The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change

TitleThe Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change
Publication TypeBook
Year of Publication2009
AuthorsNexon, Daniel H.
Number of Pages408
PublisherPrinceton University Press
CityPrinceton, NJ
Abstract

In this book, Daniel Nexon demonstrates how the emergence of new forms of religious heterodoxy during the Reformation sparked violent upheavals, toppling the old political order and inaugurating the modern sovereign state. Nexon provides an understanding of how the mobilization of transnational religious movements intersects with – and can destabilize – imperial forms of rule. Taking a fresh look at the pivotal events of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries – including the Schmalkaldic War, the Dutch Revolt, and the Thirty Years' War – Nexon argues that early modern "composite" political communities had more in common with empires than with modern states, and introduces a theory of imperial dynamics that explains how religious movements altered Europe's balance of power. He shows how the Reformations gave rise to crosscutting religious networks that undermined the ability of early modern European rulers to divide and contain local resistance to their authority. In doing so, the Reformations produced a series of crises in the European order and crippled the Habsburg bid for hegemony. Nexon's account of these processes provides a theoretical and analytic framework that not only challenges the way international relations scholars think about state formation and international change, but enables us to better understand global politics today.

URLhttps://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7rx8f
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261342067

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