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How the legacy of monarchical empires shaped Britain, France, Spain, and the United States as they became liberal entities Historians view the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as a turning point when imperial monarchies collapsed and modern nations emerged. Treating this pivotal moment as a bridge rather than a break, The Imperial Nation offers a sweeping examination of four of these modern powers—Great Britain, France, Spain, and the United States—and asks how, after the great revolutionary cycle in Europe and America, the history of monarchical empires shaped these new nations. Josep Fradera explores this transition, paying particular attention to the relations between im...
Focusing on major political and legal theorists whose work on constitutional theory had a significant impact, this book unearths an untold story of the development of constitutional thought in the context of the broader political environment.
The rediscovery of Roman law and the emergence of classical canon law around AD 1100 marked the beginnings of the civil law tradition in Europe. Between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries, a highly sophisticated legal science of a truly European dimension was developed. Since then the different European States have developed their own national legal systems, but with the exception of England and Ireland they are all heirs to this tradition of the ius commune. This historical introduction to the civil law tradition, from its original Roman roots to the present day, considers the political and cultural context of Europe's legal history. Political, diplomatic and constitutional developments are discussed, and the impacts of major cultural movements, such as scholasticism, humanism, the Enlightenment and Romanticism, on law and jurisprudence are highlighted. This contextual approach makes for a fascinating story, accessible to any reader regardless of legal or historical background.
Freedom, today perceived simply as a human right, was a continually contested idea in the early modern period. In Freedom and the Construction of Europe an international group of scholars explore the richness, diversity and complexity of thinking about freedom in the shaping of modernity. Volume 1 examines debates about religious and constitutional liberties, as well as exploring the tensions between free will and divine omnipotence across a continent of proliferating religious denominations. Debates about freedom have been fundamental to the construction of modern Europe, but represent a part of our intellectual heritage that is rarely examined in depth. These volumes provide materials for thinking in fresh ways not merely about the concept of freedom, but how it has come to be understood in our own time.
The Twelve Years Truce of 9 April 1609 made a temporary end to the hostilities between Spain and the Northern Netherlands that had lasted for over four decades. The Truce signified a crucial step in the recognition of the Republic of the Northern Netherlands as a sovereign power. As the direct source of inspiration for the 1648 Peace of Munster the Truce is a crucial text in the formation of the early modern law of nations. As few other texts, it reflects the radical changes to the laws of war and peace from around 1600. The Twelve Years Truce offers a collection of essays by leading specialists on the diplomatic and legal history of the Antwerp Truce of 1609. The first part covers the negotiation process leading up to the Truce. The second part collects essays on the consequences of the Truce on the state of war. In the third part, the consequences of the Truce for the sovereignty of the Northern and Southern Netherlands as well as it wider significance for the changing laws of war and peace of the age are scrutinised.
The untold story of how the Dutch conquered the European book market and became the world's greatest bibliophiles--"an instant classic on Dutch book history" (BMGN - Low Countries Historical Review) "[An] excellent contribution to book history."--Robert Darnton, New York Review of Books The Dutch Golden Age has long been seen as the age of Rembrandt and Vermeer, whose paintings captured the public imagination and came to represent the marvel that was the Dutch Republic. Yet there is another, largely overlooked marvel in the Dutch world of the seventeenth century: books. In this fascinating account, Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen show how the Dutch produced many more books than pictu...
Calvinism must be assigned a significant place among the forces that have shaped modern European culture. Even now, despite its history of religious fragmentation and secularization, Europe continues to bear the marks of a pervasive Calvinist ethos. The character of that ethos is, however, difficult to pin down. In this volume, many of the traditional scholarly conundrums about the relationship between Calvinism and the cultural history of Europe are revisited and re-investigated, to see what new light can be shed on them. For example, how has the ethos of Calvinism, or more broadly the Reformed tradition, affected economic thinking and practice, the development of the sciences, views on religious toleration, or the constitution of European polities? In general, what kind of transformations did Calvinism’s distinct spirituality bring about? Such questions demand painstaking and detailed scholarly work, a fine sample of which is published in this volume.
In the course of a "rewriting of the early-modern and 19th-century international law," this edited volume deals with the so far underexposed revolutionary and Napoleonic Europe, especially with the position of the French satellite states according to international law and the coherent considerations about constitutional law and power structure. The contributions include 6 papers written in English, 5 papers in French, and 1 in German. Contents include: In the Embrace of France: An Introduction . La genèse de la Constitution batave de 1798, un produit français? . Farewell to the American Dream: Dutch Interest in American Constitutional Developments in the Early Nineteenth Century . Wie die ...
Picturing Punishment examines representations of criminal bodies as they moved in, through, and out of publicly accessible spaces in the city during punishment rituals in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic. Once put to death, the criminal cadaver did not come to rest. Its movement through public spaces indicated the potent afterlife of the deviant body, especially its ability to transform civic life. Focusing on material culture associated with key sites of punishment, Anuradha Gobin argues that the circulation of visual media related to criminal punishments was a particularly effective means of generating discourse and formulating public opinion, especially regarding the efficacy of civ...
By examining the relationship between international law and empire from early modernity to the present, this volume improves current understandings of the way international legal institutions, practices, and narratives have shaped imperial ideas about and structures of world governance.