Contrary to their traditional image as a caste of intransigent reactionaries and parasites, this analysis maintains that pre-revolutionary nobility actually were in the forefront of French economic and intellectual life, and until 1789, at the head of the movement for reform of the old regime.

In the five hundred years covered by this volume there was scarcely a year which passed without either war or some open demonstration of hostility between the many sovereign powers which governed Europe. States and peoples lived under the shadow of war, were ceaselessly prompted to consider the possibility of war, had to find ways of dealing with the consequences of war. This volume in the Origins of the Modern State in Europe series focuses on the crucial role of war in the formation of state systems. It starts from the assumption that interstate rivalries and conflicts were at the heart not only of the demarcation of territories, but also of the ever-growing need to mobilize resources for warfare. Institutionalization was consequently highly dependent on such competition. It was for military reasons, and with military aims, that the state secured control of time and space, both at sea and on land. The Origins of the Modern State in Europe series arises from an important international research programme sponsored by the European Science Foundation. The aim of the series, which comprises seven volumes, is to bring together specialists from different countries, who reinterpret from a comparative European perspective different aspects of the formation of the state over the long period from the beginning of the thirteenth to the end of the eighteenth century. One of the main achievements of the research programme has been to overcome the long-established historiographical tendency to regard states mainly from the viewpoint of their twentieth-century borders.

Des spécialistes de l'histoire de l'éducation analysent l'idée selon laquelle les universités du XVIe siècle auraient été des centres de résistance aux nouveaux modes de pensée, de foi et de savoir apportés par l'humanisme, la Renaissance, la Réforme et la Contre-Réforme. Ils montrent qu'elles furent aussi des lieux d'échanges, de dissémination et de modélisation.

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries witnessed the transformation of the old rural order to the modern class society. While historians have studied this transition as it occurred in individual countries, Jerome Blum offers the first view of it as a European experience tha transcended political frontiers. Originally published in 1978. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.