This is the only scholarly work in the English language on the city of Rome in the Age of the Enlightenment, and the only book in any language to treat this fascinating city in all its multifarious aspects. Professor Gross combines extensive archival research with the latest findings of other scholars to produce a uniquely rounded portrait of the papal capital, elegantly illustrated with contemporary engravings by Piranesi and others. The book is divided into two sections, in the first of which Professor Gross discusses the material and institutional structures of the city, including its...

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.

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.

How did women in 16th century western Europe cope with the consequences of being considered inherently sinful--as well as being legally and economically subordinate to their fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons? What might become of a woman unable to raise a dowry? What were the difficulties faced by spinsters, single mothers, and widows? In this brilliant investigation into the lives of women from all social strata, Hufton leads us from poor-house to palazzo, from cradle to grave, illuminating what it meant to be female in western Europe during the years 1500 to 1800.

This book presents a new interpretation of the development of the French army during the "personal rule" of Louis XIV. Based on massive archival research, it examines the army not only as a military institution but also as a political, social and economic organism. Guy Rowlands asserts that the key to the development of Louis XIV's armed forces was the king's determination to acknowledge and satisfy the military, political, social and cultural aspirations of his officers, and maintain the solid standing of the Bourbon dynasty.