ESF conference grant
The new Monarchy’: Rethinking The Relations Of Elites And Princes In Europe’s Iron Century, 1590s To 1720
Since the 1955 congress of European historians in Rome, the assumption of a completion of institutional absolutist state-building by the later seventeenth century has been steadily eroded. During the last fifty years, a large number of studies has emphasized that unprecedented wars and war related burdens were a major stimulus for crucial changes in the relation of regimes and elites during the seventeenth century, but that these changes should not be characterized primarily in terms of the building of a bureaucratic coercive tax state increasingly independent from society and its pressure groups.
The actual early modern innovation was public debt on a hitherto unknown scale. Whatever relevance taxes had gained by 1500 (as in France, England or Castile), the exploding costs of the European arms- and war race severely qualified their contribution to paying overall cost; hence the fact of exploding public debt.
Other innovations were the massive sale of offices and the farming of taxes. Thus, rather then experiencing the emancipation of an institutional bureaucratic state from its social and ecclesiastical elites by way of secure regular enforceable taxes, regimes became increasingly dependant on old and new elites to organize and broker public debt, farm taxes, and buy or pre-finance offices. As Lucien Bely put it with reference to Louis XIV, “les creanciers du roi sont des groupes financiers, et derriere eux, la noblesse et la bourgeoisie qui pretent ses avoirs”. While certain groups profited from these changes, others felt left behind. Jim Collins described for Brittany as Ronald Hutton for the officers of the royal army in the Civil War the emergence of new elites.
Debates and struggles ensued among elites about the distribution of resources and privileges, about access to offices and spoils, about the best course in costly foreign wars and about the legitimacy of the whole process. The resulting new modes of government were determined by the new relations of regimes to old and new elites; they were neither characterized by the power of a bureaucratic state nor did they resemble late medieval relationships between crown, magnates and nobility; hence the focus of this conference to compare patterns of relations among regimes, primarily princely dynasties, but also republican regimes, and elites across Europe during the crucial ‘Iron Century’.
The most important current collections of essays dealing with the relation of regimes and elites under the impact of war, various olumes of the ESF series on the origins of the modern state, cover in each volume the whole period from 1300 to 1800. Though their value is undisputed, they necessarily attempt to capture very general developments across many centuries and cannot pinpoint the precise impact of the unprecedented burden of war on European societies precisely in Europe’s Iron Century. For example, since the overriding importance of public debt is freely acknowledged and documented for the later sixteenth and seventeenth century, the volumes do not draw conclusions from this but rather insist on the long term importance of state taxes over the whole period from 1300 to 1800.
Current research suggests three perspectives for the comparison here attempted, each to be approached via three topics.
A: Representation and Integration: Negotiating Allegiance. This perspective focuses on the strategies of regimes to integrate the elites of their agglomerate polities. The emphasis here is on the forging of the unity of the agglomerate polity by whatever means (including national rhetoric) and on the representation of the regime in relation to their various political nations. To this end, one topic will be the constitutional responses to crises of the agglomerate polity by improvising alleged fundamental laws and constitutions embedded in an alleged ‘national’ ancient or medieval past. The group addressing this topic will emphasize not long term philosophical ideas, but ad hoc responses to dynastic crises, though these might have been formulated and sold as representations of long term principles.
A second topic will be the role of coins, paintings, flags, coronation rites and marriage, baptism and funeral ritual for political integration. Regimes, like the Habsburgs in Madrid, realized the heterogeneous character of the agglomerate polities. Coins, images and rituals, in particular at marriages, baptisms or burials were used to counter the diverse forces of the agglomerate by symbolic unity around the princely dynasty or republican symbols. A third topic will be the role of the court in the context of managing the agglomerate polity. Courts functioned as important points of contact between princes and elites and played an important function for national identity formation within the complex federated or partially integrated monarchy.
B: Contemporary Analyses of the Agglomerate Polity. New kinds of analysis, in particular comparing the new regimes with the principate and emperorship of Rome, and new ideologies developed alongside the changes mentioned above. Emphasis is laid here on two reservoirs of vocabulary that could be used to frame demands and make sense of what was happening. The bible and theology on the one hand, classic texts and the tradition of historiography on the other are singled out. A perspective on reflections by members of the governing elite not meant for publication will balance this approach. Thus, this perspective will be addressed by focusing on three topics. One: Tacitism and Historiography; second: Political Theology: This topic will address the changing relationship of regimes to the churches under the pressure of intense religious strife. Third: Reflections by regime-members and opponents: Members of regimes and elites reflected themselves intensively on their experiences and the best course of strategy.
C: Societal Architecture and Social Integration under Pressure of War: The conference will look at the societal architecture under the pressure of war, at the new service elites and the way in which both lower nobility and burgesses and the higher aristocracy and magnates adapted to the shifts in influence happening around them.
It is now widely accepted that ‘as public (= i.e. princely) service became a decisive criterion for social status’, nobilities ceased to be elites ‘constituted by their own self-consciousness and by the comportment that authorized them’, but became dependant on the ‘military, ecclesiastical and civil offices and privileges of precedence granted by the ruler’. But while the ability and willingness of nobilities to exercise force with means independent of the crown had significantly shrunken by 1700, we also now know that this resulted in anything but centralized modern bureaucracies.
Three important groups will be addressed:
1. New service elites such as financiers and officers in church, army, and administration.
2. Lower Gentry, ‘Noblesse Seconde’, leading citizens/burgesses.
3. Magnates and Higher Aristocracy with inter-regional networks and regular court access.
European Dimension and Added Value
Describe the European dimension and added value of your conference proposal.
The transformation of the relationships between early modern regimes and their societies was an intrinsically European and international process, since the agglomerate polities were not national entities but lands with diverse cultural and political traditions. Princely dynasties, just as magnate families in the Valois/Bourbon, German Habsburg and Spanish Habsburg or Stewart lands, gathered under their rule many different ‘nations’.
The contemporary analysis of these phenomena was international as well. The comparative discussion between the three perspectives outlined above will make it possible to challenge the traditional view that the new regimes were capable of enforcing new power policies upon their subjects, and advance an alternative and very different view, by looking at details of actual taxation agreements and procedures, administrative procedures, social and royal rites and representations, personal careers and social advancement, etc.
The conference seeks to achieve three results:
One, it seeks to achieve a common comparative platform for each of the three areas of analysis during the discussion sessions.
Second, it seeks to isolate characteristic /common/ features, but also idiosyncratic specific attributes, of the five major European areas chosen for comparison. That will be the task of the presentation of the panels on day 3.
Finally, it seeks to identify further areas of research both in relation to the European phenomenon of the ‘new monarchy’ and to the specific agglomerate constellations in each of the areas of comparison.
