Monarchy Transformed: Princes and their Elites in Early Modern Western Europe, ed. Robert von Friedeburg and John Morrill

Abstract

This volume is the result of two conferences held in Rotterdam in 2008 and 2011. Both were part of Robert von Friedeburg’s project ‘Reason of State or Reason of Princes—the New Monarchy and its Enemies’. The volume, edited by Robert von Friedeburg and John Morrill, presents a final reckoning with an outdated Rankean state formation narrative and has the ambition to present a new synthesis. The main bête noire is the so-called ‘New monarchy’ which has long been presented as a pivotal stage in state formation. These monarchies supposedly succeeded at increasing taxation and subduing traditional, noble elites. Scholars have demonstrated in recent decades that rulers in fact remained dependent on their elites, particularly financially, because tax revenues were rarely enough to cover increasing expenditure on war. Moreover, the seventeenth-century crisis of the nobility has been decisively laid to bed. This volume extends this argument further, demolishing the old narrative and arguing for a new, ‘transformed’ monarchy instead.