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"A feat of both scholarship and storytelling" (Wall Street Journal)--the definitive history of a powerful family dynasty who dominated Europe for centuries. In The Habsburgs, Martyn Rady tells the epic story of a dynasty and the world it built--and then lost--over nearly a millennium. From modest origins, the Habsburgs gained control of the Holy Roman Empire in the fifteenth century. Then, in a few decades, their possessions rapidly expanded to take in a large part of Europe, stretching from Hungary to Spain, and parts of the New World and the Far East. The Habsburgs dominated Central Europe through the First World War. Historians often depict the Habsburgs as leaders of a ramshackle empire. But Rady reveals their enduring power, driven by the belief that they were destined to rule the world as defenders of the Roman Catholic Church, guarantors of peace, and patrons of learning. This is the remarkable history of a dynasty that forever changed Europe and the world.
An essential new history of Central Europe, the contested lands so often at the heart of world history Central Europe has long been infamous as a region beset by war, a place where empires clashed and world wars began. In The Middle Kingdoms, Martyn Rady offers the definitive history of the region, demonstrating that Central Europe has always been more than merely the fault line between West and East. Even as Central European powers warred with their neighbors, the region developed its own cohesive identity and produced tremendous accomplishments in politics, society, and culture. Central Europeans launched the Reformation and Romanticism, developed the philosophy of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, and advanced some of the twentieth century’s most important artistic movements. Drawing on a lifetime of research and scholarship, The Middle Kingdoms tells as never before the captivating story of two thousand years of Central Europe’s history and its enduring significance in world affairs.
The Habsburgs are the most famous dynasty in continental Europe. From the thirteenth to the twentieth centuries, they ruled much of Central Europe, and for two centuries were also rulers of Spain. Through the Spanish connection, they acquired lands around the Mediterranean and a chunk of the New World, spreading eastwards to include the Philippines. Reaching from South-East Asia to what is now Ukraine, the Habsburg Empire was truly global. In this Very Short Introduction Martin Rady looks at the history of the Habsburgs, from their tenth-century origins in Switzerland, to the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire in 1918. He introduces the pantheon of Habsburg rulers, which included adventurers...
The first comprehensive treatment in any language on the history of customary law in Hungary, starting with Stephen Werboczy's customary law code, the Tripartitum. This code influenced the composition, structure, and procedures of the courts and retained authority even when a parliamentary government was established in the nineteenth century.
The definitive history of the dynasty that dominated Europe for centuries In The Habsburgs, Martyn Rady tells the epic story of a dynasty and the world they built -- and then lost -- over nearly a millennium. From modest origins, the Habsburgs gained control of the Holy Roman Empire in the fifteenth century. Then, in just a few decades, their possessions rapidly expanded to take in a large part of Europe, stretching from Hungary to Spain, and parts of the New World and the Far East. The Habsburgs continued to dominate Central Europe through the First World War. Historians often depict the Habsburgs as leaders of a ramshackle empire. But Rady reveals their enduring power, driven by the belief that they were destined to rule the world as defenders of the Roman Catholic Church, guarantors of peace, and patrons of learning. The Habsburgs is the definitive history of a remarkable dynasty that forever changed Europe and the world.
This account aims to explain not only the bloody course of recent events in Romania, from Timisoara to the miners, but also to analyze older and deeper trends which dominate Romanian politics, such as native fascism, inter-ethnic rivalry and a history of authoritarian rule.
This book examines Max Weber's understanding of bureaucracy by applying his ideas to the development of officialdom from the ninth century to the present in six territories: England, Sweden, France, Germany, Spain, and Hungary. Edward Page takes a broad view of bureaucracy that includes not only officials in important central or national institutions but also those providing goods and services locally. The 'scorecard' is based on expected developments in four key areas of Weber's analysis: the functional differentiation of tasks within government, professionalism, formalism, and monocracy. After discussing the character of officialdom in the ninth, twelfth, fifteenth, eighteenth, and twenty-first centuries, the book reveals that Weber's scorecard has a mixed record, especially weak in its account of the development of monocracy and formalism. A final chapter discusses alternative conceptions of bureaucratic development and sets out an account based on understanding processes of routinization, institutional integration, and the instrumentalization of law.
Explains why and how ideocratic and totalitarian governments emerge, establish themselves, evolve, eventually collapse, and disintegrate or transform themselves into new ideocracies.
This is Volume Two of a two-volume collection that brings together contributions from cultural and military history to offer an examination of religious rites employed in connection with warfare as well as their transformative and power- and identity-building potential across political communities of medieval Northern, Central, and Eastern Europe. Covering the period ca. 900 and 1500, the work takes theoretical, textual and practical approaches to the research on religious warfare, and investigates the connections between, and significance and function of crucial war rituals such as pre-, intra- and postbellum rites, as well as various activities surrounding the military life of individuals, polities, and corporates. Contributors are Robert Antonín, Robert Bubczyk, Dariusz Dąbrowski, Jesse Harrington, Carsten Selch Jensen, Sini Kangas, Radosław Kotecki, Gregory Leighton, Kyle C. Lincoln, Jacek Maciejewski, Yulia Mikhailova, Max Naderer, László Veszprémy, and Dušan Zupka.