The European Nobilities In The Seventeenth And Eighteenth Centuries Western Europe

This text examines Western European nobility in the 17th and 18th centuries. It includes chapters on: the consolidation of noble power c. 1600-1800; the British nobility 1660-1800; the Dutch nobility; nobility in France and Spain; and the Italian nobilities.

The second volume of the survey covers northern, central and eastern Europe - Denmark, Sweden, Brandenburg-Prussia, the Austro-Bohemian lands, Hungary, Poland-Lithuania and Russia.

This collection of authoritative essays by leading national specialists examine the nobility of a particular country or region, on a systematic basis: they analyze the structure of the particular elite, and survey its political and economic activities, as well as the social and ideological basis of its own position and power.

An authoritative and accessible survey of the European nobility over four centuries.

Essays with national approaches provide unique coverage of Europe's Old Regime nobilities, from Britain to Russia and from Sweden to Portugal, framed by a substantial comparative editorial introduction and concluded by a survey of the fate of the nobilities during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The complete short Oxford History of Europe provides a concise, readable, and authorititive point of entry for the history of Europe from the Ancient Greeks to the present day in eleven volumes. In each chapter a leading expert offers focused and penetrating insights into the major themes and influences of the period. Lying between the two great 'peaks' of European history, the Reformation and the Enlightenment in the centuries before and after, the seventeenth century lacks a clear identity of its own. And yet, it is the very proliferation of major events, crises, and processes throughout Europe that has made this transitional age so difficult to label. This book fully explores the seventeenth century, highly significant for the future of Europe. In a set of chapters covering and contrasting the European experience across the full century and the full continent, the reader is offered a rich, lively, and provocative introduction to this exciting period.