Staatsbildung Als Kultureller Prozess

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Staatsbildung als kultureller Prozess

Author : Ronald G. Asch
Publisher : Böhlau Verlag Köln Weimar
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 464 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Staatsbildung als kultureller Prozess by : Ronald G. Asch

Download or read book Staatsbildung als kultureller Prozess written by Ronald G. Asch and published by Böhlau Verlag Köln Weimar. This book was released on 2005 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In diesem Band werden traditionelle historiographische Fragestellungen mit den Ansätzen jüngerer Forschungsrichtungen verbunden, um in kulturhistorischer Perspektive nach der Realität von Herrschaft vor Ort und der erfahrungsgeschichtlichen Dimension politischer Macht zu fragen. Dabei wird nicht mehr der moderne Staat des 19. Jahrhunderts, dessen Entwicklung gewissermaßen rückblickend analysiert wird, als Ausgangspunkt genommen, sondern die Zeit des Umbruchs traditioneller Herrschaftspraktiken am Beginn der Neuzeit und die Entstehung neuer Herrschaftsstrukturen, die vor dem Hintergrund einer sich wandelnden politischen Kultur legitimiert und vermittelt werden mussten. Die auf West- und Mitteleuropa ausgerichteten Beiträge greifen einzelne Aspekte des politischen Wandels sowie der zentralen und lokalen Herrschaftsausübung auf, etwa die Bedeutung von Rechtssprechung und Justiznutzung, die prägende Kraft der höfischen Kultur oder die Rolle sozialer Eliten im Staatsbildungsprozess, um exemplarisch die Vielschichtigkeit von Herrschaft und Herrschaftslegitimation zwischen dem 16. und 18. Jahrhundert aufzuzeigen.

Citizenship and Identity in a Multinational Commonwealth

Author : Karin Friedrich
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004169830
Total Pages : 340 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (41 download)

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Book Synopsis Citizenship and Identity in a Multinational Commonwealth by : Karin Friedrich

Download or read book Citizenship and Identity in a Multinational Commonwealth written by Karin Friedrich and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2009 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work is an attempt to change thinking not only on the political practice and the role of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in a European context (both East and West), but to also connect the early modern past with present notions of citizenship and participatory political systems.

Empowering Interactions

Author : Wim Blockmans
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 131714421X
Total Pages : 414 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (171 download)

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Book Synopsis Empowering Interactions by : Wim Blockmans

Download or read book Empowering Interactions written by Wim Blockmans and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-02 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The emergence of the state in Europe is a topic that has engaged historians since the establishment of the discipline of history. Yet the primary focus of has nearly always been to take a top-down approach, whereby the formation and consolidation of public institutions is viewed as the outcome of activities by princes and other social elites. Yet, as the essays in this collection show, such an approach does not provide a complete picture. By investigating the importance of local and individual initiatives that contributed to state building from the late middle ages through to the nineteenth century, this volume shows how popular pressure could influence those in power to develop new institutional structures. By not privileging the role of warfare and of elite coercion for state building, it is possible to question the traditional top-down model and explore the degree to which central agencies might have been more important for state representation than for state practice. The studies included in this collection treat many parts of Europe and deal with different phases in the period between the late middle ages and the nineteenth century. Beginning with a critical review of state historiography, the introduction then sets out the concept of 'empowering interactions' which is then explored in the subsequent case studies and a number of historiographical, methodological and theoretical essays. Taken as a whole this collection provides a fascinating platform to reconsider the relationships between top-down and bottom-up processes in the history of the European state.

Law and Empire

Author :
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004249516
Total Pages : 360 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (42 download)

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Book Synopsis Law and Empire by :

Download or read book Law and Empire written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2013-08-15 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Law and Empire provides a comparative view of legal practices in Asia and Europe, from Antiquity to the eighteenth century. It relates the main principles of legal thinking in Chinese, Islamic, and European contexts to practices of lawmaking and adjudication. In particular, it shows how legal procedure and legal thinking could be used in strikingly different ways. Rulers could use law effectively as an instrument of domination; legal specialists built their identity, livelihood and social status on their knowledge of law; and non-elites exploited the range of legal fora available to them. This volume shows the relevance of legal pluralism and the social relevance of litigation for premodern power structures.

Healing the Herds

Author : Karen Brown
Publisher : Ohio University Press
ISBN 13 : 0821443100
Total Pages : 313 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (214 download)

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Book Synopsis Healing the Herds by : Karen Brown

Download or read book Healing the Herds written by Karen Brown and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2010-01-15 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the early 1990s, the ability of dangerous diseases to pass between animals and humans was brought once more to the public consciousness. These concerns continue to raise questions about how livestock diseases have been managed over time and in different social, economic, and political circumstances. Healing the Herds: Disease, Livestock Economies, and the Globalization of Veterinary Medicine brings together case studies from the Americas, western Europe, and the European and Japanese colonies to illustrate how the rapid growth of the international trade in animals through the nineteenth century engendered the spread of infectious diseases, sometimes with devastating consequences for indigenous pastoral societies. At different times and across much of the globe, livestock epidemics have challenged social order and provoked state interventions, often opposed by farmers and herders. The intensification of agriculture has transformed environments, with consequences for animal and human health. But the last two centuries have also witnessed major changes in the way societies have conceptualized diseases and sought to control them. From the late nineteenth century, advances in veterinary technologies afforded veterinary scientists a new professional status and allowed them to wield greater political influence. While older methods have remained important to strategies of control and prevention, as demonstrated during the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Britain in 2001, the rise of germ theories and the discovery of vaccines against some infections made it possible to move beyond the blunt tools of animal culls and restrictive quarantines of the past. Healing the Herds: Disease, Livestock Economies, and the Globalization of Veterinary Medicine offers a new and exciting comparative approach to the complex interrelationships of microbes, markets, and medicine in the global economy.

War, the State and International Law in Seventeenth-Century Europe

Author : Olaf Asbach
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317000374
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis War, the State and International Law in Seventeenth-Century Europe by : Olaf Asbach

Download or read book War, the State and International Law in Seventeenth-Century Europe written by Olaf Asbach and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-02-17 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the great paradoxes of post-medieval Europe, is why instead of bringing peace to a disorganised and violent world, modernity instead produced a seemingly endless string of conflicts and social upheavals. Why was it that the foundation and institutionalisation of secured peace and the rule of law seemed to go hand-in-hand with the proliferation of war and the violation of individual and collective rights? In order to try to better understand such profound questions, this volume explores the history and theories of political thought of international relations in the seventeenth century, a period in which many of the defining features and boundaries of modern Europe where fixed and codified. With the discovery of the New World, and the fundamental impact of the Reformation, the complexity of international relations increased considerably. Reactions to these upheavals resulted in a range of responses intended to address the contradictions and conflicts of the anarchical society of states. Alongside the emergence of "modern" international law, the equation of international relations with the state of nature, and the development of the "balance of power", diplomatic procedures and commercial customs arose which shaped the emerging (and current) international system of states. Employing a multidisciplinary approach to address these issues, this volume brings together political scientists, philosophers, historians of political thought, jurists and scholars of international relations. What emerges is a certain tension between the different strands of research which allows for a fruitful new synthesis. In this respect the assembled essays in this volume offer a sophisticated and fresh account of the interactions of law, conflict and the nation state in an early-modern European context.

Imperial Villages

Author : Beat Kümin
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004396608
Total Pages : 293 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (43 download)

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Book Synopsis Imperial Villages by : Beat Kümin

Download or read book Imperial Villages written by Beat Kümin and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hundreds of rural communities tasted political freedom in the Holy Roman Empire. For shorter or longer periods, villagers managed local affairs without subjection to territorial overlords. In this first book-length study, Beat Kümin focuses on the five case studies of Gochsheim and Sennfeld (in present-day Bavaria), Sulzbach and Soden (Hesse) and Gersau (Switzerland). Adopting a comparative perspective across the late medieval and early modern periods, the analysis of multiple sources reveals distinct extents of rural self-government, the forging of communalized confessions and an enduring attachment to the empire. Negotiating inner tensions as well as mounting centralization pressures, Reichsdörfer provide privileged insights into rural micro-political cultures while their stories resonate with resurgent desires for greater local autonomy in Europe today.

The Sinews of Habsburg Power

Author : William D. Godsey
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0198809395
Total Pages : 481 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (988 download)

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Book Synopsis The Sinews of Habsburg Power by : William D. Godsey

Download or read book The Sinews of Habsburg Power written by William D. Godsey and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sinews of Habsburg Power explores the domestic foundations of the immense growth of central European Habsburg power from the rise of a permanent standing army after the Thirty Years' War to the end of the Napoleonic wars. With a force that grew irregularly in size from around 25,000 soldiers to as many as half a million in the War of the Sixth Coalition, the Habsburg monarchy participated in shifting international constellations of rivalry from western Europe to the Near East and in some two dozen, partly overlapping armed conflicts. Raising forces of such magnitude constituted a central task of Habsburg government, one that ultimately required the cooperation of society and its elites. The monarchy's composite-territorial structures in the guise of the Lower Austrian Estates -- a leading representative body and privileged corps -- formed a vital, if changing, element underlying Habsburg international success and resilience. With its capital at Vienna, the archduchy below the river Enns (the historic designation of Lower Austria) was geographically, politically, and financially a key Habsburg possession. Fiscal-military exigency induced the Estates to take part in new and evolving arrangements of power that served the purposes of government; in turn the Estates were able in previously little-understood ways and within narrowing boundaries to preserve vital interests in a changing world. The Estates survived because they were necessary, not only thanks to their increasing financial potency, but also because they offered a politically viable way of exacting ever-larger quantities of money, men, and other resources from local society. These circumstances would persist as ruling became more regularized, formalized, and homogenized, and as the very understanding of the Estates as a social and political phenomenon was evolving.

The Power of Scripture

Author : Andreas Pečar
Publisher : Berghahn Books
ISBN 13 : 1800733216
Total Pages : 269 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (7 download)

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Book Synopsis The Power of Scripture by : Andreas Pečar

Download or read book The Power of Scripture written by Andreas Pečar and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2021-12-10 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In England, from the Reformation era to the outbreak of the Civil War, religious authority contributed to popular political discourse in ways that significantly shaped the legitimacy of the monarchy as a form of rule as well as the monarch’s ability to act politically. The Power of Scripture casts aside parochial conceptualizations of that authority’s origins and explores the far-reaching consequences of political biblicism. It shows how arguments, narratives, and norms taken from Biblical scripture not only directly contributed to national religious politics but also left lasting effects on the socio-political development of Stuart England.

Histories of Tax Evasion, Avoidance and Resistance

Author : Korinna Schönhärl
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1000823903
Total Pages : 324 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis Histories of Tax Evasion, Avoidance and Resistance by : Korinna Schönhärl

Download or read book Histories of Tax Evasion, Avoidance and Resistance written by Korinna Schönhärl and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-12-05 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tax evasion, tax avoidance and tax resistance are widespread phenomena in political, economic, social and fiscal history from antiquity through medieval, early modern and modern times. Histories of Tax Evasion, Avoidance and Resistance shows how different groups and individuals around the globe have succeeded or failed in not paying their due taxes, whether in kind or in cash, on their properties or on their crops. It analyses how, throughout history, wealthy and poor taxpayers have tried to avoid or reduce their tax burden by negotiating with tax authorities, through practices of legal or illegal tax evasion, by filing lawsuits, seeking armed resistance or by migration, and how state authorities have dealt with such acts of claim making, defiance, open resistance or elusion. It fills an important research gap in tax history, addressing questions of tax morale and fairness, and how social and political inequality was negotiated through taxation. It gives rich insights into the development of citizen-state relationships throughout the course of history. The book comprises case studies from Ancient Athens, Roman Egypt, Medieval Europe, Early Modern Mexico, the Ottoman Empire, Nigeria under British colonial rule, the United Kingdom of the early 20th century, Greece during the Second World War, as well as West Germany, Switzerland, Sweden and the United States in the 20th century, including transnational entanglements in the world of late-modern offshore finance and taxation. The authors are experts in fiscal, economic, financial, legal, social and/or cultural history. The book is intended for students, researchers and scholars of economic and financial history, social and world history and political economy. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 license.

The Science of State Power in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1790-1880

Author : Borbala Zsuzsanna Török
Publisher : Berghahn Books
ISBN 13 : 1805395556
Total Pages : 286 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (53 download)

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Book Synopsis The Science of State Power in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1790-1880 by : Borbala Zsuzsanna Török

Download or read book The Science of State Power in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1790-1880 written by Borbala Zsuzsanna Török and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2024-06-01 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The formation of modern European states during the long 19th century was a complicated process, challenged by the integration of widely different territories and populations. The Science of State Power in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1790-1880 builds on recent research to investigate the history of statistics as an overlooked part of the sciences of the state in Habsburg legal education as well as within the broader public sphere. By exploring the practices and social spaces of statistics, author Borbála Zsuzsanna Török uncovers its central role in imagining the composite Habsburg Monarchy as a modern and unified administrative space.

The Stalin Cult in East Germany and the Making of the Postwar Soviet Empire, 1945–1961

Author : Alexey Tikhomirov
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1666911909
Total Pages : 385 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (669 download)

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Book Synopsis The Stalin Cult in East Germany and the Making of the Postwar Soviet Empire, 1945–1961 by : Alexey Tikhomirov

Download or read book The Stalin Cult in East Germany and the Making of the Postwar Soviet Empire, 1945–1961 written by Alexey Tikhomirov and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-03-28 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the construction, dissemination, and reception of the Stalin cult in East Germany from the end of World War II to the building of the Berlin Wall. By exporting Stalin’s cult to the Eastern bloc, Moscow aspired to symbolically unite the communist states in an imagined cult community pivoting around the Soviet leader. Based on Russian and German archives, this work analyzes the emergence of the Stalin cult’s transnational dimension. On one hand, it looks at how Soviet representations of power were transferred and adapted in the former “enemy’s” country. On the other hand, it reconstructs “spaces of agency” where different agents and generations interpreted, manipulated, and used the Stalin cult to negotiate social identities and everyday life. This study reveals both the dynamics of Stalinism as a political system after the Cold War began and the foundations of modern politics through mass mobilization, emotional bonding, and social engineering in Soviet-style societies. As an integral part of the global history of communism, this book opens up a comparative, entangled perspective on the ways in which veneration of Stalin and other nationalistic cults were established in socialist states across Europe and beyond.

A Companion to Multiconfessionalism in the Early Modern World

Author : Thomas Max Safley
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004216219
Total Pages : 512 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (42 download)

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Book Synopsis A Companion to Multiconfessionalism in the Early Modern World by : Thomas Max Safley

Download or read book A Companion to Multiconfessionalism in the Early Modern World written by Thomas Max Safley and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011-06-09 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the sixteenth century, the Christian church and Christian worship fragmented into a multiplicity of confessions that has grown to the present day. The essays in this volume demonstrate that multiconfessionalism, understood as the legally recognized and politically supported coexistence of two or more confessions in a single polity, was the rule rather than the exception for most of early modern Europe. The contributors examine its causes and effects. They demonstrate that local religious groups across the continent could cooperate with confessional opponents and oppose political authorities to make decisions about their religious lives, depending on local conditions and contingencies. In so doing, this volume offers a new vision of religion, state, and society in early modern Europe. Contributors include: Bernard Capp, John R. D. Coffey, Jérémie Foa, David Frick, Raymond Gillespie, Benjamin Kaplan, Howard Louthan, David Luebke, Keith Luria, Guido Marnef, Graeme Murdock, Richard Ninness, Penny Roberts, Jesse Spohnholz, Peter Wallace, Lee Palmer Wandel.

The Fiscal-Military State in Eighteenth-Century Europe

Author : Christopher Storrs
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317031660
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis The Fiscal-Military State in Eighteenth-Century Europe by : Christopher Storrs

Download or read book The Fiscal-Military State in Eighteenth-Century Europe written by Christopher Storrs and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-03 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent decades, historians of early-modern Europe, and above all those who study the eighteenth century, have elaborated the concept of what has been called the 'fiscal-military state'. This is a state whose international effectiveness was founded upon the development of large armed forces, whose performance and supply necessitated both further administrative development and the provision of large sums, the raising of which involved unprecedented levels of taxation and borrowing by governments. The present collection of essays, by leading authorities in their individual fields, all of whom have published widely on their chosen topic, explores the subject of the fiscal-military state by focusing on its leading exemplars in eighteenth-century Europe: Austria, Britain, France, Prussia and Russia. It also includes a chapter on the Savoyard state (the kingdom of Sardinia), a lesser power whose career illuminates by comparison developments elsewhere. In addition, and rather unusually, a further chapter considers the fiscal-military state in a broader, comparative international context, in the arena of international relations. Each chapter provides a summary of the state of knowledge regarding the fiscal-military state debate insofar as it relates to the state under consideration. As well as contributing to that debate, they take matters further by systematically analysing the sources of wealth and income, and the way these were tapped, and the broader impact that this attempt to extract resources had on society and the state, both in the short and longer term. The differing patterns, and the variety of models of fiscal-military state makes for ease of comparison across Europe, making the volume an invaluable resource to both students and researchers alike.

(Dis)connected Empires

Author : Zoltán Biedermann
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192556363
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (925 download)

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Book Synopsis (Dis)connected Empires by : Zoltán Biedermann

Download or read book (Dis)connected Empires written by Zoltán Biedermann and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-25 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: (Dis)connected Empires takes the reader on a global journey to explore the triangle formed during the sixteenth century between the Portuguese empire, the empire of Kotte in Sri Lanka, and the Catholic Monarchy of the Spanish Habsburgs. It explores nine decades of connections, cross-cultural diplomacy, and dialogue, to answer one troubling question: why, in the end, did one side decide to conquer the other? To find the answer, Biedermann explores the imperial ideas that shaped the politics of Renaissance Iberia and sixteenth-century Sri Lanka. (Dis)connected Empires argues that, whilst some of these ideas and the political idioms built around them were perceived as commensurate by the various parties involved, differences also emerged early on. This prepared the ground for a new kind of conquest politics, which changed the inter-imperial game at the end of the sixteenth century. The transition from suzerainty-driven to sovereignty-fixated empire-building changed the face of Lankan and Iberian politics forever, and is of relevance to global historians at large. Through its scrutiny of diplomacy, political letter-writing, translation practices, warfare, cartography, and art, (Dis)connected Empires paints a troubling panorama of connections breeding divergence and leading to communicational collapse. It examines a key chapter in the pre-history of British imperialism in Asia, highlighting how diplomacy and mutual understandings can, under certain conditions, produce conquest.

Pennsylvania Germans

Author : Simon J. Bronner
Publisher : JHU Press
ISBN 13 : 1421421399
Total Pages : 590 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (214 download)

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Book Synopsis Pennsylvania Germans by : Simon J. Bronner

Download or read book Pennsylvania Germans written by Simon J. Bronner and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2017-02-15 with total page 590 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive encyclopedia—the first of its kind—maps out three hundred years of German history and culture in Pennsylvania and beyond. Winner of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of the Choice ACRL Destined to become the standard reference on Pennsylvania Germans (also known as the “Pennsylvania Dutch”), this book is the first survey of this extensive American group in nearly seventy-five years. Nineteen broad interpretive essays written by a distinguished group of historians, anthropologists, sociologists, linguists, and folklorists tell the rich and nuanced story of Pennsylvania German history and culture. United by a distinct (and distinctly American) language, the Pennsylvania Germans have been slower to assimilate than other ethnic groups. This sweeping volume reveals, though, that the group is much less homogenous and isolated than was previously thought. From architecture, media, and farming techniques to food, folklore, and medicine, the Pennsylvania Germans and their descendants display a wide range of cultural variation. In Pennsylvania Germans, editors Simon J. Bronner and Joshua R. Brown broaden the geographical and social coverage of the group, touching both on Pennsylvanian communities and the Pennsylvania German diaspora, including settlements in Canada and Mexico. They also expand historical coverage of the Pennsylvania Germans to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Beautifully illustrated, this volume—while paying tribute to the historical and cultural legacy of the Pennsylvania Germans—is the most comprehensive book on the subject to date. Contributors: R. Troy Boyer, Simon J. Bronner, Joshua R. Brown, Edsel Burdge Jr., William W. Donner, John B. Frantz, Mark Häberlein, Karen M. Johnson-Weiner, Donald B. Kraybill, David W. Kriebel, Gabrielle Lanier, Mark L. Louden, Yvonne J. Milspaw, Lisa Minardi, Steven M. Nolt, Candace Perry, Sheila Rohrer, and Diane Wenger

The Silver Empire

Author : Oliver Volckart
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0198894503
Total Pages : 377 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (988 download)

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Book Synopsis The Silver Empire by : Oliver Volckart

Download or read book The Silver Empire written by Oliver Volckart and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-02-16 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Silver Empire is the first comprehensive account of how the Holy Roman Empire created a common currency in the sixteenth century. The problems that gave rise to the widespread desire to introduce a common a currency were myriad. While trade was able to cope with-and even to benefit from-the parallel circulation of many different types of coin, it nevertheless harmed both the common people and the political authorities. The authorities in particular suffered from neighbours who used their comparatively good money as raw material to mint poor imitations. Debasing their own coinage provided an, at best, short-term solution. Over the medium and long term, it drove the members of the Empire into rounds of competitive debasements, until they realised that a common currency was the only answer that addressed the core of the problem. Oliver Volckart examines the conditions that shaped the monetary outlook of the member states of the Empire, paying particular attention to the uneven access to silver and gold. Following closely the negotiations that prepared the common currency, he is able to illuminate the interest groups that were formed, what their agendas and ulterior motives were, how alliances were forged, and how it was eventually possible to obtain majority agreement on what a common currency should look like: a silver-based currency that was introduced in 1559-66. In fact, in contrast to what historians once believed, the common currency they achieved turns out to have functioned not significantly worse than other currencies of the time: it had similar problems and similar advantages as the money issued by more centralized governments.