This article analyzes the special historical characteristics of prefecture-level regional financial administration during the latter half of the Tang Dynasty, which had as its primary revenue source the twice-a-year tax legally established in 780. Prefectural financial administration during this period consisted of three components: the portion of the twice-a-year tax retained by prefectures (liuzhou), “money for public use” (gongyongqian), and the ever-normal and charity granaries (changping yicang). Each of these elements made its appearance at separate times from the Northern Wei to the Sui. Following the establishment of the twice-a-year tax law, they became consolidated as components of prefectural financial administration at the beginning of the ninth century. At the same time, these components of prefectural financial administration became subject to the control of the central government, especially with regard to the “money for public use,” the section over which prefectures exercised the broadest discretion. In the early Northern Song, at the end of the tenth century, all revenue sources (beyond those used to meet obligatory expenses such as the stipends of bureaucrats) came to be retrieved by the central government, and prefectural financial administration came to be placed directly under central control.

Analyzing the messages and the responses that Chinggis Khan sent to and received from Ong Khan and his allies after his defeat at the hands of the latter at the battle of Qalaqaljit Elet in the spring of 1203, and explicating the terms of cimar (chimar) and törü that appear in the messages, this article looks at the political order and culture where the Chinggisid state rose. The article argues that pre-modern Mongolian and Inner Asian politics was guided by the idea of törü, which resembles the Indo-Buddhist idea of dharma, the Chinese idea of dao, and the European idea of natural law. It also argues that the hereditary divisional system that the Inner Asian state builders regularly employed to govern their nomadic populations, the institutions of dynastic succession, and the hereditary rights of princes and the nobility for inheritance fundamentally structured Inner Asian politics. Hence, it questions the conventional wisdom that depicts pre-modern Inner Asian politics not only as pragmatic, fluid, and fractious but also dependent on the personal charisma of leadership, and the personal bond and loyalty between leaders and followers, as if it were lacking enduring social, political institutions and order.

This article focuses on the mobile peoples who engaged in piracy on the borders beyond the territories negotiated by the imperial Chinese and colonial Spanish and Dutch powers, and by doing so, reframe our perception of early modern imperial and maritime history. In pre-modern times, the control of territory within the administrative borders was incomplete, and small pockets of territories with porous borders were beyond governmental rule. The people and the groups that lived along the coast of the northeastern South China Sea were, at different times, recognized differently and many of their activities were at times sanctioned and at other times outlawed. This article reveals a facet of how the non-stateless peoples lived on the borders beyond, claimed their own order in their own way, and worked and became naturalized or classified inside the strengthening borders in pre-modern societies according to the agenda and discourses of the dominant powers. I argue that the coastal societies had their own “order” that created groups “beyond control” or “being registered gradually.”