War, Religion and Court Patronage in Habsburg Austria: The Social and Cultural Dimensions of Political Interaction, 1521-1622 (Studies in Modern History)

This case study of the causes of the Thirty Years’ War suggests an alternative framework to that of Absolutism, and views state-building as an interactive bargaining process that can engender challenges to political authority. It shows how selective court patronage changed the cultural habits of nobles in education, manners, and tastes, but failed to transform religious identities, which were intimately tied to noble interests. Instead, the confessionalization of patronage deepened divisions within the elite, providing multiple incentives for the formation of an anti-Habsburg alliance among Protestants in 1620. "Using numerous published and unpublished travel journals by middle-class men and women from England, Scotland and Wales who toured the Continent and Britain, this book explores the variety of national identities existing in Victorian Britain. Unlike most scholars who focus on a single national identity in Britain, Morgan's study reveals the subtle way that national identity shifted depending on context, particularly geographic context. In so doing, the book also highlights the specific qualities middle-class victorians had in mind when they used such terms as British, English, Scots and Welsh to identify themselves collectively." "Morgan's book has wide-ranging appeal because it integrates two subject areas of interest to scholars across disciplines - travel and national identity. Furthermore, the book's accessible style and extensive use of the amusing, telling anecdote make it attractive to the non-scholarly reading public as well. In particular, Morgan's work is significant for anyone grappling with geopolitical changes in our time. In that the book analyses multiple national identities in a single state, it illuminates the sort of collective imagining likely to take place among Europeans in a more united Europe and enhances our understanding of why some states are successful at incorporating multiple national identities and others are not."--Jacket This book examines the origins of the first stage of the Thirty Years War. Taking a long-term perspective, it addresses crucial issues in the history of the royal court and the nature of state-building. It views state formation as the product of interdependence and bargaining between centre and locality, but cautions against unduly stressing collaboration at the expense of contentious politics. Karin MacHardy replaces the formular of 'absolutism' with the concept of 'coordinating state', and reconceptualizes noble interest and exchange within patrol-client relations. Focusing on the centrality of court patronage in Habsburg state formation, she questions the claim that the transformation of the cultural habits of nobles was an imposed disciplining process. Instead, her study demonstrates that nobles often made voluntary adjustments to state growth, but resisted when it threatened their social reproduction and cultural identities. This occurred before 1620, when the confessionalization of Habsburg patronage coinsided with demographic and economic change, and endangered the social and religious position of Protestant nobles This examination of the Whig theory of resistance that emerged from the revolution of 1688 in England presents an important challenge to the received opinion of Whig thought as confused and as inferior to the revolutionary principles set forth by John Locke.; While a wealth of Whig literature is analyzed, Julia Rudolph focuses upon the work of James Tyrrell, presenting a full-length study of this seminal Whig theorist, and friend and colleague of John Locke. This book provides a compelling argument for the importance of Whig political thought for the history of liberalism. Front Matter....Pages i-xiii Introduction....Pages 1-18 Front Matter....Pages 19-19 Political Culture, Political Space....Pages 21-46 Religious Reformations and Civil War....Pages 47-88 Discourse of Division, 1618–20....Pages 89-122 Front Matter....Pages 123-123 Social Capital, Symbolic Power and Religious Conflict....Pages 125-150 Advancing at the Imperial Court....Pages 151-182 Confessionalizing Court Patronage....Pages 183-213 Back Matter....Pages 214-331 Most Habsburg historians agree that the medieval or feudal political order had been transformed by the late fifteenth century.