This issue includes “Bishops and Territory: The Case of Late Roman and Byzantine North Africa” (Anna Leone); “A Conflicted Heritage: The Byzantine Religious Establishment of a War Ethic” (J. A. McGuckin); “Hoards and Hoarding Patterns in the Early Byzantine Balkans” (Florin Curta and Andrei Gândilă); “Light, Color, and Visual Illusion in the Poetry of Venantius Fortunatus” (Michael Roberts); “At the Edge of Two Empires: The Economy of Cyprus between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (650s–800s CE)” (Luca Zavagno); “China, Byzantium, and the Shadow of the Steppe” (David A. Graff); “‘And So, with the Help of God’: The Byzantine Art of War in the Tenth Century” (Robert S. Nelson); “The Image of the Virgin Nursing (Galaktotrophousa) and a Unique Inscription on the Seals of Romanos, Metropolitan of Kyzikos” (John Cotsonis); “Marching across Anatolia: Medieval Logistics and Modeling the Mantzikert Campaign” (John Haldon with Vince Gaffney, Georgios Theodoropoulos, and Phil Murgatroyd); “The Moral Pieces by Theodore II Laskaris” (Dimiter G. Angelov); “Mary Magdalene between East and West: Cult and Image, Relics and Politics in the Late Thirteenth-Century Eastern Mediterranean” (Vassiliki A. Foskolou); “Byzantine Houses and Modern Fictions: Domesticating Mystras in 1930s Greece” (Kostis Kourelis); and “The White Monastery Federation Project: Survey and Mapping at the Monastery of Apa Shenoute (Dayr al-Anba Shinūda), Sohag, 2005–2007” (Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom and Elizabeth S. Bolman with Mohammed Abdel Rahim, Saad Mohammed, Dawn McCormack, Tomasz Herbich, Gillian Pyke, Louise Blanke, Tracy Musacchio, and Mohammed Khalifa).

This volume explores the relationship between culture and the military in Chinese society from early China to the Qing empire, with contributions by eminent scholars aiming to reexamine the relationship between military matters and law, government, historiography, art, philosophy, literature, and politics.

The book critically investigates the perception that, due to the influence of Confucianism, Chinese culture has systematically devalued military matters. There was nothing inherently pacifist about the Chinese governments’ views of war, and pragmatic approaches—even aggressive and expansionist projects—often prevailed.

Though it has changed in form, a military elite has existed in China from the beginning of its history, and military service included a large proportion of the population at any given time. Popular literature praised the martial ethos of fighting men. Civil officials attended constantly to military matters on the administrative and financial ends. The seven military classics produced in antiquity continued to be read even into the modern period.

These original essays explore the ways in which intellectual, civilian, and literary elements helped shape the nature of military institutions, theory, and the culture of war. This important contribution bridges two literatures, military and cultural, that seldom appear together in the study of China, and deepens our understanding of war and society in Chinese history.