Conventionally, ``absolutism'' in early-modern Europe has suggested unfettered autocracy and despotism -- the erosion of rights, the centralisation of decision-

Winner of the 2003 Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize This book rejects a commonplace of European history: that the treaties of Westphalia not only close

Absolutism in Central Europe is about the form of European monarchy known as absolutism, how it was defined by contemporaries, how it emerged and developed, and

The 14 essays in this volume look at both the theory and practice of monarchical governments from the Thirty Years War up until the time of the French Revolutio