The Freestate of the Three Leagues in the Grisons, a rural confederation of peasant villages in the Swiss Alps, was one of the most unusual political entities found in early modern Europe. Its inhabitants enjoyed popular sovereignty and remarkable local autonomy, and many of them insisted on political equality among citizens, and on political leaders' responsibilities to their communities. The author uses pamphlets and political documents to trace the Freestate's evolution, focusing on its institutional structure and on the political language used by its in habitants.

In this detailed study, Henry Heller challenges the dominant approach to the history of early modern France, that of the Annales school, with its emphasis on long-term economic and cultural forces. He reexamines the history of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in France, and finds a surprising degree of economic, technological and scientific innovation. At the same time, he contests the view that the religious conflicts of the period ought only to be understood in strictly religious terms.

This book is the first serious study of Henry IV's relationship with the towns of France. Rejected by a majority of his subjects because of his Protestant faith, Henry spent the early years of his reign conquering his kingdom through the use of force, persuasion, bribery, and conciliation. By reopening the lines of communication between the crown and the towns, he strengthened the French monarchy. Thus while this book is not a biography of the King, it offers an in-depth analysis of a crucial aspect of his craft of kingship.

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.

In the literature on the Dutch revolt--indeed, in the scholarship on revolution as a whole--the experience of the leading textile and trading center of Lille stands out as singular. Although affected by powerful economic, political, and religious currents that provoked rebellion in many other cities, it was renowned for adhering to the existing order. In this comprehensive study, Robert S. DuPlessis draws on a wide range of primary sources to illuminate the processes of selective adaptation that by the 1560s had endowed Lille with a structural tendency to stability.