‘The European World’ BK 05/09

Europe Transformed? The Political World

Outline, dates and terms

  1. The European Landscape
  • Shifts in the political geographybetween c. 1500 and the early eighteenth century: from Spanish via French to British dominance; Ottoman decline
  • New powers: Sweden, Russia and Brandenburg-Prussia
  • Growing role of international diplomacy, peace congresses and balance of power (leading to a ‘pentarchy’ of Austria, Britain, France, Prussia, Russia)

Peace of Westphalia 1648; War of the Spanish Succession 1701-14; Peace of Utrecht 1713 (Philip, Duke of Anjou/Bourbon dynasty, inherits Spanish crown); Peace of Nystad 1721

  1. State Formation
  • From personal rule of lordsin a feudal pyramidto more abstract government of an‘absolute’ monarch over all subjects within a territory
  • Tendency towards centralization, bureaucratization, professionalization and marginalization of representative assemblies, albeit to various degrees and with regional differences (NB: Dutch and Swiss republics)
  • Waves of legislation in the interest of ‘good police’; growing taxation; standing armies and promotion of social discipline; mercantilism

‘Police state’ (Raeff); ‘fiscal-military state’ (Glete); Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619-83)

  1. Political Life and Thought
  • Lavish representation of power in art and architecture (esp. in princely courts), yet continued reliance on patronage networks

Louis XIV (‘sun king’; ‘L’état c’est moi’); Versailles; Maria Theresia of Austria

  • Justifying absolute rule with recourse to human nature

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651)

  • BUT: power restrictions, resistance and calls for sovereignty of the people

Monarchomachs (Beza) in the late 16thC; Locke and Levellersin 17thC England

  • Evolving the Law of Nations

Hugo Grotius, Three Books on the Law of War and Peace (1625)

  1. Conclusions
  • Evolution of a newEuropean system: rise of Britain and colonial interests, multilateral treaties, concept of ‘balance of power’
  • Emergence of modern state: princely court, taxation, legislation, standing army, mercantilist economic policy (but NB: limits of ‘absolutism’)
  • Continued inequalities in political rights and gender relations(patriarchy)

Select bibliography

Adamson, John (ed.), The Princely Courts of Europe: Ritual, Politics and Culture under the Ancien Régime 1500-1750 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999)

Blockmans, Wim; Genet, Jean-Philippe (general eds), The Origins of the Modern State in Europe: 13th to 18th Centuries (7 vols, Oxford: UP, 1995-98)

Bonney, Richard, The European Dynastic States 1494-1660 (Oxford: UP, 1991)

Glete, Ian, War and the State in Early Modern Europe: Spain, the DutchRepublic and Sweden as Fiscal-Military States 1500-1660 (London, 2002)

Graves, Michael, The Parliaments of Early Modern Europe 1400-1700 (London: Longman, 2001)

Henshall, Nicholas, The Myth of Absolutism: Change and Continuity in Early Modern European Monarchy (London: Longman, 1992)

Raeff, Marc, The Well-Ordered Police State: Social and Institutional Change through Law (New Haven: Yale UP, 1983)

Skinner, Quentin, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Vol. 1: The Renaissance, Vol. 2: The Age of Reformation (Cambridge: UP, 1978)

Te Brake, Wayne Ph., Shaping History: Ordinary People in European Politics 1500-1700 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998) [D 231.T3]

The Peace of Utrecht, engraving by A. Allard, Amsterdam 1713

[Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris]