Patronage of the Wurttemberg Hofkapelle during the Thirty Years War

German courts have long been renowned for their support of music.How long could this support continue in times of war? This articleconsiders the fate of the Württemberg Hofkapelle duringthe Thirty Years War (1618-48), a conflict that forced manydistinguished Hofkapellen to close their doors for much of thewar's duration. The Hofkapelle (literally ‘court chapel’or music ensemble) was the focus of much music patronage atearly modern German courts, and typically consisted of an orchestraof strings, horns, and percussion, as well as adult male singersand a boys’ choir. Based on an analysis of church councilaccounts that list all expenditure for court music throughoutthe war, the article asserts that demand for music during religiousservices under both Protestant and Catholic control of the duchyremained relatively constant. This demand enabled the Hofkapelleto continue musical performances, despite the enormous constraintsthe war placed on court expenditure. Music patronage was significant in several ways. Payment forperformers and composers could be highly competitive among Germancourts, with the best musicians earning salaries often far exceedingthose of other officials. Foreign musicians were much in demandin Württemberg as elsewhere, such as English lutenist JohnPrice, who founded a group of English lutenists at the Württembergcourt in 1618 that lasted until the death of Duke Johann Friedricha decade later. While the hardship of wartime effectively endedthe payment of large salaries, forcing many top performers toleave, members of the court still called for music at church,even if they had to pay for performances themselves. A studyof music patronage during the Thirty Years War thus revealsnot only the extent to which the court sought to support thearts, but also how that support reflected the shifting fortunesof war.     

Poetry and Prayer: Women and Politics of Spiritual Relationships in the Early Twelfth Century

Writers such as the author of the Histoire , Richard of Devizes, Jordan Fantosme, earlier writers such as Orderic Vitalis and William of Malmesbury, or even the dubious Geoffrey of Monmouth, used gendered language to comment, criticise or alternatively applaud women's roles. Their views on women can be explained by the climate of clerical misogyny within which they wrote, their desire to please their patron and the convention of genre. There were many influences working on individual writers which can explain their views. William of Malmesbury was partisan to the Angevin cause; Orderic Vitalis wrote an ecclesiastical history which criticised the morals of secular society and castigated violently the enemies of the patrons of his monastery. The complex nature of the portrayals of both men and women therefore has to be studied in the light of such biases. Noblewomen participated in literary patronage, they inspired authors as models of virtue, were condemned for typically feminine vices, and as such exerted some influence over the shape of texts. They also commissioned texts, were connected with churchmen and such networks could be used for political purposes. Literary sources have been the subject of much theoretical discussion, yet they can be read alongside charters, the evidence of women's economic, administrative, religious patronage and individual initiative, which have in comparison been relatively neglected.     

Hydraulic patronage: A political ecology of the Turkey-Northern Cyprus water pipeline

From a political ecology perspective, I label hydraulic patronage the systemic provision of water resources by a patron state to a client territory. The mega-infrastructure of the Turkey-Northern Cyprus water pipeline is identified as an example of Turkish hydraulic patronage, combining the centralised determination of volumetric flows with a market-led distribution network configuring water allocation and management in the de facto (internationally unrecognised) state of Northern Cyprus. This patronage articulates a Turkish hydro-territorialisation at odds with an island-wide hydrosocial scaling performed by the Republic of Cyprus. Early opposition to the pipeline from municipalities in Northern Cyprus focused on their loss of rents from the licensing of water extraction, while pro-unification political parties objected to a potential spoiling effect on future peace talks with the Republic of Cyprus. Ecological criticisms of the pipeline from Turkish Cypriot civil society actors stressed the displacement of alternative development pathways, including sustainable water management. Hydraulic patronage highlights the duality of state-making and environment-making in the reproduction of contingent sovereignty, which is observable in de facto states and other client territories (e.g. occupied and annexed lands).     

Notice to contributors

In 1400 Guillaume l’Archevêque, the lord of Parthenay, commissioned the Roman de Parthenay (RP), a poetic ancestral romance affirming his family’s descent from Mélusine, the mythic fairy-serpentine matriarch of the Poitevin Lusignan dynasty. Prevailing scholarship holds that Guillaume’s commission was a political response to the earlier patronage of a prose Mélusine romance by Jean, duke of Berry, c. 1392. According to this view, Guillaume was an English partisan who sought to counter the French claims to Poitevin territories embedded in Berry’s romance with a text that proclaimed his own (and therefore English) rights to lands in central France. After exploring textual and historical evidence for this conventional view, the paper argues that clues to understanding Guillaume’s patronage lie in an analytical comparison of passages in the RP with the specific dynastic circumstances confronting l’Archevêque at the end of the fourteenth century. Examination of the romance in conjunction with evidence provided by feudal, financial, and legal sources suggests that Guillaume’s literary patronage was motivated not by contemporary affairs of state but by his anxieties about the imminent extinction of the Parthenay dynasty.     

Patronage and Professionalism: Manning a Transitional Empire, 1760–1870

While there is agreement that the Colonial Office continued to man an expanding empire in the nineteenth century by the technique of patronage, the reasons for the longevity of this practice, despite ‘reform’ of civil service recruitment in the early 1850s, have been little analysed. This article explores, from patronage records and private papers, the factors sustaining preferment in the gift of secretaries of state and their governors, rather than by resorting to examinations. Its conclusions are that the practice was associated with class status among senior civil servants, gradually mitigated by promotions from within colonial establishments. Patronage was burdensome to manage centrally and had to be devolved to governors, as colonial establishments expanded, creating a pool of talent among senior officials for secretaries of state to draw on. This trend is evident in establishment statistics from the late 1840s to1871. It supports the Colonial Office claim that the service was ‘professional’ according to its own criteria of learning through experience in political accommodation with local notables and dealing with emergencies. Thus, the department justified its opposition to competitive examinations for appointments overseas, while tolerating them for junior posts at home, and the practice survived till the end of the century and after.     

Rethinking Idris-i Bidlisi: An Iranian Bureaucrat and Historian between the Shah and the Sultan

A bureaucrat and historian of Iranian origin, Idris-i Bidlisi (b. Ray/Iran 1457–d. Istanbul 1520), is undoubtedly one of the most original and important intellectual figures in the Ottoman?Iranian borderland in the sixteenth century. He lived in a very turbulent period and established different relationships with Iranian and Ottoman dynasties at the end of the fifteenth century and at the beginning of the sixteenth century. He and his works have been the focus of long-standing historical debates in Turkey that have continued to the present day. Until now, most modern scholarly works on Bidlisi have failed to provide a proper, in-depth textual and historical analysis. As a result, such modern works have come to present a skewed, romanticized image of Bidlisi, largely detached from the nature and dynamics of the historical context in which Bidlisi lived and evolved as an intellectual and writer. This paper provides a realistic appraisal of Bidlisi and discusses the shortcomings of modern historiography on him. By looking at Bidlisi and his corpus, and more specifically at the ways in which the latter was shaped by Bidlisi’s patronage relationships, the paper aims to open up a window into Bidlisi’s evolving mindset and worldview. In other words, through an in-depth analysis of his corpus and new archival sources the paper strives to unveil the intellectual life and career of an Iranian bureaucrat and historian positioned between Ottoman?Iranian borderland and provide a glimpse into the nature of patronage in the sixteenth century.     

PTOLEMAIC CAMEOS OF THE SECOND AND FIRST CENTURIES BC

Cameos were devised some time in the Hellenistic period, and they were used in a decorative manner. In terms of style and subject matter they follow developments in the making of intaglios and other glyptic products as well as coinage. This paper examines two related series of cameos which seem to have been produced in Alexandria of the later Hellenistic period, and under direct Ptolemaic patronage. Their study is held in view of a reappraisal of the Tazza Farnese, and the presentation here of a further argument in support of this Grand Cameo's dating in the first century BC.     

Glastonbury Abbey: Archaeological Investigations 1904–79

Abstract

Netley Abbey began to attract visitors in the 18th century, of whom John Milner was amongst the first to leave an account of the ruins. Certain carvings he saw in the south transept led him to suppose that Richard Fox, bishop of Winchester (1501–28), had been a benefactor to the abbey church. Subsequent historians then followed Milner's supposition. This paper refutes Fox's patronage and reveals the true identity of the patron of Netley. It discusses the nature of the patron's gift to the abbey church and how his friendship with William Paulet, who was granted Netley after the Dissolution, preserved it. The article concludes by presenting details of some of the carved imagery from Netley that survives and other remains recorded in the 19th century which may have formed part of the final phase of building and ornamentation of the abbey church prior to its dissolution.     

Employment on the Priory of Durham Estates, 1494–1519: The Priory as an Employer

Abstract

This article argues that during the years in which he was Archbishop of York, 1514 to 1530, Thomas Wolsey monopolised the patronage of the city of York's governing institution. Unlike previous patrons, Wolsey's status as both the prelate of the archdiocese and the most prominent Crown minister and favourite of Henry VIII, gave him an unprecedented position in the city's quest for securing royal favour. The mayor and commonalty of York were not only aware of Wolsey's pre-eminent standing, but sought to exploit their perceived special connection with him for the city's economic benefit. It was York's governors who initiated and strived to maintain a continual patron-client relationship with Wolsey. In doing so, they deviated from the typical pattern of clientage among sixteenth-century urban governments by forsaking multiple ties with other local and regional notables. Brokers formed the channel through which patronage and clientage were transmitted. These were both men associated with Wolsey through archidiocesan administration and resident locally, and men situated in Wolsey's London household at York Place. By examining patronage and clientage in the context of the city's most pressing issues, this article sheds light on urban-Crown relations in the early Henrician period under Wolsey's supremacy.     

Progressive Patronage? Municipalities,NGOs, CBOs and the Limits to Slum Dwellers’ Empowerment

Efforts aimed at urban poverty reduction and service delivery improvement depend critically on slum dwellers’ collective agency. Adding to a long history of community participation approaches, there is a now growing incidence of so‐called ‘partnerships’ between municipal agencies, non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) and slum organizations. Such approaches require a fair representation of a majority of the poor by local community‐based organizations (CBOs), the potential and interest of both poor men and women to organize pro‐actively in collective action, and a CBO leadership that works for the common good. This article puts some key assumptions underlying grassroots‐based strategies under scrutiny. That relations amongst the urban poor are unequal and that they are divided in terms of income, gender and ethnicity has been well documented, but there has been less attention for the fact that the poor, facing conditions of scarcity and competition, rely on vertical relations of patronage and brokerage which may hinder or prevent horizontal mobilization. Rather than being vehicles of empowerment and change, CBOs and their leadership often block progress, controlling or capturing benefits aimed at the poor and misusing them for private (political) interests. Presenting evidence from community‐based projects in the slums of three large Indian cities, the article argues that municipal agencies, donors and NGOs cannot easily escape the logic of patronage and often themselves become part of a system of vertical dependency relations.