In The Reception of Bodin an international and interdisciplinary team of seventeen scholars considers one of the most remarkable figures in European intellectual history, the sixteenth-century jurist and philosopher Jean Bodin, as a ‘prismatic agent’ in the transmission of ideas. The subject is approached in the light of reception theory coupled with critical evaluation of key texts as well as features of Bodin’s own career. Bodin is treated as recipient of knowledge gleaned from multifarious sources, and his readers as receivers responding diversely to his work in various contexts and from various standpoints. The volume provides searching insights both into Bodin’s mental world and into processes that served to cross-fertilise European intellectual life from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. Contributors include Ann Blair, Harald E. Braun, Glenn Burgess, Peter Burke, Vittor Ivo Comparato, Marie-Dominique Couzinet, Luc Foisneau, Robert von Friedeburg, Mark Greengrass, Virginia Krause, Johannes Machielsen, Christian Martin, Sara Miglietti, Diego Quaglioni, Jonathan Schüz, Michaela Valente.

The Republican Alternative seeks to move beyond the mere notion of scholarly inquiry into the republic—the subject of recent rediscovery by political historians interested in Europe’s intellectual heritage—by investigating the practical similarities and differences between two early modern republics, as well as their self-images and interactions during the turbulent seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Among the world’s most economically successful societies, Switzerland and the Netherlands laid much of the foundation for their prosperity during the early modern period discussed here. This volume attempts to clarify the special character of these two countries as they developed, including issues of religious plurality, the republican form of government, and an increasingly commercially-driven agrarian society.

This major work is the most radical reinterpretation of the subject for fifty years. Hicks argues that Bastard Feudalism was far more complex - and positive in its effects - than previous accounts have suggested. A major contribution to historical debate which revolutionises our view of late medieval society.

This book provides seven studies that address major issuessuch as the human rights and human security nexus, gender aspectsof human security, ethical and environmental challenges, humansecurity as a basic element for a policy framework, the humansecurity agenda developed by the Human Security Network, anddebates on human security within the United Nations. Building on its variety of themes, the book takes account ofthe complexity and scope of the concept of human security, andproposes thereby to refresh and enrich discussion Contributors are internationally renowned experts in thedifferent subfields of human security Offers an overview of current trends and insights on what is atstake if the international community is to maintain the momentumcreated a few years ago when the concept of human securityemerged Designed to help both newcomers and experts in the field ofhuman security Readers will find inspiration in the new developments of aconcept that aims to shape practical action to meet the needs ofthe most vulnerable

The purpose of this volume is to challenge the assumption that Westphalia brought an end to more than a century of religious conflicts and marked the beginning of a new era in which secular power politics were the motivating factors in international relations and warfare. It also reconceptualizes the relationship between war, foreign policy, and religion during the period 1648 to 1713.

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.

This volume examines the history of a complex and varied body of ideas over a period of more than a thousand years.