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The princes étrangers, or the foreign princes, were an influential group of courtiers in early modern France, who maintained their unofficial status as 'foreigners' due to membership in sovereign ruling families. Arguably the most influential of these were the princes of Lorraine, a sovereign state on France's eastern border. During the sixteenth century the Lorraine-Guise dominated the culture and politics of France, gaining a reputation as a powerful, manipulative family at the head of the Catholic League in the Wars of Religion and with close relationships with successive Valois monarchs and Catherine de Medici. After the traumas of 1588, however, although they faded from the narrative h...
Proximity to the monarch was a vital asset in the struggle for power and influence in medieval and early modern courts. The concept of ‘access to the ruler’ has therefore grown into a dominant theme in scholarship on pre-modern dynasties. Still, many questions remain concerning the mechanisms of access and their impact on politics. Bringing together new research on European and Asian cases, the ten chapters in this volume focus on the ways in which ‘access’ was articulated, regulated, negotiated, and performed. By taking into account the full complexity of hierarchies, ceremonial rites, spaces and artefacts that characterized the dynastic court, The Key to Power? forces us to rethink power relations in the late medieval and early modern world. Contributors are: Christina Antenhofer, Ronald G. Asch, Florence Berland, Mark Hengerer, Neil Murphy, Fabian Persson, Jonathan Spangler, Michael Talbot, Steven Thiry, and Audrey Truschke.
The 'Defenestration of Prague', the coup d'etat staged by Protestant Bohemian nobles against officials of the Hapsburg Emperor triggered the Thirty Years War. When Habsburg Spain intervened in support of their Holy Roman Emperor relative, what had started as a localised political and religious dispute in Germany, transformed into a European and global conflict. In seeking to exploit the Bohemian revolt, Spanish Habsburg revanchist ambitions directed by the Spanish Count of Olivarez at the economically powerful Dutch Republic were allied with the Habsburg Emperor’s counter-reformation ambitions. After the Bohemian defeat at the White Mountain in 1620 the war widened as the Dutch Republic, E...
This book offers for the first time a conceptual history of compromise. Alin Fumurescu combines contextual historical analysis of daily parlance and a survey of the usage of the word from the end of the sixteenth century to the beginning of the eighteenth century in both French and English with an analysis of canonical texts in the history of political thought. This book fills a significant gap in the literature about compromise and demonstrates the connection between different understandings of compromise and corresponding differences in understandings of political representation. In addition, Fumurescu addresses two controversial contemporary debates about when compromise is beneficial and when it should be avoided at all costs. A better understanding of the genealogy of compromise offers new venues for rethinking basic assumptions regarding political representation and the relationship between individuals and politics.
Reveals how early modern religious conceptions of covenant and community were deployed for surprisingly radical political ends.
Douglas Adams will be most fondly remembered for the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series and its idiosyncratic humour. But this biography covers his life from his days as a struggling sketch writer to his untimely death at the age of 49 in May 2001.
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.
An original interpretation of 'the people's two bodies' that illuminates the opposite attitudes toward compromise throughout the American founding.
A definitive reinterpretation of the role and influence of the French army during Richelieu's ministry.
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.