Constitutionalism, warfare, and political change in early modern Europe

Abstract

Barrington Moore Jr.'s classic work, Social Origins,1 is doubtless one of the most important works of social science in the last twenty-five years. It delivered a serious blow to unilinear models of social change, reintroduced moral vision into the social sciences, and inspired a generation of historically grounded, macrohistorical studies no mean feat for a single volume. Though it has been criticized for minor historical problems, found to have overlooked important variables, and excoriated on metatheoretical grounds, a fully developed, comparative study that provides an alternative to Moore's emphasis on the commercialization of agriculture has not been put forth.2 In this article, I shall attempt just that, although, as we shall see, my findings are generally compatible with those of Moore.