Because of the growing interest in Macedonia stimulated by recent archaeological discoveries, there have been a considerable number of studies on Macedonian history. Since the 1970s these studies have been concentrated on Philip II, whose reputation had previously been overshadowed by that of Alexander the Great. Recent major works on Philip II have one common feature: they criticize the Atheno-centric nature of traditional research on this historical figure and consider him instead from a Macedonian standpoint. Unfortunately, all of these studies fall into the trap of overemphasizing Philip's friendly attitude toward Athens. This tendency is most apparent in their interpretation of "the Peace of Philocrates" concluded between Philip and Athens in 346 B.C.. Most scholars exaggerate the importance of this peace and regard it as clear evidence of Philip's friendly attitude toward Athens. The purpose of this paper is to put the Peace of Philocrates in its proper perspective and to shed some light on Philip's overall strategy in 346 B.C.. The negotiations regarding the Peace of Philocrates coincided with two important events: Philip's Thracian campaign, and his intervention in the Third Sacred War. This paper attempts to analyze the Peace in the context of these two events. Within the framework of his Thracian campaign, the Peace can be regarded as a diplomatic expedient used by Philip to forestall Athens' offensive intervention in Thracian affairs and to conquer Thrace as smoothly as possible. On the other hand, when we look at his intervention in the Sacred War, which led to his emergence as the major power in Greek politics, we can see that Philip intended to strike a blow at Athens' ally, the Phocians, with Thebes' cooperation, in order to enter the mainstream of Greek politics. In short, we can affirm that Philip's policy of favouring Athens played no part at all in that process, and that his peace with Athens had no effect on his settlement of the Sacred War. Therefore, the Peace of Philocrates was only a diplomatic expedient for conquering Thrace smoothly, and it had almost nothing to do with Philip's intervention in the Sacred War, which, in 346 B.C., was a very important part of his strategy toward Greece. It follows from this conclusion that it is necessary to amend the recent studies which inflate the importance of the Peace of Philocrates in Philip's plan and which consequently imply that Philip's attitude toward Athens was friendly.

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This paper is a study of the control exercised over local entities by the Toyotomi Hideyoshi regime during the Bunroku 文禄 era (1592-1595), a period which included the first, unsuccessful invasion of Korea. The research literature to date on this period of peace treaties and negotiations has tended to place Hideyoshi's policies within the context of making preparations for the second invasion of Korea; however, it is the opinion of the author that the events of the Bunroku era did not necessarily anticipate that invasion, which was launched in 1597. Rather, we see the evolvement of political policies aiming mainly at a revival of the early modern state order that was wavering under the collapse of Hideyoshi's plan for expanding his national hegemony. In this sense, the author embarks on an analysis of the regime's interference in local affairs from the viewpoint of the political power structure of the time. For this purpose, the author looks at the Kobayakawa family domain in Najima 名島, Chikuzen 筑前 province and takes up various policies that had continued since the cadastres (taikokenchi 太閤検地) that had begun in 1582. The cadastre of the Kobayakawa domain was carried out by one of its vassals, Yamaguchi Genba 山口玄蕃, in 1595, when the lord of that domain, Takakage, retired and was succeeded by his adopted son, Hidetoshi. The author's analysis of the documents related to this event may be summarized at follows. On the local level, the cadastre was aimed at determining "village" (mura 村) units not on the basis of productivity (kokudaka 石高), but rather on the basis of cultivated land area. With respect to the process by which fiefs were assigned to vassals after this survey, the author finds two stages involved. One he calls the "Najima" stage, which involved a provisional agreement between Yamaguchi and the traditional Kobayakawa vassals; the other is the "Fushimi" (伏見) stage, which involved the final decision made by the central figures in the Toyotomi regime. In the end, the "Fushimi" plan prevailed. Moreover, this plan ignored the results from the 1595 cadastre and was devised on the basis of a formula determined at the center, which in effect reduced all fief allotments to vassals. It is interesting that the documents announcing these new allotments followed a similar process, in which direct orders (hanmotsu 判物) sealed by Kobayakawa Hidetoshi were issued announcing the execution of the "Fushimi" plan, followed by fief allotment notices (ategaijo 宛行状) that contained Hideyoshi's seal. As the result of this decision-making process, Kobayakawa Hidetoshi was able to increase the amount of land under his personal control, while depriving the domain's vassals of their traditional vested rights, thus bringing about in effect a separation of the warrior class in this domain from the soil (heinobunri 兵農分離). The author concludes that this type of cadastre/fief determination process promoted by the Toyotomi regime is representative of what was being done throughout Japan to revive the early modern state order that was being threatened by the collapse of Hideyoshi's plan to exband his hegemony. On the other hand, such interference in local affairs was designed to regain control over politics from Kanpaku 関白 Toyotomi Hidetsugu, and through increasing the amount of land directly controlled by each daimyo 大名, they were able l) to shift their statuses from leaders among vassal confederates to actual power holders, 2) to remove the economic base of vassal autonomy, and 3) to promote the creation of a stable political and social order under the label "pax-Hideyoshi".

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Sung Hui Yao is the encyclopedic record of the Sung administrations and contains chapters entitled "chu jiang guan (Dismissal and Demotions)". These chapters are a compilation of punishment records of Sung bureaucrats, covering a period extending from the beginning of the dynasty up to the year 1224. However, it is not obvious as to what exactly had been put on record or what criteria was used. This paper is an attempt to assess the credibility of these historical documents by clarifying the range and content. With this objective in mind the following operation was conducted; In the first part, the contents of each article are classified with examples to show that while there exist several types of formats, they all in principle contain four units of information ; [1]names and posts of the dismissed, [2]forms of punishment, [3]grounds for the punishment, [4]prosecuting bodies. Furthermore, [1]names and posts of the dismissed which constitute the main part of the records can be classified into three parts ; (a)dismissal of the present post held by the offender, (b)dismissal of the former post which had been held by the offender, (c)dismissal of the post which were to be held by the offender. The names which appear in (a)are also found in the lists of the dismissed magistrates in local gazetteers of the time. The second part finds an apparent correlation between the total number of Sung officials of the time and the frequency of the dismissal entries described in the "Dismissals and Demotions". However, the number of the dismissal entries is found to be disproportionally bigger in the mid-Southern Sung period. Against this background, the third part further looks into the names described in part (a)and the names of the dismissed magistrates referred in the local gazetteers. A contrastive analysis revealed that as a rule, the names of the posts which are of a higher level than provincial magistrates correspond with the descriptions found in the Sung local gazetteers and vice versa, regardless of the differences in region and post. As for Controller-general, mutual confirmation is possible after the Guang Zong period. The virtual agreement between the records of the central administration and that of the local gazetteers in rare and indicates that these descriptions in the "Dismissals and Demotions", at least for the period of time covered in this paper, are not biased toward the dignataries of the time, but instead were recorded in an exhaustive and objective manner. As for the Northern Sung, although there is a possibility of bias toward the officials in Kai Feng, the "Dismissals and Demotions" contains a much larger quantity of historical records when compared with other documents including Xu Zi Zhi Tong Jian Chang Pian after the Tai Zong period. The above survey endorses the objectivity and hence the validity of the "Dismissals and Demotions" as a documentation suitable for further statistical inferences, as far as the period after Xiao Zong period and the post higher than prefectural magistrates are concerned. The validity of the "Dismissals and Demotions" could complement the credibility of other chapters in Sung Hui Yao, which share the same characteristics, especially in style with studying not only the patterns commonly found in the dismissals of bureaucrats but also various aspects of the dynasty, censorates, intendants, and yamens and the regional difference in illicit conducts among magistrates.

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