Mongol rule in Rus′ was profound, especially in the administration of taxes and tribute, which were adapted to the traditions of Rus′ian princely governance. The thirteenth century was a “dark age” when Rus′ was subjected to severe Mongol attacks and tribute was imposed under the supervision of basqaqs. The Rus′ian church, however, was exempted from paying tribute. Through the bestowal of a yarligh, the Mongols designated the rulers of Rus′ian principalities, including the grand prince of Vladimir, titular head of the Rus′. The fourteenth century saw the rise of Moscow, as its princes gradually monopolized the collection of the tribute. By the first quarter of the fifteenth century, Mongol rule had weakened as the effects of plague, civil wars within the Golden Horde, Tamerlane’s attacks, and the fracturing of the Golden Horde into separate khanates took their toll. By 1480 and the Battle of the Ugra River, Mongol rule was effectively over.

A complete analysis of the fragmentary evidence for the Attalid fiscal system is presented, which aims to reveal those strategies of revenue seeking that were available to the kings after the territorial grant of the Settlement of Apameia. Generally, Pergamon’s direct taxes fell on communities, not landholders. The direct taxation of persons – poll taxes – seems to have been limited. The various forms of indirect taxation on movement, usage, and sale are analyzed, including the agoranomia of Toriaion. The personnel of tax collection in the Attalid kingdom are identified at two levels: the royal bureaucracy and the local tax farmers, who purchased tax contracts from polis authorities. Royal tax farmers as such did not exist. An assessment of taxation levels is offered. What becomes clear are the practical limits and enduring ideological framework within which the post-188 BCE Attalids attempted to expand revenues by deepening the incidence rather than the scope of taxation.

In 2018, Lauren Alaina released her single “Ladies in the ’90s,” which takes a nostalgic look at her childhood through cleverly chosen lyrics from chart-topping songs of the 1990s. “Ladies in the ’90s” references women—and only women—from country music, as well as pop, rock, and R&B. The song establishes Lauren Alaina’s broad musical lineage and evokes nostalgia for an earlier decade. This chapter explores the performative and affective use of nostalgia and lineage in country music. A close reading of “Ladies in the ’90s” reveals how the generation of country artists coming of age in the second decade of the twenty-first century are redefining and expanding the stylistic, cultural, and even racial boundaries of the genre through the nostalgic tropes that have been used for decades in country music. In so doing, artists like Lauren Alaina are challenging the industry and carving out new musical and narrative spaces.

This chapter reviews the evidence from the Greek world for tribute and taxation. It begins with some comparative considerations about tributary regimes and the impact of Achaemenid imperialism on the fiscal development of the Greek city-states, including the Delian League and the Hellenistic kingdoms. The transition from tribute to taxation is cast as a significant indicator of state formation. A fundamental theme in ancient Greek taxation is the relationship between coercion and consent, especially how political institutions facilitate the sharing of communal burdens by the rich. Extraordinary levies on property and persons were a common feature of city-states, which Macedon and the Hellenistic kingdoms also adopted. Finally, the chapter treats indirect taxes, which are thought to provide a much larger and more regular portion of state revenue in the Greek world.

A complete analysis of the fragmentary evidence for the Attalid fiscal system is presented, which aims to reveal those strategies of revenue seeking that were available to the kings after the territorial grant of the Settlement of Apameia. Generally, Pergamon’s direct taxes fell on communities, not landholders. The direct taxation of persons – poll taxes – seems to have been limited. The various forms of indirect taxation on movement, usage, and sale are analyzed, including the agoranomia of Toriaion. The personnel of tax collection in the Attalid kingdom are identified at two levels: the royal bureaucracy and the local tax farmers, who purchased tax contracts from polis authorities. Royal tax farmers as such did not exist. An assessment of taxation levels is offered. What becomes clear are the practical limits and enduring ideological framework within which the post-188 BCE Attalids attempted to expand revenues by deepening the incidence rather than the scope of taxation.

Foreign trade always mattered in imperial China. Especially during the middle period and early modern times, China experienced enormous growth and expansion of foreign trade. According to Confucian concepts, merchants belonged to the lowest echelon of society; agriculture, not trade, was considered the basis of a stable state and society. Most Chinese governments indeed sought to maintain more or less strict control over foreign commerce and those who were responsible for it. But one has to emphasize the co-operative rather than antagonistic relationship with markets and with the merchant class during most of China’s imperial history. In addition, we can observe certain characteristics and qualitative changes throughout the centuries.

The fourth chapter reconstructs the population history of the Nahua community in Xochimilco for the entirety of the colonial period. Having established the timing, rate, and extent of demographic change, the chapter traces the implications of population decline for social relations. The chapter argues that epidemics and subsequent interventions by the government in the tribute system, incomplete and unsuccessful though they were, represented an assertion of royal authority, one that provided opportunities for Nahua nobles and commoners to contest and renegotiate their relationships with each other and with the colonial administration. These changes proved to be especially threatening to the nobility. In response, the dynastic rulers sought to reassert their own political power within the altepetl, although their success owed much to the efforts of noblewomen in securing and harnessing economic assets to their families’ advantage. They also contracted valuable strategic marriage alliances that bolstered, if only temporarily, their families’ positions in the face of so much loss of life.

Against the common view that the creation of obligations through generosity in gift-giving and hospitality is a pervasive feature of the Homeric world and an antecedent of the classical and later culture of euergetism and benefactions, a survey of the epic evidence shows that this type of generosity is in effect confined to ‘international’ relations. Within Homeric communities, ‘gifts’ are almost always forms of payment for services rendered or tributes to those of higher status, and the flow of wealth is from the community to the elite more than vice-versa. The origins of public benefactions therefore do not lie in a culture of gift-giving but in an ideology of ‘public service’ owed by the elite to the community. In Homer, such service is ideally performed in war, counsel and the administration of justice, but as political and military changes reduced the scope for elite performance in these arenas while public spending needs increased during the archaic period, the community increasingly came to expect financial services instead from the elite.

The fourth chapter focuses on two different ways of “reading” the landscape of the northwestern Himalaya. The first evolved from the surveying and road-building practices discussed in Chapters 2 and 3: practices which resulted in an increasingly standardized body of environmental knowledge that was widely circulated through gazetteers, route books, and intelligence reports. But there is also a second way of reading the Himalayan landscape: one that emerged from earlier precolonial modes of seeing, discussed in Chapter 1. Jurisdictional problems between the imperial state and its Himalayan frontier–including disputes over taxation, water rights, territory, and grazing rights–produced deep uncertainty about the limits of frontier locales. In fact, the main challenge to the imperial vision of the would-be border came from an unlikely source: pashmina goats. By illustrating the emergence of a geographical episteme illustrated in gazetteers and other official publications, I show how information about borders, terrain, and geographical features became a necessary prerequisite for understanding political territory. This episteme, I argue, reveals the slow emergence of geopolitical thinking. But the utility of this form of thinking was consistently undermined by the multiple modes through which indigenous groups conceived of the space around them.

Between 643 and 668 CE, East Asia was engulfed by a war that drew in nearly every state in the region. During the preceding centuries, peripheral states used tribute and investiture relations to balance competing Chinese empires against each other, but the unification of China under the Sui disrupted this strategy. As tension emerged between Koguryŏ and the Chinese empires, Silla and Paekche repeatedly sought to advance their interests by drawing the Sui and Tang into conflicts on the Korean peninsula. The result was a massive reconfiguration of the region: Paekche and Koguryŏ were destroyed, Silla consolidated control of the Korean peninsula, and Yamato entered a period of rapid centralization, while the Tang retreated. These events demand our attention because they offer insight into the flexibility of East Asian tribute and investiture relations, which shifted but endured throughout this period of extreme volatility.

Having assembled a sizeable dataset in Part II, we now move forward in Part III to its analysis, synthesis, and conceptualisation. Multi-faceted problems invite cross-disciplinary approaches, and Part III engages in methodological and theoretical pluralism as it seeks ways to bring anthropology and history into a closer communion. At various junctures in this volume I have emphasised the importance of looking at the Classic Maya less as a series of separate polities than as a unified political culture. We have reached the point where that assertion needs to be more fully explored and its implications fleshed out.