‘The European World’
BK 05/09
Europe Transformed? The Political World
Outline, dates and terms
1. The European Landscape
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Shifts in the political geography between c. 1500 and the early eighteenth
century: from Spanish via French to British dominance; Ottoman decline
New powers: Sweden, Russia and Brandenburg-Prussia
Growing role of international diplomacy, peace congresses and balance of
power (leading to a ‘pentarchy’ of Austria, Britain, France, Prussia, Russia)
Peace of Westphalia 1648; War of the Spanish Succession 1701-14; Peace of Utrecht 1713
(Philip, Duke of Anjou/Bourbon dynasty, inherits Spanish crown); Peace of Nystad 1721
2. State Formation
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From personal rule of lords in a feudal pyramid to more abstract
government of an ‘absolute’ monarch over all subjects within a territory
Tendency towards centralization, bureaucratization, professionalization and
marginalization of representative assemblies, albeit to various degrees and
with regional differences (NB: Dutch and Swiss republics)
Waves of legislation in the interest of ‘good police’; growing taxation;
standing armies and promotion of social discipline; mercantilism
‘Police state’ (Raeff); ‘fiscal-military state’ (Glete); Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619-83)
3. Political Life and Thought
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Lavish representation of power in art and architecture (esp. in princely
courts), yet continued reliance on patronage networks
Louis XIV (‘sun king’; ‘L’état c’est moi’); Versailles; Maria Theresia of Austria
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Justifying absolute rule with recourse to human nature
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651)
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BUT: power restrictions, resistance and calls for sovereignty of the people
Monarchomachs (Beza) in the late 16thC; Locke and Levellers in 17thC England
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Evolving the Law of Nations
Hugo Grotius, Three Books on the Law of War and Peace (1625)
4. Conclusions
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Evolution of a new European system: rise of Britain and colonial interests,
multilateral treaties, concept of ‘balance of power’
Emergence of modern state: princely court, taxation, legislation, standing
army, mercantilist economic policy (but NB: limits of ‘absolutism’)
Continued inequalities in political rights and gender relations (patriarchy)
Select bibliography
Adamson, John (ed.), The Princely Courts of Europe: Ritual, Politics and Culture under the Ancien
Régime 1500-1750 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999)
Blockmans, Wim; Genet, Jean-Philippe (general eds), The Origins of the Modern State in Europe: 13th
to 18th Centuries (7 vols, Oxford: UP, 1995-98)
 Bonney, Richard, The European Dynastic States 1494-1660 (Oxford: UP, 1991)
Glete, Ian, War and the State in Early Modern Europe: Spain, the Dutch Republic and Sweden as
Fiscal-Military States 1500-1660 (London, 2002)
Graves, Michael, The Parliaments of Early Modern Europe 1400-1700 (London: Longman, 2001)
Henshall, Nicholas, The Myth of Absolutism: Change and Continuity in Early Modern European
Monarchy (London: Longman, 1992)
Raeff, Marc, The Well-Ordered Police State: Social and Institutional Change through Law (New Haven:
Yale UP, 1983)
Skinner, Quentin, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Vol. 1: The Renaissance, Vol. 2: The
Age of Reformation (Cambridge: UP, 1978)
Te Brake, Wayne Ph., Shaping History: Ordinary People in European Politics 1500-1700 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1998) [D 231.T3]
The Peace of Utrecht, engraving by A. Allard, Amsterdam 1713
[Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris]