Perilous Performances

In a book addressing those interested in the transformation of monarchy into the modern state and in intersections of gender and political power, Katherine Crawford examines the roles of female regents in early modern France. The reigns of child kings loosened the normative structure in which adult males headed the body politic, setting the stage for innovative claims to authority made on gendered terms. When assuming the regency, Catherine de Medicis presented herself as dutiful mother, devoted widow, and benign peacemaker, masking her political power. In subsequent regencies, Marie de Medicis and Anne of Austria developed strategies that naturalized a regendering of political structures. They succeeded so thoroughly that Philippe d'Orleans found that this rhetoric at first supported but ultimately undermined his authority. Regencies demonstrated that power did not necessarily work from the places, bodies, or genders in which it was presumed to reside. While broadening the terms of monarchy, regencies involving complex negotiations among child kings, queen mothers, and royal uncles made clear that the state continued regardless of the king--a point not lost on the Revolutionaries or irrelevant to the fate of Marie-Antoinette.

An innovative analysis of the representational strategies that constructed Catherine de’ Medici and sought to explain her behaviour and motivations.

Mapping and Charting for the Lion and the Lily: Map and Atlas Production in Early Modern England and France is a comparative study of the production and role of maps, charts, and atlases in early modern England and France, with a particular focus on Paris, the cartographic center of production from the late seventeenth century to the late eighteenth century, and London, which began to emerge (in the late eighteenth century) to eclipse the once favored Bourbon center. The themes that carry through the work address the role of government in map and chart making. In France, in particular, it is the importance of the centralized government and its support for geographic works and their makers through a broad and deep institutional infrastructure. Prior to the late eighteenth century in England, there was no central controlling agency or institution for map, chart, or atlas production, and any official power was imposed through the market rather than through the establishment of institutions. There was no centralized support for the cartographic enterprise and any effort by the crown was often challenged by the power of Parliament which saw little value in fostering or supporting scholar-geographers or a national survey. This book begins with an investigation of the imagery of power on map and atlas frontispieces from the late sixteenth century to the seventeenth century. In the succeeding chapters the focus moves from county and regional mapping efforts in England and France to the “paper wars” over encroachment in their respective colonial interests. The final study looks at charting efforts and highlights the role of government support and the commercial trade in the development of maritime charts not only for the home waters of the English Channel, but the distant and dangerous seas of the East Indies.

Thrust into power in the midst of the bloodiest conflict Europe had ever experienced, Amalia Elisabeth fought to save her country, her Calvinist church, and her children’s inheritance. Tryntje Helfferich’s vivid portrait reveals how this unique and embattled ruler used her diplomatic gifts to play the great powers of Europe against one another during the Thirty Years War, while raising one of the most powerful and effective fighting forces on the continent. Stranded in exile after the death of her husband, Amalia Elisabeth stymied the maneuvers of male relatives and advisors who hoped to seize control of the affairs of her tiny German state of Hesse-Cassel. Unshakable in her religious faith and confident in her own capacity to rule, the princess crafted a cunning strategy to protect her interests. Despite great personal tragedy, challenges to her rule, and devastating losses to her people and lands, Amalia Elisabeth wielded her hard-won influence to help shape the new Europe that arose in the war’s wake. She ended her reign in triumph, having secured the birthright of her children and the legalization of her church. The Iron Princess restores to view one of the most compelling political figures of her time, a woman once widely considered the heroine of the seventeenth century.

Queens Consort, Cultural Transfer and European Politics examines the roles that queens consort played in dynastic politics and cultural transfer between their natal and marital courts during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. This collection of essays analyses the part that these queens played in European politics, showing how hard and soft power, high politics and cultural influences, cannot be strictly separated. It shows that the root of these consorts’ power lay in their dynastic networks and the extent to which they cultivated them. The consorts studied in this book come from territories such as Austria, Braunschweig, Hanover, Poland, Portugal, Prussia and Saxony and travel to, among other places, Britain, Naples, Russia, Spain and Sweden. The various chapters address different types of cultural manifestation, among them collecting, portraiture, panegyric poetry, libraries, theatre and festivals, learning, genealogical literature and architecture. The volume significantly shifts the direction of scholarship by moving beyond a focus on individual historical women to consider ‘queens consort’ as a category, making it valuable reading for students and scholars of early modern gender and political history.