State Formation in Early Modern Alsace, 1648–1789

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen A. Lazer
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
State Formation

scholarly journals CONTESTED LEGITIMACY AND THE AMBIGUOUS RISE OF VESTRIES IN EARLY MODERN LONDON

2011 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. F. MERRITT
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
State Formation ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Royal Commission ◽  
The Political ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
Legal Challenges ◽  
Early Modern London

ABSTRACTStudies of the rise of London's vestries in the period to 1640 have tended to discuss them in terms of the inexorable rise of oligarchy and state formation. This article re-examines the emergence of the vestries in several ways, moving beyond this traditional focus on oligarchy, and noting how London's vestries raised much broader issues concerning law, custom, and lay religious authority. The article reveals a notable contrast between the widespread influence and activities of London vestries and the questionable legal framework in which they operated. The political and ecclesiastical authorities – and in particular Archbishop Laud – are also shown to have had very mixed attitudes towards the legitimacy and desirability of powerful vestries. The apparently smooth and relentless spread of select vestries in the pre-war period is also shown to be illusory. The granting of vestry ‘faculties’ by the authorities ceased abruptly at the end of the 1620s, amid a series of serious legal challenges, on both local and ideological grounds, to the existence of vestries. Their rise had thus been seriously contested and stymied well before the upheavals of the 1640s, although opposition to them came from multiple sources – Laudians, Henry Spelman and the royal Commission on Fees, and local parishioners – whose objectives could vary.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Lockwood
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
State Formation ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Modern Europe

The introduction outlines previous definitions of the modern state as well as historians’ current explanations of state formation in early modern Europe and England. It demonstrates that earlier scholars have focused almost entirely on the state’s ability to engage in active warfare and have thus neglected an important aspect of the monopoly of violence, the restriction of non-state or illegitimate violence. The introduction also explores the medieval background of the coroner system, the mechanism designed to regulate violence in England and explains why the system had failed to achieve its proposed ends prior to the sixteenth century.

scholarly journals Constructing and Representing Territory in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
State Formation ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Geographical Area ◽  
Formation Processes ◽  
Constitutional History ◽  
Stained Glass ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Modern Europe

In recent political and constitutional history, scholars seldom specify how and why they use the concept of territory. In research on state formation processes and nation building, for instance, the term mostly designates an enclosed geographical area ruled by a central government. Inspired by ideas from political geographers, this book explores the layered and constantly changing meanings of territory in late medieval and early modern Europe before cartography and state formation turned boundaries and territories into more fixed (but still changeable) geographical entities. Its central thesis is that analysing the notion of territory in a premodern setting involves analysing territorial practices: practices that relate people and power to space(s). The book not only examines the construction and spatial structure of premodern territories but also explores their perception and representation through the use of a broad range of sources: from administrative texts to maps, from stained glass windows to chronicles.

scholarly journals The Volatile State in Southeast Asia: Evidence from Sumatra, 1600–1800

2003 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 497-529 ◽  
Author(s):  
Freek Colombijn
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
State Formation ◽  
State Power ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
The State ◽  
Central State ◽  
Seminal Work ◽  
Clifford Geertz ◽  
State Capital

The communis opinio of historians is that early modern, or precolonial, states in Southeast Asia tended to lead precarious existences. The states were volatile in the sense that the size of individual states changed quickly, a ruler forced by circumstances moved his state capital, the death of a ruler was followed by a dynastic struggle, or a local subordinate head either ignored or took over the central state power; in short, states went through short cycles of rise and decline. Perhaps nobody has helped establish this opinion more than Clifford Geertz (1980) with his powerful metaphor of the “theatre state.” Many scholars have preceded and followed him in their assessment of the shakiness of the state (see, for example, Andaya 1992, 419; Bentley 1986, 292; Bronson 1977, 51; Hagesteijn 1986, 106; Milner 1982, 7; Nagtegaal 1996, 35, 51; Reid 1993, 202; Ricklefs 1991, 17; Schulte Nordholt 1996, 143–48). The instability itself was an enduring phenomenon. Most polities existed in a state of flux, oscillating between integration and disintegration, a phenomenon which was first analyzed for mainland Southeast Asia by Edmund Leach (1954) in his seminal work on the Kachin chiefdoms. This alternation of state formation and the breaking up of kingdoms has been called the “ebb and flow of power” and the “rhythm” of Malay history (Andaya and Andaya 1982, 35). In this article, I will probe into the causes of the volatility of the Southeast Asian states, using material from Sumatra to make my case.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document