P. S. Barnwell examines the development of imperial and royal government in the western part of the Roman Empire and in the early "barbarian" kingdoms that were established within its frontiers - the Visigothic, Burgundian, Frankish, and Vandal nations. Covering the fifth century - the period from the death of the Emperor Theodosius to the death of the Emperor Justinian - Barnwell's book demonstrates the extent to which barbarian government was influenced by its Roman predecessor. Earlier studies have argued implicitly that the fifth century witnessed the disintegration of an ordered Roman governmental system and its replacement by a series of disorganized "Germanic" administrations. Barnwell, by contrast, examines Roman government of the fifth-century western Empire on its own terms, and then analyzes the administrations of individual Barbarian kingdoms in relation to this fifth-century Roman background. He shows that the law and government of the Barbarian kingdoms were more deeply indebted to Roman institutions than most previous historians have realized.

Scholars of the Middle Ages are familiar with the notion of text as an inscribed document, whether that inscription occurs upon stone, metal, vellum or textiles, but the concept of inscription and, therefore, of text, can be extended to cover a range of evidence. Thus, one might speak of archaeological remains, land use patterns, traditional stories, remnant practices and revenant beliefs as constituting texts in their own right. Broadly defined then, text is the means by which we engage with the historical subject. The medievalist, however, faces particular constraints in interpreting these texts through the agencies of their transmission. Questions such as who authored these texts, when and why, intersect with problems of transcription, translation and redaction to inform a complex discourse. The majority of the chapters in this book started life as papers presented at a conference entitled Text and Transmission in Early Medieval Europe and the title of this book ultimately derives from that theme. The subjects these chapters deal with range in geography from Ireland through to Byzantium, and cover almost a millennium of European history, but they are united in their effort to prise from their subjects some truths about texts, transmission and the critical literacies needed to interpret both.

This is the first full-length institutional study of the organization and functions of the Imperial Household Department under Ch'ing rule. That department constituted the emperor's 'personal bureaucracy.' In tracing the complex structure of this organization, Preston Torbert has avoided an exhaustive listing of nominal offices and their prescribed duties; instead, he has described the distinctive 'social groups' that made up the departments total personnel-the bondservants, the eunuchs, and the palace maids.