This is an interdisciplinary study of a large Italian estate which belonged to the Medici Grand Dukes of Tuscany. The Medici administrators kept detailed records of the activities of their subjects and these have been used by the author to analyse the demographic, social, economic and political history of the village. The records cover two centuries, which span a harsh economic depression and the ?general crisis? of the seventeenth century. An aim of the book is to gauge the impact of the general European crisis upon a regional society, and to assess the contribution of agrarian economic and...

Noble affinities were the essence of power in sixteenth-century France. This is the first book to analyze the development of a noble following during the whole course of the Wars of Religion. The Guise were one of the greatest families of Christendom and this is the first substantial work on them for a century. In Normandy, a stronghold of Protestantism, they built a formidable ultra-Catholic party that ultimately challenged the monarchy. This book breaks new ground by discussing all groups in political society, from international dynastic politics to peasant revolt.

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.

The reign of Philip III of Spain (1598SH1621) has been viewed traditionally as the age when Spain's world power started to wane. This book reappraises this interpretation and demonstrates that this period represented a realignment of Spanish power in world affairs. It also analyzes the career of the Duke of Lerma, Philip III's chief minister, the first of a series of European royal favorites (such as the Duke of Buckingham, Cardinal Richelieu, and the Count-Duke of Olivares) who influenced politics, court culture and the arts during the seventeenth century.

The Protestant Reformation and revolt against Spain led to major struggles among civic and religious leaders over how to care for the poor in the cities of Holland. For centuries parish charity had been devoted to all poor residents. Calvinists, however, intended their church deacons (who were responsible for charity) to care primarily, if not exclusively, for poor church members. Focusing on six cities, this study shows that the struggle over charity is best understood as a conflict between two distinct visions of Christian community during the Reformation.

It is assumed widely that "war made the state" in seventeenth-century France. Yet this study challenges the traditional interpretations of the role of the army as an instrument of the emerging absolutist state, and shows how the expansion of the French war effort contributed to weakening Richelieu's hold on France and heightened levels of political and social tension. This is the first detailed account of the French army during this formative period of European history. It also contributes more generally to the "military revolution" debate among early modern historians.

The Quest for Compromise is an interdisciplinary study of an imperial court in late-sixteenth-century Vienna, and a detailed examination of a fascinating moment of religious moderation. It investigates the rise and fall of an irenic movement through four individuals: an Italian artist (Jacopo Strada), a Silesian physician (Johannis Crato), a Dutch librarian (Hugo Blotius) and a German soldier (Lazarus von Schwendi), who sought peace and accommodation through a wide range of cultural, intellectual and political activity.

This book presents a social and cultural history of "dishonorable people" (unehrliche Leute), an outcast group in early modern Germany. Executioners, skinners, grave-diggers, shepherds, barber-surgeons, millers, linen-weavers, sow-gelders, latrine-cleaners, and bailiffs were among the "dishonorable" by virtue of their trades. It shows the extent to which dishonor determined the life chances and self-identity of these people. Taking Augsburg as a prime example, it investigates how honorable estates interacted with dishonorable people, and shows how the pollution anxieties of early modern...

This book focuses on the history of Royal Prussia--the "other Prussia"--which was part of the Polish state from 1454 to 1793. It studies the complex relationship between Germans and Slavs in the Polish-Prussian borderlands, and demonstrates the importance of national and historical myth-making for power politics. Analyzing the rivalry between the multinational, constitutionalist Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and its centralized, dynastic neighbor Brandenburg-Prussia, this study contributes to our understanding of the process of early modern nation-building and the formation of national...

In what is sometimes called the age of absolutism, Castilian nobles and commoners, tribunes and towns, were to a considerable degree able to resist and shape royal commands. This is a study of one such form of resistance: the opposition to military levies in the 1630s and 1640s. The assurance with which such a range of people addressed the crown reveals a society in which a great number of people had a great deal to say about the definition and use of political power.