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Symbolic power depends on the efficiency with which the values of any dominant group are transmitted to society at large. In the eleventh century, the Latin medieval Church initiated a fundamental transformation of the Western European symbolic communication system. In France and England, the symbolic power of the Gregorian Church was derived from the superiority of the spiritual power of the papacy. Its armies of monks and priests had to convince the members of the ecclesia (the Christian society) of the necessity to embark on the road to individual salvation under the guidance of the Church, imposing a new division between clergy and laity. Yet, whereas clericus and litteratus had earlier been synonymous, many lay people were now able to read and write. If the Church had developed its own administration and bureaucracy, the Gregorian educational and cultural revolution offered the same opportunity to cities and states, which thus acquired the capacity to govern by the written word. As the laity entered into an age of literacy, the foundations were laid for the genesis of a new type of state.

Based on a collaboration between historians of Chinese and European politics, Political Communication in Chinese and European History, 800-1600 offers a first comprehensive overview of current research on political communication in middle-period European and Chinese history. The chapters present new work on the sources and processes of political communication in European and Chinese history partly through juxtaposing and combining formerly separate historiographies and partly through direct comparison. Contrary to earlier comparative work on empires and state formation, which aimed to explain similarities and differences with encompassing models and new theories of divergence, the goal is to further conversations between historians by engaging regional historiographies from the bottom up.