Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Series
  3. Cambridge Studies in Early Modern History

Cambridge Studies in Early Modern History monographs and studies illuminate the character of the period as a whole. In particular they focus attention on a dominant theme within it, the interplay of continuity and change as they are presented by the continuity of medieval ideas, political and social organization, and by the impact of new ideas, new methods and new demands on the traditional structures.

  • General Editors: John Elliott, University of Oxford, Olwen Hufton, University of Oxford, H. G. Koenigsberger, University of London, H. M. Scott, University of St Andrews

Refine search

Refine search

Content type:
Publication date:
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

31 results in Cambridge Studies in Early Modern History

Page 2 of 2

Classes, Estates and Order in Early-Modern Brittany
  • James B. Collins
  • Published online:
    06 October 2009
    Print publication:
    17 March 1994
  • This book uses the Breton experience to address two fundamental historiographical issues: the meaning of absolutism and the nature of early-modern French society. It abandons the old framework that opposed orders to classes, and instead seeks to find the central meaning of the evolution of the French state in the maintenance of order (especially the preservation of property). Professor Collins's main purpose, illustrated by his fusion of economic, social and institutional approaches, is to combine social and political/institutional history, so long separated in works on this field. Contrary to much received wisdom, Professor Collins argues that absolutism was more facade than reality, and that French society was much more mobile than generally believed.

The Reformation and Rural Society
  • The Parishes of Brandenburg-Ansbach-Kulmbach, 1528–1603
  • C. Scott Dixon
  • Published online:
    03 October 2009
    Print publication:
    14 December 1995
  • What was the effect of the Reformation movement on the parishioners of the German countryside? This book examines the reform movement at the level of its implementation - the rural parish. Investigation of the Reformation and the sixteenth-century parish reveals the strength of tradition and custom in village life and how this parish culture obstructed and frustrated the efforts of the Lutheran reformers. The Reformation was not passively adopted by the rural inhabitants. On the contrary, the parishioners manipulated the reform movement to serve their own ends. Parish documentation reveals that the system of parish rule diffused the disciplinary aims of the church and rendered the pastors impotent. A look at parish beliefs suggests that the nature of parish thought worked to undermine the main tenets of the Lutheran faith, and that the legacy of the Reformation was a dialogue between these two realms of experience.

Labour, Science and Technology in France, 1500–1620
  • Henry Heller
  • Published online:
    01 October 2009
    Print publication:
    07 December 1995
  • For a generation, the history of the ancien régime has been written from the perspective of the Annales school, with its emphasis on the role of long-term economic and cultural factors in shaping the development of early modern France. In this detailed 1995 study, Henry Heller challenges such a paradigm and assembles a huge range of information about technical innovation and ideas of improvement in sixteenth-century France. Emphasising the role of state intervention in the economy, the development of science and technology, and recent research into early modern proto-industrialisation, Heller counters notions of a France mired in an archaic, determinist mentalité. Despite the tides of religious fanaticism and seigneurial reaction, the period of the religious wars saw a surprising degree of economic, technological and scientific innovation, making possible the consolidation of capitalism in French society during the reign of Henri IV.

The Limits of Royal Authority
  • Resistance and Obedience in Seventeenth-Century Castile
  • Ruth MacKay
  • Published online:
    29 September 2009
    Print publication:
    06 May 1999
  • 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. Whereas there was little open conflict, there was sometimes a surprising degree of autonomy, rights and reciprocity on the part of the king's vassals. This is a study of one such form of resistance: the opposition to military levies. This opposition took place during a period of crisis, during the 1630s and 1640s, when the Crown's need to raise an army came into conflict with a notion of kingship that was far from absolute. From the king's advisory councils to parliament, from city councils and seigneurial estates, to the most humble villages, Castilians had recourse to a wide range of political and juridictional means with which to dispute the king's claims and avoid conscription.

The Other Prussia
  • Royal Prussia, Poland and Liberty, 1569–1772
  • Karin Friedrich
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    24 February 2000
  • This book considers the phenomenon of nation-building before the age of modern nationalism. It focuses on royal (Polish) Prussia - the 'other' Prussia - a province of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from 1466 to 1772/3, and its major cities Danzig, Thorn and Elbing. As an integral part of the Polish state the Prussian estates took pride in their separate institutions and privileges. Although its urban elites became predominantly Protestant and German-speaking, they formulated a republican identity deliberately hostile to the competing monarchical-dynastic myth in neighbouring ducal Prussia, ruled by the Brandenburg-Hohenzollerns from 1618. After 1700, the Polish crown increasingly antagonized the Prussian burghers by its centralizing policies and its failure to protect the integrity of the Commonwealth's borders. The decline of Poland and the partitions of 1772–93 guaranteed that it was not the tradition of liberty but the Hohenzollern version of Prussian identity that survived into the modern era. Joint winner of the Orbis book prize, The American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies.

The Armada of Flanders
  • Spanish Maritime Policy and European War, 1568–1668
  • R. A. Stradling
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    28 February 1992
  • The Flanders armada, took shape in response to the use of seapower by the Dutch rebels, and evolved into the most effective unit in Spain's defence establishment. In combination with its privateering auxiliaries, this elite striking force dominated the North Sea for some twenty years (1625–45), and campaigned also in the Mediterranean and Atlantic theatres of war. Yet its contribution to the tenacious survival of Spanish hegemony has never before been assessed. A narrative of the armada's fighting record over the century of its meaningful existence is presented with constant reference to the strategic-logistical context and analysis of policymaking in Madrid. Attention is paid to the political significance of maritime policy, and particularly the relationship between Madrid and its subordinate headquarters in Brussels; the infrastructure of the armada; the ships themselves, above all the revolutionary but elusive 'frigate'; the social hierarchy of crews and commanders; and details of administration and financing.

War, State and Society in Württemberg, 1677–1793
  • Peter H. Wilson
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    23 March 1995
  • This book provides a radical new interpretation of the aims of the lesser German princes during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries through the example of the duchy of Württemberg. Arguing that the princes' political ambitions were fundamental in shaping the internal development of their territories, the author sheds new light on the political importance of the notorious German 'soldier trade' and its role in international diplomacy. The wider social and political impact of these policies is also investigated in a comparative framework, while traditional interpretations of the dramatic struggle between duke and estates are challenged in a reassessment of the role of early modern representative institutions in German state development. The relationship of these internal political struggles to the different elements of the Holy Roman Empire is revealed, opening up new perspectives on the role of the German states within the imperial structure and revealing the empire as a flawed but functioning political system.

Religious Toleration and Social Change in Hamburg, 1529–1819
  • Joachim Whaley
  • Published online:
    18 September 2009
    Print publication:
    08 August 1985
  • The emergence of religious toleration was one of the main features of the development of Western society after the Reformation. While previous research has concentrated largely on ideas of toleration, this study of the Lutheran Imperial City of Hamburg analyses the way in which those ideas were received and gradually implemented. Hamburg was one of the most dynamic mercantile centres of early modern Europe. It attracted substantial numbers of Catholics, Calvinists and Jews. Dr Whaley examines the factors, which influenced the often uneasy relationship with the Lutheran majority. He illuminates the interaction between religion, politics and social change, and shows the impact of international movements and German Imperial legislation on local controversies. An analysis of the major religious and secular festivities, like the centenaries of the Reformation, illuminates those deep-rooted political and ideological factors which cancelled out the obvious economic and humanitarian arguments in favour of open toleration.

The Continuity of Feudal Power
  • The Caracciolo Di Brienza in Spanish Naples
  • Tommaso Astarita
  • Published online:
    28 August 2009
    Print publication:
    12 December 1991
  • The Continuity of Feudal Power is an analytic study of a family of the Neapolitan aristocracy during the early modern period, with particular focus on the time of Spanish rule (1503–1707). The Caracciolo marquis of Brienza were a branch of one of the oldest and most powerful clans in the kingdom of Naples, and they numbered among the hundred wealthiest feudal families throughout the early modern period. Professor Astarita reconstructs the family's patrimony, administration and revenues, the family's relationship with the rural communities over which it had jurisdiction, its marriage and alliance policies, and the relations between the aristocracy and the monarchical government. His emphasis is on the continuing importance of feudal traditions, institutions and values both in the definition of the aristocracy's status and in its success in ensuring the persistence of its wealth and power within the kingdom.

Defiled Trades and Social Outcasts
  • Honor and Ritual Pollution in Early Modern Germany
  • Kathy Stuart
  • Published online:
    06 August 2009
    Print publication:
    04 May 2000
  • This book presents a social and cultural history of 'dishonourable 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 'dishonourable' by virtue of their trades. This dishonour was either hereditary, often through several generations, or it arose from ritual pollution whereby honourable citizens could become dishonourable by coming into casual contact with members of the outcast group. The dishonourable milieu of the city of Augsburg from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries is reconstructed to show the extent to which dishonour determined the life-chances and self-identity of dishonourable people. The book then investigates how honourable estates interacted with dishonourable people, and how the pollution anxieties of early modern Germans structured social and political relations within honourable society.

The Emergence of the Eastern Powers, 1756–1775
  • H. M. Scott
  • Published online:
    16 July 2009
    Print publication:
    15 November 2001
  • Throughout the nineteenth century, international relations in Europe were dominated by five great powers - Britain, France, Russia, Austria and Prussia. The creation of this system has been located traditionally in the long struggle with revolutionary and Napoleonic France. By contrast, this study demonstrates that its origins lie half a century earlier. During the third quarter of the eighteenth century, the European states-system was transformed by the military rise of Russia and Prussia in the Seven Years War of 1756–63. Eastern Europe became pre-eminent, and during the 1770s Poland was partitioned for the first time, while Russia and Austria also seized territory from the Ottoman empire. Europe's centre of gravity moved sharply eastwards, and by the later 1770s Russia was emerging as the leading continental power. This study, based upon manuscript and printed sources from six countries, provides a comprehensive analysis of these crucial events.

Page 2 of 2