Expansion and Crisis in Louis XIV's France

Expansion and Crisis in Louis XIV's France

Author: Darryl Dee

Publisher: University Rochester Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 1580463037

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Driven by a desire for glory and renown, Louis XIV presided over France's last great burst of territorial expansion in Europe. During the first three decades of his rule, his armies conquered numerous territories along France's borders. After 1688, however, the tide of conquest turned as the kingdom was plunged into crisis. For the remainder of his reign, the king and his people endured wars against grand alliances of European powers, ecological disasters, economic depression, state bankruptcy, and demographic stagnation. Expansion and Crisis in Louis XIV's France examines these central yet understudied aspects of the age of the Sun King through the experience of Franche-Comté, a possession of the Spanish empire with a long history of autonomy, conquered by Louis XIV in 1674. Dee's detailed research reconstructs the ensuing dialogue -- sometimes harmonious, sometimes discordant -- between the king and the elites who ruled this province. The integration of Franche-Comté into France proved to be a protracted process involving confrontation, negotiation, and compromise. The resulting regime was then severely tested by the challenges of Louis XIV's late reign; its survival demonstrated how the king had brought a distinctly early modern state to the height of its development. This study offers significant new insights on the growth of the territorial state in early modern Europe, the nature of the French absolute monarchy, and the political legacy of the Sun King. Darryl Dee is Assistant Professor of History, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Canada.


The Boundaries of the Republic

The Boundaries of the Republic

Author: Mary Dewhurst Lewis

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 9780804757225

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In this first comprehensive history of immigrant inequality in France, Mary D. Lewis chronicles the conflicts arising from mass immigration between the First and Second World Wars, the uneven rights arrangements that emerged during this time, and their legacy for contemporary France.


Private Ambition and Political Alliances

Private Ambition and Political Alliances

Author: Sara E. Chapman

Publisher: University Rochester Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 9781580461535

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Sara Chapman focuses on the Phélypeaux de Pontchartrain family to provide a broad study of institutions & political authority in the early modern French state from 1670 to 1715.


The Third Reign of Louis XIV, c.1682-1715

The Third Reign of Louis XIV, c.1682-1715

Author: Julia Prest

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-12-08

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 1317014103

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The personal rule of Louis XIV, following on from a long period of royal minority and apprenticeship, lasted 54 years from 1661 to 1715. But the second half of this personal rule has, until recently, received significantly less scholarly attention than the 1660s and 1670s. This has obscured some of the very real changes and developments that occurred between the early 1680s and the mid-1690s, by which time a new generation of younger royals had come to prominence, France was engulfed in international war on a greater scale than ever before, and the king was visibly no longer as vigorous or healthy as he had once been. The essays in this volume take a close look at the way a new set of political, social, cultural and economic dispensations emerged from the mid-1680s to create a different France in the final decades of Louis XIV’s reign, even though the basic ideological, social and economic underpinnings of the country remained very largely the same. The contributions examine such varied matters as the structure and practices of government, naval power, the financial operations of the state, trade and commerce, social pressures, overseas expansion, religious dissent, music, literature and the fine arts.


The Oxford Handbook of the Ancien Régime

The Oxford Handbook of the Ancien Régime

Author: William Doyle

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 598

ISBN-13: 0199291209

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

An exploration of current scholarly thinking about the wide and surprisingly complex range of historical problems associated with the study of Ancien Régime Europe


King Chǒngjo, an Enlightened Despot in Early Modern Korea

King Chǒngjo, an Enlightened Despot in Early Modern Korea

Author: Christopher Lovins

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2019-03-25

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 1438473656

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Were the countries of Europe the only ones that were "early modern"? Was Asia's early modernity cut short by colonialism? Scholars examining early modern Eurasia have not yet fully explored the relationships between absolute rule and political modernization in the highly contested early modern world. Using a comparative perspective that places Chŏngjo, king of Korea from 1776 to 1800, in context with other Korean kings and with contemporary Chinese and European rulers, Christopher Lovins examines the shifting balance of power in Korea in favor of the crown at the expense of the aristocracy during the early modern period. This book is the first to analyze in English the recently discovered collection of 297 private letters written by Chŏngjo himself. These letters were a vital channel of communication outside of official court historians' scrutiny, since private meetings between the king and his ministers were forbidden by custom. Royal politics played out in an arena of subtle communication, with court officials trying to read the king's unstated, elliptically hinted at intentions and the king trying to suggest what he wanted done while maintaining plausible deniability. Through close analysis of both official records and private letters, including Chŏngjo's "secret letters," Lovins shows that, in contrast to previous assumptions, the late eighteenth-century Korean monarchs were not weak and ineffective but instead were in the process of building an absolutist polity.


Flattering Alliances

Flattering Alliances

Author: Peter Lindström

Publisher: Nordic Academic Press

Published: 2015-01-01

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 918735151X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Taking a fresh look at the history of diplomacy, this book looks at the fight for hegemony between France and Austria after the Peace of Westphalia 1648, showing how their clashes dragged the Scandinavian kingdoms into European top-level politics and forced them to take part in the play, constantly negotiating risks and profits. Historians Peter Lindström and Svante Norrhem discuss how the Great Powers were binding allies to their side, and how the Scandinavian countries and their political elites responded. Many of the diplomatic strategies were solidified through family alliances, patronage, and economic politics, something quite different from what is expected from today's diplomatic neutralities.


Forests in Revolutionary France

Forests in Revolutionary France

Author: Kieko Matteson

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015-04-16

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 1107043344

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book investigates the bitterly contested development of environmental conservation in France from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, suggesting that conflicts over forests between the state, landowning elites, and the peasantry not only reflected escalating demand for this most vital of natural resources but also shaped the country's revolutionary struggles.


King of the World

King of the World

Author: Philip Mansel

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2020-09-01

Total Pages: 669

ISBN-13: 022669092X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Louis XIV was a man in pursuit of glory. Not content to be the ruler of a world power, he wanted the power to rule the world. And, for a time, he came tantalizingly close. Philip Mansel’s King of the World is the most comprehensive and up-to-date biography in English of this hypnotic, flawed figure who continues to captivate our attention. This lively work takes Louis outside Versailles and shows the true extent of his global ambitions, with stops in London, Madrid, Constantinople, Bangkok, and beyond. We witness the importance of his alliance with the Spanish crown and his success in securing Spain for his descendants, his enmity with England, and his relations with the rest of Europe, as well as Asia, Africa, and the Americas. We also see the king’s effect on the two great global diasporas of Huguenots and Jacobites, and their influence on him as he failed in his brutal attempts to stop Protestants from leaving France. Along the way, we are enveloped in the splendor of Louis’s court and the fascinating cast of characters who prostrated and plotted within it. King of the World is exceptionally researched, drawing on international archives and incorporating sources who knew the king intimately, including the newly released correspondence of Louis’s second wife, Madame de Maintenon. Mansel’s narrative flair is a perfect match for this grand figure, and he brings the Sun King’s world to vivid life. This is a global biography of a global king, whose power was extensive but also limited by laws and circumstances, and whose interests and ambitions stretched far beyond his homeland. Through it all, we watch Louis XIV progressively turn from a dazzling, attractive young king to a belligerent reactionary who sets France on the path to 1789. It is a convincing and compelling portrait of a man who, three hundred years after his death, still epitomizes the idea of le grand monarque.