The struggle for power in early modern Europe : religious conflict, dynastic empires, and international change / Daniel H. Nexon.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Nexon, Daniel H., 1973-

Series:

Princeton studies in international history and politics.

Princeton studies in international history and politics

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Europe--Politics and government--1517-1648.

Europe.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (408 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton : Princeton University Press, c2009.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Scholars have long argued over whether the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, which ended more than a century of religious conflict arising from the Protestant Reformations, inaugurated the modern sovereign-state system. But they largely ignore a more fundamental question: why did the emergence of new forms of religious heterodoxy during the Reformations spark such violent upheaval and nearly topple the old political order? In this book, Daniel Nexon demonstrates that the answer lies in understanding how the mobilization of transnational religious movements intersects with--and can destabilize--imperial forms of rule. Taking a fresh look at the pivotal events of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries--including the Schmalkaldic War, the Dutch Revolt, and the Thirty Years' War--Nexon argues that early modern "composite" political communities had more in common with empires than with modern states, and introduces a theory of imperial dynamics that explains how religious movements altered Europe's balance of power. He shows how the Reformations gave rise to crosscutting religious networks that undermined the ability of early modern European rulers to divide and contain local resistance to their authority. In doing so, the Reformations produced a series of crises in the European order and crippled the Habsburg bid for hegemony. Nexon's account of these processes provides a theoretical and analytic framework that not only challenges the way international relations scholars think about state formation and international change, but enables us to better understand global politics today.

Contents:

Introduction

Theorizing international change

The dynastic-imperial pathway

Religious contention and the dynamics of composite states

The rise and decline of Charles of Habsburg

The dynamics of Spanish hegemony in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century

The French wars of religion

Westphalia reframed

Looking forward, looking back.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [301]-331) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

ISBN:

9786613163660

9781283163668

1283163667

9781400830800

140083080X

OCLC:

741492616