Magnanimous Dukes and Rising States

Magnanimous Dukes and Rising States PDF Author: Robert Stein
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198757107
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 332

Book Description
In the late fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries, the Dukes of Valois-Burgundy created a composite monarchy in the Netherlands, an area that had been dominated for centuries by several regional dynasties. In this way they laid the foundation for the modern states of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxemburg. The rise of the House of Burgundy can be read as the success story of a dynasty that in little over a century managed to assemble a great number of principalities, thus creating a new state. The Burgundian takeover, however, resulted in a modernization of administration, jurisdiction, and finances. The process of unification and the character of the union are the central topics of Magnanimous Dukes and Rising States. Robert Stein mirrors continuity and modernization in Burgundian times with the bankruptcy of the former dynasties and the decline of feudal government. The powerful towns played an important background role; it was only with their support that a unification of the Netherlands was possible, but this support was not unselfish. This study is about the development of power relations and institutions in the field of tension between ruler and subject, between centralization and particularism.

Magnanimous Dukes and Rising States

Magnanimous Dukes and Rising States PDF Author: Robert Stein
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780191817014
Category : Netherlands
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description
This work tells the story of the formation of a new state in north-western Europe and the rise of the Burgundian house in the fifteenth century, and how a power-hungry dynasty was able to reach a new equilibrium with the elites. The outcome had the lasting effect of laying the foundation for the modern states of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxemburg

The Power and Pains of Polysemy: Maritime Trade, Averages, and Institutional Development in the Low Countries (15th–16th Centuries)

The Power and Pains of Polysemy: Maritime Trade, Averages, and Institutional Development in the Low Countries (15th–16th Centuries) PDF Author: Gijs Dreijer
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004540350
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Book Description
This book offers a study of so-called ‘Maritime Averages’, a variety of risk management instruments used in maritime trade, in the Low Countries, showing how Averages played a major role in the institutional development of the Low Countries.

A Concise History of Belgium

A Concise History of Belgium PDF Author: Guy Vanthemsche
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521192412
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 397

Book Description
"The nation-state Belgium, born in 1830, and the polities that preceded it since ancient times, have played an important role in European and even global history. This introductory history offers a synthetical and non-specialist yet academically based view on the social, economic, political, and cultural aspects of its evolution"--

The Spanish Habsburgs and Dynastic Rule, 1500–1700

The Spanish Habsburgs and Dynastic Rule, 1500–1700 PDF Author: Elisabeth Geevers
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000909360
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Book Description
Providing a novel research methodology for students and scholars with an interest in dynasties, at all levels, this book explores the Spanish Habsburg dynasty that ruled the Spanish monarchy between c. 1515 and 1700. Instead of focusing on the reigns of successive kings, the book focuses on the Habsburgs as a family group that was constructed in various ways: as a community of heirs, a genealogical narrative, a community of the dead and a ruling family group. These constructions reflect the fact that dynasties do not only exist in the present, as kings, queens or governors, but also in the past, in genealogies, and in the future, as a group of hypothetical heirs. This book analyses how dynasties were ‘made’ by the people belonging to them. It uses a social institutionalist framework to analyse how family dynamics gave rise to practices and roles. The kings of Spain only had limited power to control the construction of their dynasty, since births and deaths, processes of dynastic centralisation, pressure from subjects, relatives’ individual agency, rivalry among relatives and the institutionalisation of roles limited their power. Including several genealogical tables to support students new to the Spanish Habsburgs, this book is essential reading for all students of early modern Europe and the history of monarchy. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Community, Urban Health and Environment in the Late Medieval Low Countries

Community, Urban Health and Environment in the Late Medieval Low Countries PDF Author: Janna Coomans
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110883177X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 351

Book Description
Explores how preventative health practices shaped urban communities, social ties and living environments in the medieval Low Countries.

Unions and Divisions

Unions and Divisions PDF Author: Paul Srodecki
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000685586
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Book Description
Providing a comprehensive and engaging account of personal unions, composite monarchies and multiple rule in premodern Europe: Unions and Divisions. New Forms of Rule in Medieval and Renaissance Europe uses a comparative approach to examine the phenomena of the medieval and renaissance unions in a pan-European overview. In the later Middle Ages, genealogical coincidences led to caesuras in various dynastic successions. Solutions to these were found, above all, in new constellations which saw one political entity becoming co-managed by the ruler of another in the form of a personal union. In the premodern period, such solutions were characterised by two factors in particular: on the one hand, the entry of two countries into a union did not constitute a military annexation — even though claims to the throne were all too often imposed by force; on the other hand, the new unitarian constellation retained, at least de jure, the independence of its respective components. The twenty-four essays, ranging in scope from Scandinavia to Iberia, from England and France to Central and Eastern Europe, examine whether the respective unions were the result of careful planning and deliberations in the face of a long-foreseen succession crisis or whether they emerged from dynamic developments that were largely reactive and dependent upon various random factors and circumstances. Each union is assessed to provide an understanding, for students and researchers, of the political and social forces involved in the respective countries and investigates how the unions were reflected in contemporary literature (pamphlets, memoranda, chronicles, diaries etc.), propaganda and in legal and historical discourses. This volume is essential reading for students and researchers interested in the history of monarchy, political history and social and cultural histories in premodern Europe.

The Holy Roman Empire [2 volumes]

The Holy Roman Empire [2 volumes] PDF Author: Brian A. Pavlac
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1440848564
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 839

Book Description
Reference entries, overview essays, and primary source document excerpts survey the history and unveil the successes and failures of the longest-lasting European empire. The Holy Roman Empire endured for ten centuries. This book surveys the history of the empire from the formation of a Frankish Kingdom in the sixth century through the efforts of Charlemagne to unify the West around A.D. 800, the conflicts between emperors and popes in the High Middle Ages, and the Reformation and the Wars of Religion in the Early Modern period to the empire's collapse under Napoleonic rule. A historical overview and timeline are followed by sections on government and politics, organization and administration, individuals, groups and organizations, key events, the military, objects and artifacts, and key places. Each of these topical sections begins with an overview essay, which is followed by alphabetically arranged reference entries on significant topics. The book includes a selection of primary source documents, each of which is introduced by a contextualizing headnote, and closes with a selected, general bibliography.

The Futures of Medieval French

The Futures of Medieval French PDF Author: Jane Gilbert
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1843845954
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 401

Book Description
Essays on aspects of medieval French literature, celebrating the scholarship of Sarah Kay and her influence on the field.

The Voice of the People?

The Voice of the People? PDF Author: Wim Blockmans
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1003830102
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 441

Book Description
Over the last two centuries, Europe has developed various forms of political representation from which democratic parliamentary systems gradually emerged. This book unravels the conditions, scale and impact under which political participation of common burghers and peasants emerged. Political participation in Europe before the Revolutions moved away from the traditional focus on ‘Three Estates’ which has often blurred the interpretation of popular participation’s role in societies. This book instead examines Europe’s key political variants such as high levels of commercialization and urbanization, combined with a balance of powers between competing categories of actors in society controlling relatively independent resources which lead to political participation forming across the continent. Instead of starting from any ideal type of political participation, this book focuses on the variation through time and space, its composition and activity, helps to explain the functions particular institutional settings fulfilled. The time frame 1100–1800 sheds light on the long-term evolutions such as institutional inertia and processes of oligarchizing. To reveal a correlation of economic and demographical growth with the claim of rising social classes to voice their interests. It also points to the opposite tendency: the formation of fiscalmilitary monarchical states. This book is essential reading for those interested in the formation of Europe’s political structures and students of premodern political history.