Workshop: “Towards a Theory of Responsive Regimes: Petition-and-Response Lawmaking and Bottom-Up State Formation, Antiquity-1700” by Adrian Masters, University of Texas at Austin

This article suggests that marginal, middling, and elite individuals and groups in ancien régime societies used petitions to prompt and phrase rulers' administrative and decrees. These petition-and-response systems lay at the heart of what I call responsive regimes, which had historical roots in Antiquity and by 1700 were the world's predominant political system. This article argues through primary and secondary source analysis that Ancient Rome and Egypt, the medieval Islamic and Christian states, and the early modern Mughals, Safavids, Ottomans, Italian states, the Vatican, and Spain, including the Spanish New World, among others, were responsive regimes. I then theorize the consequences of this constant bottom-up ruler-ruled communication, which forged far-flung communications networks, forced rulers to create responsive bureaucracies, gave rise to intermediaries to help the illiterate write letters and navigate court expectations, and created shared ruler-ruled discourses of justice. I also analyze how royal courts and their capital cities were not merely elite spaces but massive and extraordinarily cosmopolitan meeting points for petitioners seeking reforms and redress, and how petitioning engendered complex transculturation which had impacts back in the peripheries. Lastly, I ask how largely passive, responsive rulers might attempt to harness these petitions and achieve a more assertive form of statecraft.

Adrian Masters received his Ph.D. in Atlantic History from the University of Texas at Austin in 2018. His regional and chronological focus is the sixteenth century Spanish Empire, and his research interests include: state formation, the origins of imperial legislation, the emergence of 'racial' categories, and the power of politically marginal groups (including women and Indians) to shape the Empire from below. He has published in the Hispanic American Historical Review, and has a book contract with Harvard University Press for a monograph he is co-authoring with Dr. Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Alice Drysdale Sheffield Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Masters has received a Fulbright-García Robles Student Grant, a Geraldnie Styles Recruitment Fellowship, a UT Austin Continuing Fellowship, as well as other awards from Harvard and the John Carter Brown Library. He is an IHS Fellow this year.

Read more about Dr. Masters and his work at:
https://adrianmasters.academia.edu/

Responder:
Miriam Bodian
Professor of History, and 
Director, Institute for Historical Studies
The University of Texas at Austin
https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/history/faculty/mb35382

Free and open to the public. RSVP required. To RSVP and receive a copy of the pre-circulated paper, please email cmeador@austin.utexas.edu by 9 a.m., Friday, Sep. 21.

 

Sponsored by: Institute for Historical Studies in the Department of History; Center for European Studies

Monday, February 11, 2019 at 12:00pm to 1:30pm

Garrison Hall (GAR), 4.100
128 INNER CAMPUS DR , Austin, Texas 78705

Event Type

Academics, Arts & Humanities, Policy & Law, World & Culture

Departments

College of Liberal Arts

Target Audience

Students, Staff, Faculty, General Public

Website

https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/histor...

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