On the rise and Decline of the Monarchical Principle: Constitutional Vicissitudes in Spain and Germany

2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 268-292
Author(s):  
Lucas Prakke

Nation-state formation – Holy Roman Empire – Dissolution and realignment – Spain, fragmented – Reconquista – Charles V – Wars of succession – Centralisation under house of Bourbon – Napoleon – Spanish war of independence – History of the Cortes – Constitution of Cádiz – Weakness of Spanish Constitutionalism – German Confederation – Monarchical principle in Vienna Final Act – Old and new ideas of sovereignty – Metternich and fear of revolution – March revolution – Bismarckian empire as constitutional monarchy – Degeneration of the Reich – Exit the Kings – Enter Juan Carlos

2015 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
JILL ROSENTHAL

AbstractThis article argues that international aid to Rwandan refugees in Ngara district during decolonization unfolded as part of a broader project of nation-state formation and regulation – one that deeply affected local narratives of community and belonging. While there is an extensive scholarship on decolonization and nationalism, we know less about the history of the nation-state as a refugee-generating project, and the role of international aid agencies therein. The history of Rwandan refugees in Ngara district, Tanzania, reveals the constitutive relationship between nation-building and refugee experiences, illustrating that during decolonization local political imaginations congealed around internationally-reified categorizations of the ‘refugee’ and the ‘citizen’.


2006 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 565-576 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER H. WILSON

The German political scientist and philosopher, Samuel von Pufendorf, described the Holy Roman Empire in 1667 as a ‘monstrosity’, because it did not fit any of the recognized definitions of a state. The issue of the Empire's statehood has been the most important consideration in its historiography in recent decades: was it a state? If so, what kind? This review addresses these questions by examining how the debate on the Empire is related to wider controversies surrounding German history, the contemporary process of European integration, and about political organization in general. It explains how these debates are rooted in the political and religious disputes of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that still influence how the history of the Empire is written today. The four principal modern interpretations are identified and assessed: the Empire as a ‘failed nation state’, as a federation, and, more recently, as an ‘Empire-State’ or a ‘Central Europe of the Regions’. The piece concludes by offering a new explanatory framework to assess the Empire's political development.


2007 ◽  
Vol 8 (10) ◽  
pp. 955-975 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcílio Toscano Franca Filho

On 23rd June 2007, after three years of uncertainty, European Union leaders agreed on relaunching the old idea of a Magna Charta for Europe (now called “the Reform Treaty”), a normative structure based on the old ideas of deference to national identities, sovereignty and equality. To many authors, the first time that juridical equality between states was solemnly stated was in the aftermath of the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), in the Westphalia Peace Treaties, representing the beginning of modern international society established in a system of states, and at the same time, “the plain affirmation of the statement of absolute independence of the different state orders.” In fact, under an Eurocentric conception of political ideas (which envisages England as an isolated island and Iberia as Maghreb, north of Africa), the modern state emerges with the Westphalia Peace Treaties. However, under a broader conception, the modern nation-state (under the form of absolute monarchy) emerged long before the Westphalia Peace Treaties, in Iberia and England. Nevertheless, it is in these documents which lies the “birth certificate” of the modern sovereignty nation-state, base of the present democratic state, and “founding moment” of the international political system. Far beyond this merely formal aspect, the importance of the Westphalia Peace Treaties is so great to the understanding of the notion of state that Roland Mousnier, in describing the 16th and 17th centuries in the General History of the Civilizations, organized by Maurice Crouzet, asserts that those treaties symbolized a real “constitution of the new Europe,” a multifarious Europe, plural and very distant from the religious unit of Christianity, from the political unit of the Holy Roman Empire, and from the economical unit of the feudal system. Constitutions are especially important because they establish the rules for the political authority, they determine who governs and how they govern: “[I]n codifying and legitimating the principle of sovereign statehood, the Westphalian constitution gave birth to the modern states-system.”


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
FREDERICK G. CROFTS

ABSTRACT Examining the understudied collection of costume images from Heidelberg Calvinist, lawyer, and church councillor Marcus zum Lamm's (1544–1606) ‘treasury’ of images, the Thesaurus Picturarum, this article intervenes in the historiography on sixteenth-century German national imaginaries, emphasizing the import of costume books and manuscript alba for national self-fashioning. By bringing late sixteenth-century ethnographic costume image collections into scholarly discourse on the variegated ways of conceiving and visualizing Germany and Germanness over the century, this article sheds new light on a complex narrative of continuity and change in the history of German nationhood and identity. Using zum Lamm's images as a case-study, this article stresses the importance of incorporating costume image collections into a nexus of patriotic genres, including works of topographical-historical, natural philosophical, ethnographic, cartographic, cosmographic, and genealogical interest. Furthermore, it calls for historians working on sixteenth-century costume books and alba to look deeper into the meanings of such images and collections in the specific contexts of their production; networks of knowledge and material exchange; and – in the German context – the political landscape of territorialization, confessionalization, and dynastic ambition in the Holy Roman Empire between the Peace of Augsburg and the Thirty Years War (1555–1618).


Author(s):  
Olga Khavanova

The article is based on the materials from Russian and Austrian archives and devoted to lesser-known circumstances of the preparation and course of the 1761 diplomatic mission of Baron A.S. Stroganov to Vienna on the occasion of the wedding of the heir to the throne, Archduke Joseph, with Isabella of Parma. The embassy is considered in the context of symbolic communication through ceremonial gestures between St. Petersburg and Vienna. It emphasised the particularly friendly nature of the relationship between the two dynasties and two courts, not only united by a bilateral treaty and membership in the anti-Prussian alliance during the Seven Years War but also symbolically related as godparents. A.S. Stroganov was a young aristocrat without proper experience in the field of diplomacy and of the modest court rank of Kammer-Junker. The appointment was explained by his kinship with Chancellor M.I. Vorontsov whose daughter Anna officially accompanied her husband on the trip. The imperial ambassador to St. Petersburg Count Nicolaus Esterházy spared no effort to smooth over the awkwardness and find benevolent patrons for the young couple in Vienna. European education and the exceptional personal qualities of the ambassador allowed A. Stroganov to fulfil the commission with honour and receive the title of a Count of the Holy Roman Empire from Emperor Francis I as a reward. The embassy became the last page in the history of relations between St. Petersburg and Vienna on the eve of the break of bilateral relations and Russia’s withdrawal from the Seven Years War in 1762.


Author(s):  
Matthew Lockwood

The conclusion reiterates the centrality of the coroner system and its oversight in the monopolization of violence, state formation, and the growth of state power by creating and delineating new definitions of legitimate and illegitimate violence. It also examines the resulting decline of extra-judicial violence—blood feud, vendetta etc.—and subsequent attempts by the English state to target and control non-lethal forms of non-state violence such as riot and assault. Finally, the conclusion offers some initial comparisons with continental Europe and suggests that the trends seen in England may have been mirrored by similar attempts to monopolize violence in the Holy Roman Empire.


Author(s):  
Martin Hébert

Indigenous peoples’ rights to self-determination and self-government are recognized by several international instances. Deliberation plays a key role in the exercise of these rights, and its forms are as diverse as the cultures and social structures of which it is part. However, efforts to understand commonalities and differences between contexts and experiences have led to discussions of what Rodolfo Stavenhagen has termed the “indigenous situation.” This chapter looks at some ways in which self-identified Indigenous peoples have maintained, repurposed, and developed practices of political deliberation within such contexts of colonialism, nation-state formation, and capitalist expansion. A particular emphasis is put on the various scales at which deliberation takes place, be it in community life, regional organizations, or national and international political movements.


2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 203-228
Author(s):  
Robert Kurelić

The counts of Krk were one of the most prestigious and most powerful noble families in late medieval Croatia, with a dominant role attained under Nicholas IV who received the last name Frankapani from Pope Martin V in 1430. Soon after his death German language sources began to refer to the family as Grafen von Krabaten or Counts of Croatia, a somewhat peculiar designation considering that there were other prominent families such as the counts of Krbava who also maintained contacts within the Holy Roman Empire. This paper traces the development of the term von Krabaten from 1440 until the election of Ferdinand I Habsburg as king of Croatia, showing how it was used throughout the century and may have been an indication of the respect and status achieved by the Frankapani under Nicholas IV and his sons. The term is also explored as a helping tool for further research into the history of the family using sources that have hitherto been overlooked or neglected.


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