Monarchy Transformed
Princes and their Elites in Early Modern Western Europe

A decisive contribution to the long-running debate about the dynamics of state formation and elite transformation in early modern Europe.

Robert von Friedeburg (Edited by), John Morrill (Edited by)

9781316510247, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 17 August 2017

406 pages
23.5 x 16 x 2.5 cm, 0.7 kg

'This is an important book that will be essential reading for historians of state formation and nobilities … will stimulate further research on a whole range of significant aspects of early modern history.' Alistair Malcolm, Renaissance Quarterly

This decisive contribution to the long-running debate about the dynamics of state formation and elite transformation in early modern Europe examines the new monarchies that emerged during the course of the 'long seventeenth century'. It argues that the players surviving the power struggles of this period were not 'states' in any modern sense, but primarily princely dynasties pursuing not only dynastic ambitions and princely prestige but the consequences of dynastic chance. At the same time, elites, far from insisting on confrontation with the government of princes for principled ideological reasons, had every reason to seek compromise and even advancement through new channels that the governing dynasty offered, if only they could profit from them. Monarchy Transformed ultimately challenges the inevitability of modern maps of Europe and shows how, instead of promoting state formation, the wars of the period witnessed the creation of several dynastic agglomerates and new kinds of aristocracy.

1. Introduction: monarchy transformed - princes and their elites in early modern Western Europe Robert von Friedeburg and John Morrill
Part I. Dynasties and Monarchies: 2. Dynasties, realms, peoples and state formation, 1500–1720 John Morrill
3. Dynastic monarchy and the consolidation of aristocracy during Europe's long seventeenth-century Hamish Scott
4. Dynastic instability, the emergence of the French monarchical commonwealth and the coming of the rhetoric of 'L'état', 1360s to 1650s James Collins
5. Setting limits to grandeur: preserving the Spanish monarchy in an iron century B. J.Garcia Garcia
6. The new monarchy in France, the social elites and the society of princes Lucien Bely
Part II. Elites, Rhetoric and Monarchy: 7. The King and the family: primogeniture and the Lombard nobility in the Spanish monarchy Antonio Álvarez-Ossorio Alvariño
8. Portugal's elites and political status within the Spanish monarchy Pedro Cardim
9. In the service of the dynasty: building a career in the Habsburg household, 1550–1650 Dries Raeymakers
10. Revolutionary absolutism and the elites of the Danish monarchy in the long seventeenth century Gunner Lind
11. The 'New Monarchy' as despotic beast: the perspective of the lesser nobility in France and Germany, 1630s to 1650s Robert von Friedeburg
12. The crisis of sacral monarchy in England in the late seventeenth century in comparative perspective Ronald G. Asch
Afterword. Rethinking the relations of elites and princes in Europe from the 1590s to the 1720s Nicholas Canny.

Subject Areas: Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], European history [HBJD]