Download or read book Monarchism and Absolutism in Early Modern Europe written by Cesare Cuttica and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-06 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 14 essays in this volume look at both the theory and practice of monarchical governments from the Thirty Years War up until the time of the French Revolution. Contributors aim to unravel the constructs of ‘absolutism’ and ‘monarchism’, examining how the power and authority of monarchs was defined through contemporary politics and philosophy.
Download or read book Monarchism and Absolutism in Early Modern Europe written by Cesare Cuttica and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-06 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 14 essays in this volume look at both the theory and practice of monarchical governments from the Thirty Years War up until the time of the French Revolution. Contributors aim to unravel the constructs of ‘absolutism’ and ‘monarchism’, examining how the power and authority of monarchs was defined through contemporary politics and philosophy.
Download or read book Royal and Republican Sovereignty in Early Modern Europe written by Robert Oresko and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1997-01-30 with total page 706 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of illustrated essays on sovereignty and political power in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe.
Download or read book Monarchisms in the Age of Enlightenment written by John Christian Laursen and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2007-01-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent decades, historians of early-modern European political thought have tended to neglect the concept of monarchy and monarchism, focusing instead on the development of republicanism during this period. Monarchisms in the Age of Enlightenment aims to correct this imbalance by illustrating that many thinkers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in fact, saw monarchy as a solution to the instability, chaos, and even violence of experiments with republican government. Editors Hans Blom, John Christian Laursen, and Luisa Simonutti have brought together outstanding scholars in the field to correct many of the misleading stereotypes about monarchy, and to explore the variety and dynamism of this form of government, in early-modern Europe. Contributors explore four major themes: monarchisms in the political thought of Spinoza, Bayle, Fénelon, Hume, and Montesquieu; enlightened Christian and millenarian monarchisms; defending and resisting absolute monarchy; and, finally, reflections on the British monarchy. Fascinating and timely, Monarchisms in the Age of Enlightenment will be of interest to historians, political theorists, political philosophers, and political scientists.
Download or read book The Myth of Absolutism written by Nicholas Henshall and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-06 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conventionally, ``absolutism'' in early-modern Europe has suggested unfettered autocracy and despotism -- the erosion of rights, the centralisation of decision-making, the loss of liberty. Everything, in a word, that was un-British but characteristic of ancien-regime France. Recently historians have questioned such comfortably simplistic views. This lively investigation of ``absolutism'' in action -- continent-wide but centred on a detailed comparison of France and England -- dissolves the traditional picture to reveal a much more complex reality; and in so doing illuminates the varied ways in which early-modern Europe was governed.
Download or read book Leviathan written by Thomas Hobbes and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2012-10-03 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written during a moment in English history when the political and social structures were in flux and open to interpretation, Leviathan played an essential role in the development of the modern world.
Download or read book The Routledge History of Monarchy written by Elena Woodacre and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-06-12 with total page 1031 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge History of Monarchy draws together current research across the field of royal studies, providing a rich understanding of the history of monarchy from a variety of geographical, cultural and temporal contexts. Divided into four parts, this book presents a wide range of case studies relating to different aspects of monarchy throughout a variety of times and places, and uses these case studies to highlight different perspectives of monarchy and enhance understanding of rulership and sovereignty in terms of both concept and practice. Including case studies chosen by specialists in a diverse array of subjects, such as history, art, literature, and gender studies, it offers an extensive global and interdisciplinary approach to the history of monarchy, providing a thorough insight into the workings of monarchies within Europe and beyond, and comparing different cultural concepts of monarchy within a variety of frameworks, including social and religious contexts. Opening up the discussion of important questions surrounding fundamental issues of monarchy and rulership, The Routledge History of Monarchy is the ideal book for students and academics of royal studies, monarchy, or political history.
Download or read book Democracy and Anti Democracy in Early Modern England 1603 1689 written by Cesare Cuttica and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-07-18 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Listen to the podcast here. This cross-disciplinary collection of essays examines – for the first time and in detail – the variegated notions of democracy put forward in seventeenth-century England. It thus shows that democracy was widely explored and debated at the time; that anti-democratic currents and themes have a long history; that the seventeenth century is the first period in English history where we nonetheless find positive views of democracy; and that whether early-modern writers criticised or advocated it, these discussions were important for the subsequent development of the concept and practice ‘democracy’. By offering a new historical account of such development, the book provides an innovative exploration of an important but overlooked topic whose relevance is all the more considerable in today’s political debates, civic conversation, academic arguments and media talk. Contributors include Camilla Boisen, Alan Cromartie, Cesare Cuttica, Hannah Dawson, Martin Dzelzainis, Rachel Foxley, Matthew Growhoski, Rachel Hammersley, Peter Lake, Gaby Mahlberg, Markku Peltonen, Edward Vallance, and John West.
Download or read book The Dream of Absolutism written by Hall Bjørnstad and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction. The problem with absolutism ; Beyond mere propaganda ; Approaching absolutism differently: royal glory and royal exemplarity ; The dream of absolutism -- The grammar of absolutism. The dream of a book like no other ; Taking Louis XIV's Mémoires seriously ; Absolutism, explained to a child: "The first and most important part of our entire politics" ; The utility of "These Mémoires" ; The paradoxes of absolutist exemplarity ; Conclusion: "So many ghastly examples" -- Mirrors of absolutism. Introduction: Our body in this space ; An age of mirrors ; A gallery celebrating greatness ; Making the king see what he felt ; A mirror for one ; In lieu of conclusion: Mirrors for a future without a past -- Absolutist absurdities. Exhibit A: The royal historiographer and the unparalleled greatness of Louis XIV ; Exhibit B: Absolutism from the cabinet of fairies to the cabinet of the king ; Conclusion: Seven theses on the dream of absolutism.
Download or read book The Early Modern Dutch Press in an Age of Religious Persecution written by David de Boer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. For victims of persecution around the world, attracting international media attention for their plight is often a matter of life and death. This study takes us back to the news revolution of seventeenth-century Europe, when people first discovered in the press a powerful new weapon to combat religiously inspired maltreatments, executions, and massacres. To affect and mobilize foreign audiences, confessional minorities and their advocates faced an acute dilemma, one that we still grapple with today: how to make people care about distant suffering? David de Boer argues that by answering this question, they laid the foundations of a humanitarian culture in Europe. As consuming news became an everyday practice for many Europeans, the Dutch Republic emerged as an international hub of printed protest against religious violence. De Boer traces how a diverse group of people, including Waldensians refugees, Huguenot ministers, Savoyard office holders, and many others, all sought access to the Dutch printing presses in their efforts to raise transnational solidarity for their cause. By generating public outrage, calling out rulers, and pressuring others to intervene, producers of printed opinion could have a profound impact on international relations. But crying out against persecution also meant navigating a fraught and dangerous political landscape, marked by confessional tension, volatile alliances, and incessant warfare. Opinion makers had to think carefully about the audiences they hoped to reach through pamphlets, periodicals, and newspapers. But they also had to reckon with the risk of reaching less sympathetic readers outside their target groups. By examining early modern publicity strategies, de Boer deepens our understanding of how people tried to shake off the spectre of religious violence that had haunted them for generations, and create more tolerant societies, governed by the rule of law, reason, and a sense of common humanity.
Download or read book The Impossible State written by Wael B. Hallaq and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2012-11-20 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wael B. Hallaq boldly argues that the "Islamic state," judged by any standard definition of what the modern state represents, is both impossible and inherently self-contradictory. Comparing the legal, political, moral, and constitutional histories of premodern Islam and Euro-America, he finds the adoption and practice of the modern state to be highly problematic for modern Muslims. He also critiques more expansively modernity's moral predicament, which renders impossible any project resting solely on ethical foundations. The modern state not only suffers from serious legal, political, and constitutional issues, Hallaq argues, but also, by its very nature, fashions a subject inconsistent with what it means to be, or to live as, a Muslim. By Islamic standards, the state's technologies of the self are severely lacking in moral substance, and today's Islamic state, as Hallaq shows, has done little to advance an acceptable form of genuine Shari'a governance. The Islamists' constitutional battles in Egypt and Pakistan, the Islamic legal and political failures of the Iranian Revolution, and similar disappointments underscore this fact. Nevertheless, the state remains the favored template of the Islamists and the ulama (Muslim clergymen). Providing Muslims with a path toward realizing the good life, Hallaq turns to the rich moral resources of Islamic history. Along the way, he proves political and other "crises of Islam" are not unique to the Islamic world nor to the Muslim religion. These crises are integral to the modern condition of both East and West, and by acknowledging these parallels, Muslims can engage more productively with their Western counterparts.
Download or read book King Ch ngjo an Enlightened Despot in Early Modern Korea written by Christopher Lovins and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2019-03-25 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Were the countries of Europe the only ones that were "early modern"? Was Asia's early modernity cut short by colonialism? Scholars examining early modern Eurasia have not yet fully explored the relationships between absolute rule and political modernization in the highly contested early modern world. Using a comparative perspective that places Chŏngjo, king of Korea from 1776 to 1800, in context with other Korean kings and with contemporary Chinese and European rulers, Christopher Lovins examines the shifting balance of power in Korea in favor of the crown at the expense of the aristocracy during the early modern period. This book is the first to analyze in English the recently discovered collection of 297 private letters written by Chŏngjo himself. These letters were a vital channel of communication outside of official court historians' scrutiny, since private meetings between the king and his ministers were forbidden by custom. Royal politics played out in an arena of subtle communication, with court officials trying to read the king's unstated, elliptically hinted at intentions and the king trying to suggest what he wanted done while maintaining plausible deniability. Through close analysis of both official records and private letters, including Chŏngjo's "secret letters," Lovins shows that, in contrast to previous assumptions, the late eighteenth-century Korean monarchs were not weak and ineffective but instead were in the process of building an absolutist polity.
Download or read book Montesquieu and the Despotic Ideas of Europe written by Vickie B. Sullivan and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Montesquieu is famous as a tireless critic of despotism, which he associates overtly with Asia and the Middle East and not with the apparently more moderate Western models of governance found throughout Europe. However, Vickie B. Sullivan argues that a creaful reading of Montesquieu's enormously influential The Spirit of the Law reveals the surprising result that he recognizes that Europe itself is susceptible to despotic practices - and that the threat emanates not from the East but rather from certain despotic ideas that inform Western institutions and practices. Sullivan guides readers through Montesquieu's sometimes veiled yet sharply critical accounts of Machiavelli, Hobbes, Aristotle, and Plato, as well as various Christian thinkers have brough forth despotic ideas in the form, for example, of brutal Machiavellianism, of Hobbes's justifications for the rule of one, of Plato's reasoning that denied slaves the right of natural defense, and of the Christian teachings that equated heresy with treason. Such ideas, Montesquieu shows, inform such revered European institutions as the French monarchy and the Roman Catholic Church. In this new reading of Montesquieu's masterwork, Sullivan corrects the misconception that it offers simple, objective observations, showing it to be instead a powerful critique of European politics that would become remarkably and regrettably prescient after Montesquieu's death, when despotism repeatedly emerged in Europe with virulent intensity. -- from dust jacket.
Download or read book Scandinavia in the Age of Revolution written by Pasi Ihalainen and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2011 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 'Age of Revolution' is a term seldom used in Scandinavian historiography, despite the fact that Scandinavia was far from untouched by the late eighteenth-century revolutions in Europe and America. Presenting the latest research on political culture in Scandinavia, this volume with twenty-seven contributions focuses on four key aspects: the crisis of monarchy; the transformation in political debate; the emerging influence of commercial interest in politics; and the shifting boundaries of political participation. Generously illustrated throughout, this book will introduce non-Scandinavian readers to developments in the Nordic countries during the late-eighteenth and early nineteenth-centuries and both complement and challenge research into the political cultures of Europe and America.
Download or read book Montesquieu the Despotic Ideas of Europe written by Vickie B. Sullivan and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Montesquieu is rightly famous as a tireless critic of despotism, which he associates in his writings overtly with Asia and the Middle East and not with the apparently more moderate Western models of governance found throughout Europe. However, a careful reading of Montesquieu reveals that he recognizes a susceptibility to despotic practices in the West—and that the threat emanates not from the East, but from certain despotic ideas that inform such Western institutions as the French monarchy and the Roman Catholic Church. Nowhere is Montesquieu’s critique of the despotic ideas of Europe more powerful than in his enormously influential The Spirit of the Laws, and Vickie B. Sullivan guides readers through Montesquieu’s sometimes veiled, yet sharply critical accounts of Machiavelli, Hobbes, Aristotle, and Plato, as well as various Christian thinkers. He finds deleterious consequences, for example, in brutal Machiavellianism, in Hobbes’s justifications for the rule of one, in Plato’s reasoning that denied slaves the right of natural defense, and in the Christian teachings that equated heresy with treason and informed the Inquisition. In this new reading of Montesquieu’s masterwork, Sullivan corrects the misconception that it offers simple, objective observations, showing it instead to be a powerful critique of European politics that would become remarkably and regrettably prescient after Montesquieu’s death when despotism wound its way through Europe.
Download or read book Ancient Constitutions and Modern Monarchy written by Håkon Evju and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-07-08 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What was the role of historical thought and historical inquiry in debates over reform during the Enlightenment? In Ancient Constitutions and Modern Monarchy, Håkon Evju addresses this issue by considering the case of eighteenth-century Denmark-Norway. He argues that historians contributed crucially to the rethinking of Dano-Norwegian absolutism in the face of a shift towards commercial society. Their vision of an ancient Nordic constitution helped recast the monarchy as moderate and influenced debates over agricultural improvements in Denmark and Norway. In an innovative comparative analysis, Evju demonstrates how notions of a common political past were used differently in the two kingdoms. Yet in both cases, such appeals to tradition were vital in controversies over monarchical reform politics during the Enlightenment.
Download or read book The Routledge History of Women in Early Modern Europe written by Amanda L. Capern and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-10-30 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge History of Women in Early Modern Europe is a comprehensive and ground-breaking survey of the lives of women in early-modern Europe between 1450 and 1750. Covering a period of dramatic political and cultural change, the book challenges the current contours and chronologies of European history by observing them through the lens of female experience. The collaborative research of this book covers four themes: the affective world; practical knowledge for life; politics and religion; arts, science and humanities. These themes are interwoven through the chapters, which encompass all areas of women’s lives: sexuality, emotions, health and wellbeing, educational attainment, litigation and the practical and leisured application of knowledge, skills and artistry from medicine to theology. The intellectual lives of women, through reading and writing, and their spirituality and engagement with the material world, are also explored. So too is the sheer energy of female work, including farming and manufacture, skilled craft and artwork, theatrical work and scientific enquiry. The Routledge History of Women in Early Modern Europe revises the chronological and ideological parameters of early-modern European history by opening the reader’s eyes to an exciting age of female productivity, social engagement and political activism across European and transatlantic boundaries. It is essential reading for students and researchers of early-modern history, the history of women and gender studies.
