Part I. Introduction: 1. Empires, bureaucracy and the paradox of power Peter Crooks and Timothy H. Parsons; Part II. Empires and Bureaucracy in World-Historical Perspective: 2. China as a contrasting case: bureaucracy and empire in Song China Patricia Ebrey; 3. Conflict and cooperation between Arab rulers and Persian administrators in the formative period of Islamdom, c.600-950 CE I. T. Kristó-Nagy; 4. Bureaucracy without alphabetic writing: governing the Inca empire, c.1438-1532 Chris Given-Wilson; 5. The Ottoman empire (1299-1923): the bureaucratization of patrimonial authority Karen Barkey; Part III. From Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages: 6. 'The late Roman empire was before all things a bureaucratic state.' Michael Whitby; 7. Bureaucracies, elites and clans: the case of Byzantium, c.600-1100 John Haldon; 8. Charlemagne and Carolingian military administration Bernard S. Bachrach; 9. Bureaucracy, the English state and the crisis of the Angevin empire, 1199-1205 John Gillingham; 10. The parchment imperialists: texts, scribes, and the medieval western Empire, c.1250-c.1440 Len Scales; 11. Before Humpty Dumpty: the first English empire and the brittleness of bureaucracy, 1259-1453 Peter Crooks; Part IV. From the Age of European Expansion to the End of Empires: 12. Magistrates to administrators, composite monarchy to fiscal-military empire: empire and bureaucracy in the Spanish monarchy, c.1492-1825 Christopher Storrs; 13. Britain's overseas empire before 1780: overwhelmingly successful and bureaucratically challenged Jack P. Greene; 14. 'Les enfants du siècle': an empire of young professionals and the creation of bureaucratic, imperial ethos in Napoleonic Europe Michael Broers; 15. Bureaucracy, power and violence in colonial India: the role of Indian subalterns Deana Heath; 16. From chief to technocrat: labour and colonial authority in post-World War II Africa Frederick Cooper; 17. The unintended consequences of bureaucratic 'modernization' in post-World War II British Africa Timothy H. Parsons; Part V. Afterword: 18. Empires and bureaucracy: means of appropriation and media of communication Sam Whimster.