REVIEWS 271 Constantinople in efforts to awaken imperial interest and intervention in provincial affairs speaks to the need and desire for more effective government” and that “far from being oppressed by an all-pervasive imperial government, people sometimes desired more imperial intervention and took steps to excite government interest in their problems” (167) is to push the deduction a bit too far. The only certain conclusion seems to be that people simply wanted cases resolved in their own interest. Not every appeal to the central authority is an invitation for its bigger involvement or its control over provincial matters. Also, even the most oppressive and all-pervasive of imperial governments are not necessarily efficient. Drawing conclusions from the analyzed material in this book is a particularly difficult task for the author, as a firm composition of the book is sacrificed for a detailed and meticulous analysis of the material in separate chapters. The conclusions the author reached in every single chapter are important in content and innovative in approach. However, it is not always clear how the separate conclusions contribute to the book as a whole and to the question of the nature of the Byzantine imperial administration. The best qualities of the book, in addition to the analysis of the sources on taxation, are detail and thoroughness: Neville offers a great introduction into the Byzantine state and society by her nuanced definitions of different legal, administrative, fiscal, and ideological terms; the short overview of the most important sources at the end of the book is especially useful. Her bibliography consists of the most relevant and recent works offering a solid basis for further inquiry in all aspects of Byzantine past. All this makes Neville’s book useful and accessible for novices in the field. On the other hand, her work is important for those already familiar with the problems of the Byzantine tenth and eleventh centuries, as it combines a solid source base with a novel and interesting approach to it indicating thus a new direction for further development of Byzantine studies. SRDJAN RAJKOVIC, History, UCLA Gerard Nijsten, In the Shadow of Burgundy: The Court of Guelders in the Late Middle Ages (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press 2004) xxii + 470 pp. Gerard Nijsten does not rewrite our understandings of relationships between nobles and princes nor does he redefine the concept of culture, which has become a focus of studies on late medieval courts ever since Johann Huizinga published the first version of his Autumn of the Middle Ages in 1919. Rather, Nijsten combines traditional approaches to court culture, such as evaluating art and literature and analyzing the import of rituals and festivals, with Malcolm Vale’s innovative approach of a detailed examination of financial accounts.26 The result is the rehabilitation, in modern historiography, of the court of Guelders from 1371 to 1473, proving that this small Low Country duchy sandwiched between France and the Holy Roman Empire deserves notice. While most studies of late medieval courts focus on the big splashy arenas centered in France, 26 Malcolm Vale, The Princely Court: Medieval Courts and Culture in North-West Europe (Oxford 2001). REVIEWS 272 England, and Burgundy,27 Nijsten argues for the need to look more closely at smaller, regional courts that perhaps represent a more typical picture of late medieval court culture. Dividing the book into three sections, Nijsten looks in turn at the nuts and bolts of court composition and court life; the existence of musical, literary, and artistic pursuits in Guelders; and how the court and art intersected to form court culture. Nijsten’s very thorough use of financial accounts, mainly stemming from the Geldrian ducal archives but also from the cities, allows a detailed picture of the court to emerge. Nevertheless, the author is very careful to note the difficulties of relying too heavily on financial accounts alone, since private transactions, intended for a duke’s or duchess’s personal use, were often not included or appeared in the accounts as a lump sum without any description of the goods bought. Additionally, a change in notarial practice in the early fifteenth century resulted in a more cursory form of description. To Nijsten, a...