Politics And Culture In Early Modern Europe

Essays taking up themes that have resonated through Professor Koenigsberger's lectures, seminars and public writings.

Gender and Political Culture in Early Modern Europe investigates the gendered nature of political culture across early modern Europe by exploring the relationship between gender, power, and political authority and influence. This collection offers a rethinking of what constituted ‘politics’ and a reconsideration of how men and women operated as part of political culture. It demonstrates how underlying structures could enable or constrain political action, and how political power and influence could be exercised through social and cultural practices. The book is divided into four parts - diplomacy, gifts and the politics of exchange; socio-economic structures; gendered politics at court; and voting and political representations – each of which looks at a series of interrelated themes exploring the ways in which political culture is inflected by questions of gender. In addition to examples drawn from across Europe, including Austria, the Dutch Republic, the Italian States and Scandinavia, the volume also takes a transnational comparative approach, crossing national borders, while the concluding chapter, by Merry Wiesner-Hanks, offers a global perspective on the field and encourages comparative analysis both chronologically and geographically. As the first collection to draw together early modern gender and political culture, this book is the perfect starting point for students exploring this fascinating topic.

This volume of essays reflects the interests and expertise of H. G. Koenigsberger, Professor of History at King's College London, who has written and taught widely on early modern Europe, from Sicily and Spain to Germany, France and the Netherlands. The contributors pay tribute to Koenigsberger's range of interest by taking up themes that have resonated through his lectures, seminars and public writings. What emerges from a variety of approaches and topics is an overriding concern with intellectual unity, an overview which encompasses and reconciles the values of the politician or scholar with those of the spiritual idealist. Even the most overtly political of the major cultural figures discussed in these pages, as Robert Kingdon's essay on Calvin demonstrates, bent their political will to the service of an intense spiritual idealism.

First attempt to bring together a range of research on the origins of news publishing Provides a broad-ranging, comprehensive survey High quality contributors with very good publishing record

The years 1650 to 1750 - sandwiched between an age of 'wars of religion' and an age of 'revolutionary wars' - have often been characterized as a 'de-ideologized' period. However, the essays in this collection contend that this is a mistaken assumption. For whilst international relations during this time may lack the obvious polarization between Catholic and Protestant visible in the proceeding hundred years, or the highly charged contest between monarchies and republics of the late eighteenth century, it is forcibly argued that ideology had a fundamental part to play in this crucial transformative stage of European history. Many early modernists have paid little attention to international relations theory, often taking a 'Realist' approach that emphasizes the anarchism, materialism and power-political nature of international relations. In contrast, this volume provides alternative perspectives, viewing international relations as socially constructed and influenced by ideas, ideology and identities. Building on such theoretical developments, allows international relations after 1648 to be fundamentally reconsidered, by putting political and economic ideology firmly back into the picture. By engaging with, and building upon, recent theoretical developments, this collection treads new terrain. Not only does it integrate cultural history with high politics and foreign policy, it also engages directly with themes discussed by political scientists and international relations theorists. As such it offers a fresh, and genuinely interdisciplinary approach to this complex and fundamental period in Europe's development.

The social, political and cultural factors determining conformity and obedience as well as dissidence and revolt are traced in sixteenth and early seventeenth century England.