Map Of Europe 1700 by Andrew Fare / Public Domain

By Dr. Robert von Friedeburg / 12.03.2010

Chair of Early Modern History

Erasmus Center for Early Modern Studies

Introduction

This article discusses the transformation of Europe from a collection of Christian dynasties and (city-) republics, which were all part of the Church of Rome and represented at the Councils of Constance (1414–1418) and Basle (1432–1448), to a Europe of sovereign states. Of these states, five would go on to dominate Europe for much of 18th, 19th and the first part of the 20th century. These five powers saw their position of dominance destroyed by the First and Second World Wars, after which Europe was dominated by two powers which were fully or partly non-European, the Soviet Union and the United States, both of which led alliance systems (Warsaw Pact, North Atlantic Treaty Organization). Given that one of these alliance systems has already ceased to exist, it can be argued that the emergence of the modern occidental state remains the most significant development in modern world history.

From Universal Christianity to the Sovereign Western State: Problems and Definitions

[LEFT]: In addition to his socio-historical and religio-sociological research, Max Weber’s work aimed at establishing sociology as an academic discipline in its own right. In the area of methodology, Weber sought a resolution of the dualism between the humanities and the natural sciences, and he argued that academic research must be freed from moral value judgements. Among Weber’s most important contributions in the area of political sociology was his theory of rule, in which he differentiates between typical legitimate forms of rule (charismatic, traditional, rational) and in which he stresses that all areas of life are being penetrated by a process of formal rationalization. His theory on the contribution of protestant ethics to the formation of modern capitalism was particularly widely read. / Ein Lebensbild, Tübingen 1926

[RIGHT]: Heavily affected by the civil and revolutionary wars of his time, the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes sought a political order that was arranged according to scientific principles and which would prevent future revolutions. In his works on state theory (De cive, 1642; Leviathan, 1651), he takes as his centre point the endeavour of the human being to maximise happiness and minimise pain. A political system is thus well ordered if it optimises this endeavour. Hobbes contends that the human being is not by origin a social being and, in their natural state, humans are in constant competition (“homo homini lupus”, “bellum omnium contra omnes”). According to Hobbes, this natural state of being could only be overcome by a contract, in which each human relinquishes his original rights to the benefit of the sovereign. If the sovereign were overthrown, the body politic would disintegrate into its individual constituents again; the human returns to its natural state. / New York Public Library

Discussions of the modern occidental state are complicated by the fact that some fundamental assumptions about its nature have lost their validity over the last twenty years. Until the 1950s, it was assumed that the gradual transfer of legitimacy in the area of civil order from universal Christianity to the modern state was caused by a putative early-modern triumph of the coercive, bureaucratic, institutional, tax-collecting state over elites which, while initially reluctant, were eventually subdued.

[LEFT]: The lawyer and historian Samuel Pufendorf (from 1694 Freiherr von Pufendorf) developed the leading system of state theory and rational law in enlightened absolutism (De jure naturae et gentium libri octo, 1672) on the basis of a rationalistic interpretation of natural law. He combined concepts of freedom and the dignity of man with the inherent requirements of the state, with reasons of state and with sovereignty in a theory of duties that made a clear distinction between law and morality, and employing a concept of international law based on natural law. / Wikimedia Commons

[RIGHT]: Immanuel Kant is considered the most important representative of German Enlightenment philosophy. Influenced by Isaac Newton, John Locke and David Hume, his work focused on the question of the possibility of metaphysical knowledge (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 1781; Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, 1788; Kritik der Urteilskraft, 1790). He based his system of strict science on the mathematico-physical natural sciences and he criticised the basic principles of traditional metaphysics. Kant established a radical separation of philosophy and theology. He attempted to lay a new foundation for knowledge, morality and faith with his transcendental philosophy. In his search for a reliable justification of morality, he formulated the categorical imperative. / Public Domain

This interpretation of history developed at the turn of the last century and informed the work of sociologists from Max Weber (1846–1920) to Charles Tilly (1929–2008). It emphasized the role of the mighty “Leviathan”, the emerging bureaucratic edifice of the modern state with its capacity to monopolize power and to coerce its subjects with its spreading tentacles, fed by secure funding in the form of regular taxes. A central feature of this historical narrative was the assumption that modern bureaucracies are characterized by a concept of power that is fundamentally different from feudal concepts or a band of gangsters. It was assumed that a growing distinction between civil order, and the interests and wishes of the ruler went hand in hand with increasing loyalty on the part of state servants to the state as an institution, as opposed to loyalty to the ruler, the ruling dynasty or a religion. It was assumed, therefore, that the development of state theory in the early modern period from Jean Bodin (1530–1596) to Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and Samuel von Pufendorf (1632–1694), and from there to Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), and the American and French revolutions reflected actual developments in the form of the expansion of the state through the expansion of the state’s bureaucratic machinery of civil servants.1

While evidence contradicting this view has been accumulating since the 1955 International Congress of Historical Sciences in Rome,2 the last two decades have seen increasingly bold attempts to react to this challenge to the historical narrative by redefining the modern state. These discussions on the nature of the modern state have not remained unaffected by developments such as the disintegration of the Soviet Union, which had an impressive bureaucratic machinery, as well as the instability of state power in many developing countries, some of which have been unable to maintain legitimacy in spite of bureaucracies and armies. Michael Stolleis (*1941) has recently concluded that the distinction between the objective reality of the power exercised by the institutional, bureaucratic, coercive state, and the state as image and argument, based on prevalent concepts of legitimacy within society is a false distinction. It is because of such concepts of civil order that the state existed, he argues. The state existed as the “will and imagination” of those running the state and by means of beliefs about the nature and legitimacy of civil order in the broader society.3

For two reasons, our understanding of the modern western state was to a large degree shaped by centuries of war and civil war in early modern Europe. Firstly, these unprecedented conflicts prompted Europeans to gradually re-conceptualize civil order. Europeans increasingly insisted on the independence of secular government from the church and on the sovereign authority of governments. They increasingly viewed the unity of subject population, state territory and state law – i.e., that all three were co-terminous – as the ideal situation. As regards foreign policy, Heinz Schilling (*1942) has shown how diplomatic relations were increasingly viewed as affairs of “state” from the second third of the 17th century, reflecting the diminishing importance of dynastic and religious interests in international relations.4 By the time of the American and French revolutions, the prevalent philosophical and legal concepts of how a state should be constituted had changed dramatically from concepts of civil order prevalent in late-medieval Europe. By this time, most of the concepts that were subsequently realized in 19th century constitutional reforms already existed.

Secondly, in the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, these changes in attitude were increasingly interpreted – incorrectly – as resulting from the actual emergence in the early modern period of the institutional state, which coerced reluctant elites and subjects into supplying the state with resources which gave the state the capacity to coerce them even more (the so-called “coercion-extraction cycle”). Reservations regarding this interpretation were first voiced at the 1955 International Congress of Historical Sciences in Rome, and subsequent research disproved it completely. It has been demonstrated that early modern bureaucratic institutions were permeated by networks of patrons and clients of old and new elites, on whom princes remained more dependent than ever.

Royal authority also continued to be organized in complex combinations of different principalities held together primarily by dynastic bonds. These principalities differed from each other in law, language and culture. Early modern historians have increasingly emphasized the composite – indeed, the jumbled – nature of Europe’s “dynastic agglomerates” and have described Europe in terms of a “society of princes”.5 For example, the consolidation of the Valois in France through the capture of Brittany and parts of Burgundy was accompanied by an ongoing shrinking of the branches of the royal family, reducing the number of potential rivals to the reigning monarch to almost none during the reigns of Henry IV (1553–1610), Louis XIII (1601–1643) and Louis XIV (1638–1715), thus massively strengthening the position of the king. However, principalities like Brittany remained distinct in political terms and were governed through clients with influence in Brittany and good contacts in Paris, rather than simply being ruled directly from Paris. Armand-Jean du Plessis de Richelieu (1585–1642) remained in the pay of Brittany and kept the province’s taxes low. Connections to Richelieu became increasingly important, however, for those members of the Breton elite keen to promote their interests in Paris.6 Bohemia was captured by military force for the House of Habsburg in 1620, but government remained firmly in the hands of local and regional elites, though these now had to submit to Roman Catholicism in order to continue to benefit from ecclesiastical benefices.7 In the case of France, Jim Collins (*1950) has attempted to distinguish between the royal dynasty with its various branches, the person of the king, and the crown representing the sum total of legal prerogatives of the king, on the one hand, and fundamental laws governing civil rule in France by which both the king and his subjects remained bound, on the other. These are just two examples of the spectacular expansion of dynastic agglomerates during the 16th and 17th centuries, bringing with it not powerful centralized states, but new dynamics created by the relationship between the different parts of the dynastic agglomerate, as well as the relationship between these parts and the ruling dynasty.8

In the area of public finances, the early modern period was characterized by an unprecedented growth in public debt. Regardless of how important a source of revenue taxes had become by 1500 (for example, in the principalities of the French royal family, in England or in Castile), the explosion in spending on the military meant that taxes alone could not cover public spending and public debt increased rapidly. Other innovations included the wholesale sale of offices, in particular in the two major dynastic agglomerates of Spain and France, and the farming of taxes. Thus, what has been interpreted as vital elements of the emerging bureaucratic state, its officesand taxes, remained firmly in the hands of those who purchased the offices or farmed the taxes.9 Far from witnessing the emancipation of an institutional, coercive, bureaucratic state from its elites by means of regular enforceable taxes, regimes became increasingly dependent on old and new elites to organize and broker public debt, farm taxes, and buy or pre-finance offices.10 As Lucien Bély (*1955) has stated with regard to Louis XIV, “les créanciers du roi sont des groupes financiers, et derrière eux, la noblesse et la bourgeoisie qui prêtent ses avoirs”.11

The term “New Monarchy”, coined in 1638 by Henri Duc de Rohan (1579–1638),12 was used from the 1960s to 1980s to signify the introduction of regular taxes and standing armies from the 15th century. It will be used below in a modified sense to include the empirical findings of the last half-century. Political regimes in early modern Europe were characterized by participation in unprecedented wars and by dramatic increases in expenditure on military preparedness, by unprecedented financial burdens associated with these wars, by dramatic increases in the volume of public funds (which were debt-financed to a significant extent)13, and by increasing recourse to a rhetoric of nation and patria by all parties involved in the raising and spending of these funds.

State Forms and State Systems, 1490s to 1790s

The Italian politician and writer Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) had responsibility for the internal administration and military of the republic of Florence, as well as for various diplomatic missions. Unjustly imprisoned in 1513 and later released, he spent his time after the end of his political career writing his main work Il principe (1513, published 1532). In this work, he attempts to describe the conditions of successful politics, while approaching the question from an empirical and systematic standpoint, as opposed to metaphysics-based Christian state theory. Instead of Christian virtues, Machiavelli emphasizes the ability of the ruler to obtain and retain power as the main prerequisite of long-lasting rule. Therefore, when the state is in jeopardy, the ruler is justified in dispensing with moral norms in order to maintain the state. / Wikimedia Commons

Given this state of research, we must clearly distinguish between three levels of analysis concerning “state forms” and “state systems”. Firstly, there are theoretical reflections on the nature of civil order by politicians and legal scholars from Leonardo Bruni (c. 1369–1444) to Bodin, and from Hobbes to Kant. Here, civil order as the legal person of the state gradually took shape. Secondly, there are contemporary analyses and descriptions ranging from Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) to the Duc de Rohan in 1638 and to Pufendorf’s history of European states. Increasingly, these writings recognized the existence of relatively stable dynastic agglomerates with their own specific constellation of political aims. They began to describe these entities with shorthand names such as England, Brandenburg, Sweden and Spain, although it remained of course entirely clear that England (from 1603 to 1688) was part of the Stuart dynastic agglomerate of England, Scotland, and Ireland; and that Brandenburg was part of the Hohenzollern dynastic agglomerate of various lands. The Allgemeine Landrecht für die Preussischen Staaten applied only subsidiary and secondary to the specific laws applicable in each of the Hohenzollern principalities – Brandenburg, Pomerania, Eastern Prussia and so forth – where these local laws did not contain clear provisions on an issue.

Thirdly, there is the modern historical analysis of constitutional and power realities. Of primary importance for the further development of the European system of states was the consolidation of the Valois monarchy in France with the takeover of large parts of Burgundy after 1477 and subsequently of Brittany, and the simultaneous consolidation of the Habsburg agglomerate in Austria and Burgundy and the subsequent inheritance of the Spanish and Italian possessions. This “New Monarchy” of Spain had accumulated vast lands in an astonishingly short period of time and could also access increasing resources from mines in America. Very soon after the consolidation of the Habsburg agglomerate through dynastic inheritance, it clashed with the Valois dynasty, which had encroached on Aragonese interests in Italy. The European system of states continued to be dominated by the clash of these dynasties, with its resulting enormous increase in military spending, from the Valois invasion in Northern Italy in 1494 until the revolution in European alliances in 1756/1757, which brought about the Franco-Austrian alliance against Prussia. There were, however, other smaller theatres of conflict upon which the main conflict only occasionally impinged, for example, the Anglo-French rivalry (Henry VIII (1491–1547) launched several expeditions into France), the struggle for the Baltic among Moscow, Denmark, Sweden and Poland, and, last but not least, the ongoing conflict between the Ottoman Empire, on the one hand, and the Habsburgs in their possessions in Austria and Hungary, Poland and Russia, on the other.

In strictly legal and constitutional terms, Europe remained primarily a collection of princes and dynastic agglomerates until the 19th-century constitutional reforms. Historians correctly point out, however, that regimes increasingly attempted from the 16th century to mobilize the population to better bear the burdens of war by employing a rhetoric of nation and fatherland. In particular, the confessionalisation of the late-16th and early-17th centuries massively reduced the freedom of action of the dynasties and also added an important confessional element to the humanist rhetoric of nation and fatherland. From the 1580s to the 1630s, several dynasties placed confessional considerations above other considerations. From the 1630s onward, however, distinct confessional identities became enshrined in most European polities and the actions of the regimes began to be defined by considerations of “state” again. The map of Europe began to be defined by the existence of a number of “powers”. By this time, no Protestant could become king of France, and no Catholic could become king of Scotland, England, or Sweden. Catholic, Lutheran and Reformed confessional identity became enshrined in the various polities and was depicted as the alleged ancient religion of nation and fatherland, as part of the fundamental laws of the polity. Through brutal conflict and negotiation, churches, estates and dynasties came to agree on this confessional identity in the respective polities, thereby integrating the dynastic agglomerates somewhat and lending them continuity. The rhetoric of state, religion and nation increasingly defined dynasties by their role as protectors of the interests of specific states and nations. The French monarchy was defined in terms of its struggle against Spain; the Swedish and Danish monarchies in terms of their struggle for the Baltic, and so on. Heinz Schilling also identifies a number of longstanding conflicts of interests between powers which resulted in ongoing intensive diplomatic and political activity in the powers concerned, though these conflicts of interest only became interconnected briefly during the Thirty Years War and again during the 18th century. These conflicts of interest were – besides the major confrontation between the Valois and Bourbons, and the House of Habsburg – the struggle for the Baltic, the struggle against the Ottomans, and the struggle for maritime superiority and colonial influence primarily among Spain, the Dutch Republic, England and France.14

[LEFT]: The Dutch scholar of law Hugo Grotius is considered the founder of classical international law, which he developed in his works (in particular De jure belli ac pacis, 1625) from principles of natural law as a part of the positive and reason-bound legal order encompassing all states and all people. Grotius thus placed international law on the basis of equality between states and mutuality. Grotius’s theories were first applied in practice in the Peace of Westphalia (1648). / Public Domain

[RIGHT]: Institution au droict des françois 1607, BnF Gallica

Writings on the nature of legal rights and political power from Bodin to Hobbes often emphasized the supposed increasing rights and prerogatives of the ruler. The reality was more complex, however. Of equal importance in the period from the late-16th to the 18th century was the “invention” of “national” law codes. In the wake of these conflicts, Europeans did indeed exhibit a particular interest in the exercise of power and techniques of suppression (the reception of Tacitus (c. 55-120)), and the need to concentrate governing rights in the hands of one person for civil order to be sustained was also widely discussed (the reception of Bodin). In addition to these discourses, however, the legal record became increasingly comprehensive. In the 16th and 17th centuries, antiquarians attempted to research the origins of laws and rights, and systematic compilations of laws were produced. All these circumstances gave rise to the vision of comprehensive legal codes for European polities to be administered primarily by judges and lawyers. Simultaneously, legal humanists increasingly emphasized the historical context of Roman law, thereby encouraging an emancipation of the legal codes of the individual European polities from Roman and Canon law. Among others, Edward Coke (1552–1634, Lord Chief Justice of England), Friedrich Lindenbrog (1573–1648), Friedrich Hortleder (1579–1640), Melchior Goldast (c. 1576/78–1635),15 Hermann Conring (1606–1681, author of De origine iuris Germanici16), Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) of the Netherlands and Guy Coquille (1523–1603, author of Institution de droict françois17) all participated in collecting and publishing compilations of laws, which, it was claimed, were medieval in origin and specific to the realm or republic in question. While English common lawyers insisted that “by lex terrae is meant the laws of St. Edward the Confessor”18, the German jurist Georg Melchior Ludolph (1667–1740) later referred to the “patrias leges”.19 Scholars began to discuss and conceptualize law not as being valid for Christianity as a whole or merely for a village or region, but for a specific kingdom or republic. Against the background of religiously motivated civil conflict and dynastic instability, elites also began to argue that these laws were inviolable. By the 1740s, in Germany as elsewhere in Europe, national laws supposedly of medieval origin were beginning to take precedence over other legal arguments.20 Though they remained partially depending on confessional historiography21, elites and their representatives increasingly emphasized the integrity and autonomy of the individual legal code of the respective polity, making regular reference to its alleged medieval origins and national character.22 These concepts became central to the ensuing debates between elites and princes. The rallying of elites behind a “national” legal order, a civil order for the “fatherland”, proved to be a crucial step towards the gradual emancipation of civil order from the churches and dynasties in the polities of Latin Christianity.23

[LEFT]: Partition of 1772

[CENTER]: Partition of 1793

[RIGHT]: Partition of 1795

This English cartoon from the year 1772 depicts Tsarina Catherine II (1729–1796), Emperor Leopold II (1747–1792) and King Frederick II of Prussia (1712–1786) standing over a map of Poland spread out on a table. Immediately behind them are the French King Louis XV (1710–1774) and the Spanish King Charles III (1716–1788). At the back, the English King George III (1738–1820) is asleep. Across the table, Polish King Stanislaus II (1732–1798) sits with his arms bound and his crown broken. Behind him, Sultan Selim III (1762–1808) stands in chains. The scales above the table carry the inscription “The Ballance of Power”. On the lighter side of the scales is the sign “Great Britain”. / Library of Congress

With the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714) and the Russian triumph over Sweden in the Great Northern War (1700–1721), a system of European states began to establish itself, which included Britain (the union of England and Scotland), Austria (the whole of the dynastic agglomerate of the German Habsburgs), France, Russia, and – after 1763 – Prussia (the whole of the Hohenzollern dynastic agglomerate).24 This pentarchy of five major powers dominated European and world history until the World Wars of the 20th century.25 By the 18th century it is possible to speak of a Europe of states. It must not be forgotten, however, that vast powers and prerogatives remained in the hands of monarchs in most cases, and they exercised these powers to pursue the perceived best interests of the individual ruler and the respective dynasty, such as Frederick II’s (1712–1786) annexation of Silesia in 1740.26 Also, dynastic claims and interests remained of primary importance in Europe’s wars of succession during the 18th century. During this period, the relative strength of the major four (then five) powers enabled them to divide longstanding established states (the divisions of Poland) and to intervene almost with impunity in other countries (the Prussian expedition into the Dutch Republic). Competition between the major powers alone spared some smaller polities from domination, with the powers keeping each other in check. In this way, the campaign of lesser princes against the alleged threat of domination by a single monarch and his “universal monarchy”, by Charles V (1500–1558) or Louis XIV, was transformed into a state system which was in itself balanced by the mutual jealousy of the major powers. At the same time, this “pursuit of glory”27 became increasingly defined as an attempt to increase the glory of the nation and the fatherland. By the late 18th-century, some princes even increasingly referred to themselves as servants of their state or nation. Indeed, failure to convince that one was guided by the best interests of the nation could have disastrous consequences for a monarch and his dynasty. Tim Blanning (*1942) has contrasted the success of the Hohenzollern and Hanoverian dynasties in Berlin and London in portraying themselves as patriotic kings, thus enabling their dynasties to survive the era of the French Revolution, with the fortunes of the Bourbons who paid the price for failing to do the same.28 While we have yet to discuss power and constitutional realities (the third level of analysis mentioned above), these were massively – though often indirectly – shaped by the other two levels already discussed (contemporary legal and political thought, and contemporary descriptions and comments). An integrated survey of all three levels is required to describe the transformation of Europe from universal Christianity to a system of sovereign states.

Jan Janssonius (1588–1664), “Belgii Foederati Nova Descriptio”, map, The Netherlands 1658 / Wikimedia Commons

William R. Sheperd (1871–1934), Europe about 1560, map (detail), USA, 1911; source: Shepherd, William: Historical Atlas, New York 1911 / University of Texas Library

Novissima Foederatarum Helvetiqum, map, Germany, 1762 / Wikimedia Commons

Apart from Europe’s major dynasties and their vast agglomerates, a small number of republics survived the regular and large-scale conflicts of the 16th and 17th centuries. From the 16th century, descriptions of forms of government distinguished – among other things – between monarchies and non-monarchical regimes, usually termed “republics”. The term “republic” signified either a non-monarchical polity (Machiavelli) or any state (Bodin). The most notable republics were the Republic of Venice, the Swiss Confederation, the Dutch Republic, the Republic of Genoa, which was in a disputed relationship with the Holy Roman Empire29, and, from 1649 to 1660 only, the English Commonwealth. With the exception of the relatively short-lived England Commonwealth, these republics were significantly smaller in size and territory than the larger dynastic agglomerates, though the Dutch Republic with around two million inhabitants had a population similar to that of the Swedish kingdom. This small number of republics differed at least as much among themselves as they did from the monarchies. Venice was essentially a city state, governed by an aristocracy and a single chief magistrate, the Doge, and had acquired a major land mass in northeastern Italy, the terra ferma. Both the Swiss Confederation and the Dutch Republic were confederacies of smaller polities. While the Dutch Republic had a single (though hotly debated) constitutional framework from the Union of Utrecht, the Swiss Confederation in practice consisted of an intricate web of mutual treaties between the cantons, giving these cantons by way of these treaties very different constitutional statuses. While all the Dutch republics were run by their estates, which consisted of knights and city magistrates, some of the Swiss cantons were monarchical, some aristocratic, and some democratic polities.30 While the influence of the ambassadors of Paris and Vienna on factions within these cantons was considerable, there were constant rumors in the Dutch Republic regarding alleged treason in Den Hague (for instance, rumors in 1672 regarding Cornelis De Witt (1623–1672) and his brother Johan De Witt (1625–1672)). The Dutch Republic nevertheless became one of the foremost economic and military powers of Europe during the 17th century. The De Witts, while still contemplating appeasement with France during the 1660s, considered “cantonizing” the Spanish Netherlands (which roughly correspond to the territory of present-day Belgium) after the Swiss example, to create a Dutch and a French zone of influence. This highlights how different the Swiss Confederation and the Dutch Republic were in practice, in spite of the fact that neither was a monarchy. For most of the early modern period, the House of Orange wielded major influence as head of the army and stadhouder (steward) in many of the Dutch republics.

Like the republics, there were also vast differences between the monarchies. The monarchies can be divided into two categories: the four large, heterogeneous continental empires, on the one hand; and the relatively smaller, but also much more homogeneous kingdoms on Europe’s geographical periphery, on the other. The first category includes Spain (including the kingdoms of Aragon and Castile, and the Burgundian, Italian and American possessions), France (including many principalities only integrated during the early modern period), the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation – and subsequently the east-central European possessions of the German branch of the House of Habsburg, which were increasingly outside the empire proper and included two sizeable kingdoms, Hungary and Bohemia31 – and the Polish-Lithuanian Union. Denmark and Sweden (both members of a late medieval union during 1397–1523), Scotland and England (united in a Stuart dynastic union between 1603 and 1688, and from 1707 united in state union rather than dynastic union) and Portugal (between 1580 and 1640 a possession of the Spanish crown) falls into the second category. Though they had at times been part of dynastic unions, these ancient kingdoms had, since the high middle ages, reasonably clear territorial boundaries (even though the province of Scania was captured from Denmark by Sweden in 1658), a reasonably stable population of subjects, and increasingly clearly defined laws and legal practices. The kingdom of England, for example, was never a dynastic agglomerate in the same way as France was, even though it was at various times connected with the Channel Islands, Scotland and Ireland by dynastic bonds.

In the larger empires, monarchies usually had to contend with powerful dynasties in the higher nobility, dynasties which within the Holy Roman Empire were busy building their own dynastic agglomerates. Indeed, the Wittelsbachs in Bavaria and the Palatinate, the Welfs in Hanover, the Albertine line of the Wettin dynasty of Saxony, and the Hohenzollerns in Prussia all attempted to secure the crown of “sovereign” principalities outside the empire (England, Poland, East Prussia). The German Habsburgs excelled in this, with their ever-increasing possessions gradually shifting the centre of gravity of their possessions outside the empire and towards the southeast of Europe, where they ultimately gained the upper hand over the Ottomans with victory in the Battle of Zenta (1697) and the capture of Belgrade (1717 and 1789) and created an empire of their own. Each of these empires was characterized by a major dynasty with a regional centre of power and with dynastic connections outside the empire. Each empire was also characterized by large variations in law, language and culture across the empire, and by conflicting national claims within the empire.

In some of the smaller, more homogenous kingdoms like Denmark and Sweden, on the other hand, the higher nobility was much weaker. Consequently, the Swedish and Danish monarchies were able, for longer or shorter periods, to severely restrict the power of the higher aristocracy, in particular, by cooperating with city burghers and the lower nobility. Rather than distinguishing between monarchies and republics, it is perhaps more useful to speak of a continuum of decreasing aristocratic influence, starting with the larger empires, where the influence of the higher aristocracy was considerable, to the smaller kingdoms and finally to the smaller republics, where the higher aristocracy hardly existed at all.

The French political philosopher Charles de Secondat, Baron de la Brède et de Montesquieu (1689–1755) was, following his humanist and legal education, the president of the parlaments of Bordeaux from 1716 to 1726. Afterwards, he travelled throughout Europe, staying in England, and other countries, between 1729 and 1731. In 1748, his opus magnum on political authority De l’esprit des lois appeared, which was of importance for the American constitution as well as that of the French Revolution of 1791, and the doctrine of the separation of powers in general. Many contemporaries perceived De l’esprit des lois as an accurate depiction of the Great Britain’s constitution, and alongside Voltaire’s Lettres philosophiques, it was a key work in continental Anglophilia. / Library of Congress

All early modern polities were based on the rule of legally privileged elites, aristocracies composed of various groups of different ages, reputations, statuses and lineages. Social mobility was invariably dependent on the acquisition of privileged legal status, and in this regard early modern republics did not differ appreciably from monarchies. However, changes were in progress. European polities were gradually emancipated from the confessional churches and their claims to authority, and there was increasing scrutiny in most European polities of the connection between legal privilege, landed wealth, claims to superior virtue and privileged access to public office. To a degree, these two developments led during the 18th century to the self-conscious description of “Commonwealth of Europe”. The early modern reception of Aristotle (384–322 BC) had consciously translated his assessment of climate and virtue into a dismissal of polities outside Latin Christianity, including Persia, the Ottoman Empire and China, but also of Orthodox Russia, as despotic regimes. It was contended that the subjects of these realms lacked what united Latin Christianity and what set the Commonwealth of Europe apart from the rest of the world: legal rights and entitlements, defendable in court with the help of professional lawyers and before professional, university-trained judges. The independence of law – of law fundamentally found, not made – of the legal system and the legal professions was the starting point from which theorists from Machiavelli to Montesquieu (1689–1755) proceeded when they discussed the unity of (occidental) Europe as free (i.e., law-governed) peoples, as distinct from the slavery of those who had to submit to the will of a human master.32 From the late 16th century, this theme was increasingly expressed in terms not directly related to confessional Christianity. During the Enlightenment, this theme became an important element of Latin European self-consciousness, and its concept of itself as distinct from, and superior to, the rest of the world, even empires once admired for their efficiency, such as the Chinese.33

Toward the Modern State System, 1790s to 1950

From the 1760s, the nature of civil order began to change rapidly. The legitimacy of political rule by inherited legal privilege was progressively undermined, and the increasing demands of warfare between the Seven Years War (1756–1763) and the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1792–1802, 1804–1815) forced monarchical regimes into a relatively long period of financial retrenchment and political cautiousness after 1815, which was prolonged further by the European revolutions of 1830 and 1848. With individual differences, most monarchies and republics had to re-organize political legitimacy and financial support in line with growing assumptions of national sovereignty – however implemented – and in line with some degree of fiscal control. Funded by the increasing revenues of the Industrial Revolution and less pressed by incessant wars as in the period before 1815, most European polities developed fully funded civil services, based to a large degree on modern university education rather than on inherited privilege.

The Social Democratic Party Reichstag member Philipp Scheidemann (1865–1939) proclaims the German Republic from a window of the Reich Chancellery on November 9 1918. / Wikimedia Commons

At the end of this process – around the turn to the 20th century – sociologists like Max Weber based their discussions of the state on the bureaucratic and coercive, tax-funded state as a standard or archetype. Providing social security for old age and in times of sickness for large elements of the increasingly democratic electorates began to establish itself as a major budgetary item. World War I would prove that, without national legitimacy, a state could no longer withstand the pressures of modern war. With the fall of the Ottoman, Russian, Austro-Hungarian and German empires in 1918 and 1919, the nation-state in its modern form became very common and even began to establish itself as the norm. Between 1815 and 1939, smaller countries such as Denmark, the Netherlands, Luxemburg (from 1839/1890) and Portugal remained protected by the rivalry between the five major powers, but also by an increasing assumption of the right of each nation to exist as an independent state. Just as in the late Middle Ages and the early modern period, however, the existence of politically independent polities went hand in hand with a vibrant European network of communication and with the exchange of manuscripts and books, of scholars and merchants, of fashions and models. The more recent emergence of a common European attitude, as distinct from the prevailing attitude in the United States, concerning issues such as the role of religion in public affairs and the financing of the welfare state is just a modern example of the continuing phenomenon of the “Commonwealth of Europe”, which persists independently of changing constitutional realities. This broader sense of commonality does not alter the fact that national cultures continue to thrive, not least because the importance of common languages – Latin or French – through which learned people throughout Europe could communicate has waned. Longstanding animosities also continue to be remembered and, indeed, continue to play an important part in national identity, an identity on which European states depend more than ever. One of the most enduring features of Europe is, after all, that it is made up of nations.34 As the content and significance of concepts of “nation” have changed over the course of centuries, concepts of “state” have changed with them, and continue to do so.

Appendix

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Rohan, Henri, Duc de: De l’intérêt des princes et des États de la chrétienté, Paris 1638.

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Notes

Weber, Wirtschaft 1922, I Soziologische Grundbegriffe, Paragraph 6: “Arten der legitimen Ordnung: Konvention und Recht”. A public order based on law is defined as “äußerlich garantiert … durch die Chance physischen oder psychischen Zwanges durch eine auf Erzwingung der Innehaltung oder auf Ahndung der Verletzung gerichtetes Handeln eines eigens darauf eingestellten Stabes von Menschen”. See in the same vein also ibid., III, 2. on “Typen der Herrschaft”, “Legale Herrschaft”. While the relative autonomy of law in the West did rest on specific “staffs” of experts (lawyers and judges), specific genres of texts (law codes, legal argument, legal philosophy) and specific expert institutions (university faculties of law), physical or other coercion was precisely not at the core of this autonomy. A few individuals could always be coerced, but society at large had to submit voluntarily. Weber is here generalizing a very specific Hobbesian view of law, one understanding law as only existing via the procurement of a coercing agency, a view which has hardly ever commanded broad acceptance in Western societies as a whole. But see Breuer, Legitimitätskonzept 2000, pp. 1–16; see in this vein the emphasis on coercion and ideologies of coercion in major texts such as Meinecke, Idee 1924; Tilly, Coercion 1990. A more detailed account of the transformation of the European state system and the interrelation of dynastic agglomerates, foreign politics, political thought and religious change is given in Friedeburg, Europa in der frühen Neuzeit 2012. Nolte, Konferenzreport [2005]. Stolleis, Key-note plenary lecture 2007, p. 223. Schilling, Konfessionalisierung 2007. Elliot, Composite Monarchies 1992, pp. 48–71; Bonney, European States 1991, p. 524; Morrill, Uneasy lies the head 2005, p. 11; Bély, La societé 1999; Henshall, Zenith 2010; Blockmans, Empowering 2009. Collins, Classes 1994. Louthan, Bohemia 2008. See Ohlmeyer, “Old” British Histories 2007, pp. 1–14; Collins, Tribes 2002. “Calendars of state” listed for many principalities the territories, towns, and servants of the prince, as the total sum of the holdings of the prince, but also as the substance of the “state” in a more public sense. For an example see [Anonymous]: Königlich Dänischer Hof- und Staatscalender: Staatshandbuch der dänischen Monarchie für das Jahr 1854, Kopenhagen o. J. [1854], online: urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb10451906-3 [02/11/2010]. Bonney, Economic Systems 1995, see Omrod, West European Monarchies 1995, pp. 123–162, 146–155 on the impressive steps made by monarchies in England and France toward establishing direct and indirect taxes amounting to about a third of royal income in the case of England around 1400. However, expenses since the 1490s outweighed these developments. “The Emergence and Consolidation of the Tax State” (Schulze / T’Hart, Emergence 1995, pp. 261–280, 281–294) do not demonstrate the overriding significance of taxes, but establish, as do the chapters on Spain (Muto, Spanish System 1995, pp. 231–260) and France (Bonney, Theories 1995, pp. 163–230) the continued importance of demesne income (Bonney, Theories 1995, pp. 168–170 on France), of the sale of offices (Bonney, pp. 163–169), the farming of taxes (ibid., pp. 241–257) and the overall establishment of a chronic and endemic state of indebtedness (ibid., pp. 284–87) solved with ad hoc and haphazard means. These problems were primarily faced by the Spanish Habsburgs and the French monarchy, but since the 17th century also by almost every dynasty or republic participating in active foreign policy (ibid., pp. 285–292). Indeed, French contemporary enumerations of items of income list the demesne, conquest, “gifts” by subjects, customs and duties on trade as important revenues and only then, as a last item, taxes (ibid., pp 168–169). Steven Gunn, David Grummitt and Hans Cools state that by the 1550s taxes had increased both in England and the Netherlands, but fail to acknowledge the longer term failure of tax-financed warfare in both England and the Netherlands and the enormous importance of public debt both in the Netherlands and England during the 17th century, when war costs really did start to mount up (see Gunn / Grummitt / Cools, War 2008). “the makers of the king were those groups of financiers and behind them, those members of the nobility and the bourgeoisie who lent him money”. Lucien Bély, La France 2009. To debate this modified sense of “New Monarchy”, the author, John Morrill, Jim Collins, Lucien Bely and Robert Frost intended to run a European Science Foundation funded Research Conference in Linköping in Sweden, 5–9 September 2011, which was unfortunately cancelled (cf. http://www.esf.org/activities/esf-conferences/conf-list-archives.html?year=2011). Rohan, L’intérêt 1638, Introduction. For example offices and spoils from the administration of debts, of taxes and customs, and offices in the military. Schilling, Konfessionalisierung 2007. See now Gaspary, Späthumanismus 2006. Conring, Hermann: De Origine Ivris Germanici Commentarius Historicus: Obiter de Justinianei Juris in scholas & fora reductione disseritur, ac Nihusiani Triumphi exploduntur, Helmstedt 1643. Coquille, Guy: Institution au droict des françois, Paris 1607. See Greenberg, Radical Face 2001, p. 116. Ludolph, Georg Melchior: De iure Foeminarum illustrium Tractatus nomico-politicus ad jura germaniae potissimum accomodatus, Jena 1711, p. 18; quoted after Willoweit, Der usus modernus 2000, p. 233. See Willoweit, Usus modernus 2000, pp. 233–234: “Es wird nun üblich, die spätantiken Volksrechte und die mittelalterlichen Rechtsbücher zu zitieren, Beispiele aus der deutschen Vergangenheit zu erörtern und daraus normative Schlussfolgerungen zu ziehen.” Friedrich Hortleder, for instance, remained dependent on the historian Sleidan, see Kess, Johann Sleidan 2008, p. 148; on ecclesiastical history in this confessional age see Pohlig, Gelehrsamkeit 2007. E.g. Willoweit, Usus modernus 2000, pp. 229–246; Greenberg, Radical Face 2001; Brooks, Law 2008; for a critique on this particularlized state of research see Berman, Law and Revolution 1983. Friedeburg, Europa in der frühen Neuzeit 2012. Elliot, Composite Monarchies 1992, pp. 48–71; Bonney, European Dynastic states 1991, p. 524; Morrill, Uneasy lies the head 2005, p. 11; Bély, La société 1999; Roll, Auswärtige Politik [forthcoming]. Duchhardt, Balance 1997. Kunisch, Friedrich der Große 2004. Blanning, Pursuit 2008. Blanning, Culture of Power 2002. See Schnettger, “Principe sovrano” 2006. The Dutch republics were Zeeland, Holland, Gelderland, Utrecht, Friesland, Groningen, Overijssel, also Drenth (without voting right in the Estates General). The lands captured from Spain were administered by the States General. Among the Swiss cantons, the princely abbey St. Gallen and the principality of Neuenburg were monarchies. See for a summary Friedeburg, Republiken 2010. For overviews see Head, Democracy 1995; Israel, Dutch Republic 1998; Frijhoff / Spies, Bevochten eendracht 1999; Horodowich, Language 2008; Hellmann, Geschichte Venedigs 1989; Morrill, Nature 1993; Worden, English Civil War 2009. See Evans, Austria 2006. Rubies, Oriental Despotism 2005, pp. 109–180. Osterhammel, Entzauberung 1998. Heimpel, Entwurf 1957, p. 173.

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