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.

The Swedish invasion of 1655, known to Poles ever since as the 'Swedish deluge', provoked the political and military collapse of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the second-largest state in Europe. Robert Frost examines the reasons for Poland's fall and the conduct of the war by the Polish government, and addresses the crucial question of why, despite widespread recognition of the shortcomings of the political system, subsequent attempts at reform failed. War has long been seen as crucial to the development of more effective systems of government in Europe during the seventeenth century,...

This book reveals the workings of a culture that cherished death, and invested its resources in the pursuit of heaven. This is the first full-length study of Spanish attitudes toward death and the afterlife in the peak years of the Counter-Reformation. It contains an analysis of the death rituals requested in hundreds of sixteenth-century Madrid testaments, as well as a detailed account of the ways in which the "good" deaths of King Philip II and Saint Teresa of Avila were interpreted by contemporaries.

This book examines the relationship between the Reformation movement of the sixteenth century and the rural population of Germany. Over ninety percent of the population lived in the countryside, and yet to date they have received scant attention. The experience of the Reformation by the average villager is described, and an attempt is made to understand the villagers on their own terms: their beliefs, their customs, and their forms of rule. The result is an original work that both examines an important event such as the Reformation and judges it by the standards (and often the words) of the...

This book examines the role of war and the development of the smaller German territories in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries through the example of the duchy of WUrttemberg. It reappraises traditional interpretations of German history that emphasize the role of Prussia and play down the significance of the smaller states. This is also the first comprehensive investigation of the relationship between developments within such territories and the structure of the Holy Roman Empire of which they formed a part. It reveals the Empire as a flawed but functioning political system and sheds...

This is a study of early modern government finance in the kingdom of Naples, one of the most important European dominions of the Spanish Empire. Professor Calabria focuses on the period from the mid-sixteenth century to the time of the Thirty Years' War. He connects fiscal developments to larger issues, such as the seventeenth-century crisis, the decline of Italy and Spain, and the economic and social significance of investments in government securities markets in early modern Europe. The Cost of Empire blends quantitative data on economic, fiscal, and financial affairs with non-quantitative...

In the second half of the eighteenth century, Paris was the second largest city in Europe, with a population of some half a million. Contemporary writers described it as anonymous and chaotic, and so it must have seemed to many new arrivals from the provinces. Yet the records of the local police officials, which have remained virtually untouched for two hundred years, reveal a world which was far from anonymous, where most people went about their daily affairs in streets and shops where not only the places but also the faces were familiar. From the mass of individual disputes and incidents...

Including Professor salmon's pioneering and authoritative analyses as well as particular studies of french revolts.

This is the first book to attempt a comprehensive analysis of the state of Spain's naval forces in the years following the defeat of the Great Armada in 1588 and during the seventeenth century. This was a period in which all of Europe's maritime powers were attaching increasing importance to naval warfare in their bid to topple Spain and to seize the rich pickings of her vast empire. The book's findings throw new light on the conservation of Spain's timber resources, naval funding, and the recruitment and status of the Spanish seaman, in a study of the political, social, economic and...

Frontiers of Heresy is among the first major English-language contributions to the history of the Spanish Inquisition since Henry Charles Lea completed his classic curvey eighty years ago. Focusing on the lands beyond Castile, Professor Monter analyzes the activities of the Holy Office during an 'Aragonese Century' (1530 1630) when these frontier tribunals were its most active elements. This 'other' Spanish Inquisition virtually ignored converted Jews and their descendants, but brutally harassed Moriscos and immigrant workers from France; it executed nearly as many people for sodomy as for...