Cambridge Studies in Early Modern History
Series · 20
books · 1977-2008
Books in series
#1
Kingship and Favoritism in the Spain of Philip III, 1598-1621
2000
The reign of Philip III of Spain (1598SH1621) has been viewed traditionally as the age when Spain's world power started to wane. This book reappraises this interpretation and demonstrates that this period represented a realignment of Spanish power in world affairs. It also analyzes the career of the Duke of Lerma, Philip III's chief minister, the first of a series of European royal favorites (such as the Duke of Buckingham, Cardinal Richelieu, and the Count-Duke of Olivares) who influenced politics, court culture and the arts during the seventeenth century.
#6
State and Nobility in Early Modern Germany
The Knightly Feud in Franconia, 1440–1567
1998
This book offers a new paradigm of the history of the German nobility in the early modern period. It shows that, contrary to the prevailing view, the nobility was not in a period of crisis that facilitated the rise of the state. Rather, the nobility underwent a process of social stratification in the wake of the growth of the state. This process led to the formation of an elite of wealthy noble families on whose cooperation the state depended. This alliance, and not a presumed partnership between rulers and bourgeoisie, was the driving force in early modern Germany.
#9
The Emergence of the Eastern Powers, 1756-1775
1995
During the third quarter of the eighteenth century, the European states-system was transformed by the military rise of Prussia and Russia. Eastern Europe became pre-eminent and during the 1770s, Poland was partitioned for the first time by its three neighbors, and two—Russia and Austria—also seized territory from the Ottoman empire. Europe's political center of gravity moved sharply eastwards, and by the later 1770s Russia was emerging as the leading continental state. Based on sources in six countries, this study provides the first survey of these crucial events.
#10
The Dynastic State and the Army under Louis XIV
Royal Service and Private Interest, 1661-1701
2002
This book presents a new interpretation of the development of the French army during the "personal rule" of Louis XIV. Based on massive archival research, it examines the army not only as a military institution but also as a political, social and economic organism. Guy Rowlands asserts that the key to the development of Louis XIV's armed forces was the king's determination to acknowledge and satisfy the military, political, social and cultural aspirations of his officers, and maintain the solid standing of the Bourbon dynasty.
#13
The Dynastic State and the Army Under Louis XIV
Royal Service and Private Interest 1661-1701
1998
This book presents a new interpretation of the development of the French army during the "personal rule" of Louis XIV. Based on massive archival research, it examines the army not only as a military institution but also as a political, social and economic organism. Guy Rowlands asserts that the key to the development of Louis XIV's armed forces was the king's determination to acknowledge and satisfy the military, political, social and cultural aspirations of his officers, and maintain the solid standing of the Bourbon dynasty.
#14
The Nobility of Holland
From Knights to Regents, 1500-1650
1984
This is the first full-scale analysis of the social and political transformation of the nobility of Holland during the revolt against Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the age of Rembrandt, nobles seemed to have been obliterated by the rising bourgeois merchants. However, in this study of the impact of the Dutch revolt, the author finds that Dutch nobles were extremely successful in maintaining their positions within the supposedly bourgeois Republic, forming the elite in administrative, political and economic systems. This is a revised edition of van Nierop's widely acclaimed Dutch publication.
#15
The Emperor and His Chancellor
A Study of the Imperial Chancellery under Gattinara
1983
This study examines a significant development within late medieval and early modern European government, set in the context of the tense relations between the young Emperor Charles V and his ageing chancellor Mercurino de Gattrina. It focuses upon an important transformation in the administrative reorganisation of European the shift in the political centre of gravity from the medieval institution of the chancellery as the secretariat for all government business and authentication to a small group of secretaries, the minister of a later age, acting directly in collaboration with the prince. In the collision between the traditional judicial and administrative pre-eminence of the late medieval chancellor and the new secretaries as expediters of the Renaissance prince's will. Charles gave his support to the latter, thus associating himself with the previous work of Ferdinand the Catholic. Against the background of this struggle with the state secretaries the imperial chancellery is analysing in its relations to the individual chancelleries of Charles V's disparate lands.
#17
Chronicle Into History
An Essay on the Interpretation of History in Florentine Fourteenth-Century Chronicles
2008
In Florence in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, the essentially medieval values of the age of Dante were transformed into the intellectual attitudes characteristic of the early Renaissance. Mr Green examines this change as it was reflected in the works of the city's vernacular chroniclers. These merchant historians evolved out of the traditional universal chronicle of the Middle Ages an embryonic form of the modern history, exemplified at the beginning of the fifteenth century by the Istoria di Firenze of Goro Dati. In the course of this transition from chronicle to history, the world-view expressed by the chronicle - which assumed that all that happened contributed to a divinely inspired historical plan - yielded before a more selective conception of the significance of events as possible natural causes of change. At the same time, the ideals underlying the medieval sense of cosmic order, with their other worldly overtones, gave way before the more secular, humanist values of the emerging Renaissance.
#18
Filippo Strozzi and the Medici
Favor and Finance in Sixteenth-Century Florence and Rome
1980
Filippo Strozzi (1489–1538), the Florentine aristocrat and banker, is usually remembered for the dramatic exploits at the end of his life. Forced into exile, he became an outspoken defender of the last Florentine Republic against the tyranny of the city's new dukes. His place in Florentine history, however, changes drastically when we focus not on his final years but on his extensive career as a Medici favourite and loyal financier. At the courts of the Medici popes he furthered the grandiose schemes of Leo X and Clement VII and accumulated a personal fortune of legendary size. Dr Bullard's study reassesses Strozzi's place in Renaissance history and considers the more general problems of paper economy and war finance, and Florentine political life, in the early sixteenth century. It documents the intricate financial ties between Florence and the papal court, and Strozzi's key role as a manipulator of the city's public funds to pay for papal wars.
#19
French Finances 1770–1795
From Business to Bureaucracy
2008
The monarchy of Louis XVI suffered revolution and then destruction after failing to settle its financial difficulties. What precisely were those difficulties? In this book, Professor Bosher shows that the monarchy was financed by a chaotic system of private enterprise which proved increasingly unmanageable and wasteful. Hundreds of profit-seeking accountants - 'capitalists', in the language of the time - stood in the way of reform and even of clear accounting until governments of the French Revolution eventually nationalized the financial system and changed it 'from capitalism into a bureaucracy'. From his close study of the administrative changes Professor Bosher concludes that the National Assembly planned to guard the public finances by bureaucratic organization. 'With a vision of mechanical efficiency and articulation', he writes, 'systems of clock-like checks and balances such as eighteenth-century Frenchmen found everywhere, even in nature itself, the revolutionary planners hoped to prevent corruption, putting their faith in the virtues of organization to offset the vices of the individual men.'
#20
The State, War and Peace
Spanish Political Thought in the Renaissance 1516–1559
1977
This is a comprehensive study in English of political thought in Spain during the Renaissance. In the early sixteenth century Castile experienced two major constitutional crises caused by the accession of a Habsburg ruler (shortly to become Holy Roman Emperor) to her throne, and by the discovery and conquest of America. Politically, these circumstances created a bizarre situation in which the venerable idea of medieval empire was forced to co-exist with a novel, imperial vision made inevitable by expansion in the new world. The strain imposed on Castile's constitutional fabric stimulated the most significant developments of Spanish political thought in the Renaissance. Against this background, Professor Fernández-Santamaria surverys the contribution of a number of eminent writers from diverse intellectual traditions who endeavoured to apply established political assumptions to these unprecedented circumstances.
#21
The Changing Face of Empire
Charles V, Phililp II and Habsburg Authority, 1551-1559
1988
Using a vast range of primary sources, this substantial and important volume provides a comprehensive analysis of the division and near-collapse of Habsburg authority during the 1550s. The principal episodes of this period (the death of Charles V, the accession of Philip II, and the latter's marriage to Mary Tudor) are well known in outline, but Dr Rodriguez-Salgado provides much that is new and original, both on the internal history of Spain, and on the highly complex diplomacy of the period. Why did Charles V and Philip I go to war against France, and Papacy and Islam, and how did the multinational empire survive the huge financial demands such wars placed upon it? Spanish relations with England and France are examined in detail, and The Changing Face of Empire does a great deal to illuminate the breakdown in relations with the Netherlands that was to culminate in the Dutch Revolt.
#22
The Kingdom of Valencia in the Seventeenth Century
1979
Drawing on hitherto unpublished sources James Casey explores two major themes in Spanish historiography - the consequences of the expulsion of the Moriscos (heavily concentrated in Valencia in the early seventeenth century), and the way in which the Habsburg Monarchy kept or lost control over its peripheral provinces. The study ranges widely over questions of population (including a pioneering attempt for early modern Spain at family reconstitution), landholding and agriculture, exploring the links between depopulation and economic decline - twin phenomena which characterized the peninsula in the age of Spain's decline. Dr Casey has drawn on a variety of previously neglected sources - parish registers, tithe records, cadastral surveys - in order to quantify these developments as far as possible. The result is a reassessment of the chronology and extent of economic recession in one of Spain's most fertile provinces, and a revision of some ideas about the importance of the expulsion of the Moriscos.
#23
Monarchies, States Generals and Parliaments
The Netherlands in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
2001
This history of the States General of the Netherlands and its relations with the monarchy involves the dukes of Burgundy and the Spanish Habsburgs in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. After more than a century of mainly peaceful cooperation, the two sides quarrelled violently about religion, sovereignty and local privileges, and decades of civil war led to a split in the country. The North became a republic and a parliamentary regime, while the South remained attached to the Spanish monarchy and continued without the States General.
#25
After the Deluge
Poland-Lithuania and the Second Northern War, 1655 - 1660
1993
The Swedish invasion of 1655, known to Poles ever since as the 'Swedish deluge', provoked the political and military collapse of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the second-largest state in Europe. Robert Frost examines the reasons for Poland's fall and the conduct of the war by the Polish government, and addresses the crucial question of why, despite widespread recognition of the shortcomings of the political system, subsequent attempts at reform failed. War has long been seen as crucial to the development of more effective systems of government in Europe during the seventeenth century, but studies usually concentrate on states which responded successfully to the challenges. Much can be learned from those that failed, and the paucity of English-language material on this important conflict means that After the Deluge will appeal to a broad audience among historians of Poland, Germany, Scandinavia, Russia, and early modern Europe in general.
#26
Neighbourhood and Community in Paris, 1740-1790
2002
In the second half of the eighteenth century, Paris was the second largest city in Europe, with a population of some half a million. Contemporary writers described it as anonymous and chaotic, and so it must have seemed to many new arrivals from the provinces. Yet the records of the local police officials, which have remained virtually untouched for two hundred years, reveal a world which was far from anonymous, where most people went about their daily affairs in streets and shops where not only the places but also the faces were familiar. From the mass of individual disputes and incidents reported to the police in each quarter there emerges a picture of a structured, largely self-regulating local community based first and foremost on neighbourhood ties. This study explores the way that such communities functioned and were maintained, and in the process touches on many aspects of life in eighteenth-century Paris.
#29
The Duke of Anjou and the Politique Struggle during the Wars of Religion
1986
From the beginning of the French Wars of Religion a small minority of toleration-minded Protestants and Catholics sought out a via media to end the civil wars which were destroying France. Later called politiques by their more zealous Catholic opponents, this group turned to François de Valois, duke of Alençon and Anjou in the 1570s, to champion their cause. Youngest son of Henry II and Catherine de Medici and heir to the throne himself after 1574, Anjou was also sought out by William of Orange and a similar group of politiques in the rebel provinces of the Netherlands, where the Dutch Revolt had virtually become a civil war. Anjou never became the saviour that either group had looked for, however. This book analyses why he nevertheless became the focus of such attention, and tries to explain why he never joined the politique struggle of the later sixteenth century.
#30
The Armada of Flanders
Spanish Maritime Policy and European War, 1568-1668
1992
The Flanders armada, took shape in response to the use of seapower by the Dutch rebels, and evolved into the most effective unit in Spain's defence establishment. In combination with its privateering auxiliaries, this elite striking force dominated the North Sea for some twenty years (1625–45), and campaigned also in the Mediterranean and Atlantic theatres of war. Yet its contribution to the tenacious survival of Spanish hegemony has never before been assessed. A narrative of the armada's fighting record over the century of its meaningful existence is presented with constant reference to the strategic-logistical context and analysis of policymaking in Madrid. Attention is paid to the political significance of maritime policy, and particularly the relationship between Madrid and its subordinate headquarters in Brussels; the infrastructure of the armada; the ships themselves, above all the revolutionary but elusive 'frigate'; the social hierarchy of crews and commanders; and details of administration and financing.
#32
Charles XI and Swedish Absolutism, 1660-1697
1998
The reading public outside Sweden knows little of that country's history, beyond the era in the seventeenth century when Sweden under Gustavus Adolphus became a major European power by her intervention in the Thirty Years' War. In the last decades of the seventeenth century another Swedish king, Charles XI, launched a less dramatic but remarkable bid to stabilize and secure Sweden's position as a major power in northern Europe and as master of the Baltic Sea. This book gives an account of what was achieved under the absolutist direction of a distinctly unglamorous, but pious and conscientious ruler.
#34
Altopascio
A Study in Tuscan Rural Society, 1587-1784
1978
This is an interdisciplinary study of a large Italian estate which belonged to the Medici Grand Dukes of Tuscany. The Medici administrators kept detailed records of the activities of their subjects and these have been used by the author to analyse the demographic, social, economic and political history of the village. The records cover two centuries, which span a harsh economic depression and the 'general crisis' of the seventeenth century. An aim of the book is to gauge the impact of the general European crisis upon a regional society, and to assess the contribution of agrarian economic and social trends towards that crisis. It analyses the broad issues of population change, economic performance and social organization within a rural community, demonstrating how the contractual relationships between landlord and tenant selectively distributed the effects of the economic crisis, and how the strong economic bonds that linked lord and peasant helped to control the dogged resistance for which the people of Altopascio were notorious.
Authors
Mack P. Holt
Author · 4 books
Mack P. Holt is Professor of History and received his Ph.D in History from Emory University in 1982. Before coming to George Mason in 1989 he taught at Harvard and Vanderbilt universities. From 1998 to 2002 he was also Director of the Honors Program in General Education, and he served as the department’s Director of Graduate Studies from 2004 to 2010.
H.G. Koenigsberger
Author · 4 books
Helmut Koenigsberger, born in Berlin, educated in Britain, sent as an enemy alien to Canada he served briefly in the Royal navy during the Second World War. He had a long career teaching history at Queen's University Belfast, Manchester University, Nottingham University, Cornell and King's College London.
H.M. Scott
Author · 2 books
Hamish Scott
Henk F.K. van Nierop
Author · 2 books
dhr. prof. dr. H.F.K. (Henk) van Nierop Henk van Nierop took his MA in History (cum laude) at the University of Amsterdam in 1974 and his doctorate at Leiden University in 1984. He has been teaching and researching at the University of Amsterdam since 1974. In 1999 he was appointed to the Chair of Early Modern History. He was a visiting professor at Boston University in 1986-87 and at the University of Minnesota in 1996. From 2000 to 2008 he served as Director of the Amsterdam Centre for the Study of the Dutch Golden Age. He is an editor of the series Amsterdam Studies in the Dutch Golden Age at Amsterdam University Press. Since 2009 he is Chair of the Department of History, Archaeology and Area Studies.
Robert I. Frost
Author · 3 books
Robert Frost was educated at the universities of St Andrews, Cracow, and London. After teaching for eighteen years at King's College London, he moved in 2004 to the University of Aberdeen, where he currently holds the Burnett Fletcher Chair in History. He is interested in the history of eastern and northern Europe from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries. His principal research interests are in the history of Poland-Lithuania, and in the history of warfare in the early modern period.
