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Department of History

States, Arms, Armies, and Navies

Seminar Questions

  • What was the relationship between states and violence in early modern Europe?
  • What was the impact of war on civilians in early modern Europe?
  • To what extent did the martial ethic change between 1500 and 1700?

Required Reading

All students should read

Ruff, Julius R., Violence in Early Modern Europe 1500-1800 (Cambridge, 2001), Chapter 2.

AND two of the following items:

E-Resources

Further Reading

Amirell, S. E., et al. (eds), Persistent Piracy: Maritime Violence and State-Formation in Global Historical Perspective (Basingstoke, 2014)

Anglo, Sydney, The Martial Arts of Renaissance Europe (New Haven, 2000)

Barbalet, Jack, 'Violence and Politics: Reconsidering Weber's "Politics as a Vocation’", Sociology (2020)

Black, Jeremy, War and the Cultural Turn (Cambridge, 2013)

Black, Jeremy, War and the World: Military Power and the Fate of Continents 1450-1600 (New Haven, 2008)

Boes, Maria R., Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Germany: courts and adjudicatory practices in Frankfurt am Main, 1562-1696 (Farnham, 2013)

Bourdieu, Pierre, On the State (Cambridge, 2015)

Carroll, Stuart, Blood and Violence in Early Modern France (Oxford, 2006)

Donagan, Barbara, ‘Atrocity, War, Crime and Treason in the English Civil War’, American Historical Review 99/4 (1994), 1137-66

Donagan, Barbara, War in England, 1642-1649 (Oxford, 2008)

von Grimmelshausen, Hans Jakob Christoffel, Simplicissimus, trans. Michael Mitchell (Sawtry, 1999)

Glete, Jan, War and the State in Early Modern Europe: Spain, the Dutch Republic and Sweden as Fiscal-Military States, 1500-1660 (London, 2002)

Hale, J.R., War and Society in Renaissance Europe, 1450-1620 (London, 1985)

Hallenberg, Mats, 'The Golden Age of the Aggressive Male? Violence, Masculinity and the State in Sixteenth-Century Sweden', Gender & History 25/1 (2013), 132–49.

Härter, Karl, 'Political Crime in Early Modern Europe: Assassination, Legal Responses and Popular Print Media', European Journal of Criminology 11/2 (2013), 142-68

Helfferich, Tryntje, ed. and trans., The Thirty Years War: A Documentary History (Indianapolis, 2009)

James, Alan, 'Rethinking the Peace of Westphalia: Toward a Theory of Early-Modern Warfare' in Jonathan Davies (ed.), Aspects of Violence in Renaissance Europe (Farnham, 2013), pp. 107-126.

Kaeuper, Richard, Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe (Oxford, 1999)

Koskinen, Ulla, Aggressive and Violent Peasant Elites in the Nordic Countries, c. 1500-1700 (Basingstoke, 2017)

Kunzle, David, From Criminal to Courtier: The Soldier in Netherlandish Art 1550-1672 (Leiden, 2002)

Lane, F. C., 'Economic Consequences of Organized Violence', Journal of Economic History 18 (1958), 401-17.

Lane, F. C., Profits from Power: Readings in Protection Rent and Violence-Controlling Enterprises (Albany, 1979)

Lawrence, D. R., The Complete Soldier: Military Books and Military Culture in Early Stuart England, 1603-1645 (Leiden, 2008)

Lewis, C.P., and A.T. Thacker, eds, 'Early modern Chester 1550-1762: The civil war and interregnum, 1642-60', in A History of the County of Chester: Volume 5 part 1: The City of Chester: General History and Topography (London, 2003), pp. 115-125.

Lynn II, John A., Women, Armies, and Warfare in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2008)

Malešević, Siniša, The Sociology of War and Violence (Cambridge, 2010)

Manning, Roger B., Swordsmen: The Martial Ethos in the Three Kingdoms (Oxford, 2003)

Marklund, Andreas, ‘The Manly Sacrifice: Martial Manliness and Patriotic Martyrdom in Nordic Propaganda
during the Great Northern War’, Gender & History 25/1 (2013), 150–69.

Mortimer, Geoff, ed. and trans., Eyewitness Accounts of the Thirty Years War 1618-48 (Basingstoke, 2002)

Murphey, Rhoads, Ottoman Warfare, 1500-1700 (London, 1999)

Redlich, Fritz, De praeda militari. Looting and booty, 1500-1815 (Wiesbaden, 1956)

Rogers, Clifford, J., ed., The Military Revolution Debate: Readings on the Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe (Boulder, CO, 1995)

Ó Siochrú, Micheál, 'Atrocity, Codes of Conduct and the Irish in the British Civil Wars 1641–1653', Past and Present 195 (2007), 55-86.

Parrott, David, The Business of War: Military Enterprise and Military Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2012)

Roberts, Penny, Peace and Authority During the French Religious Wars c.1560-1600 (Basingstoke, 2013)

Sandberg, Brian, War and Conflict in the Early Modern World: 1500-1700 (London, 2016)

Sandberg, Brian, Warrior Pursuits: Noble Culture and Civil Conflict in Early Modern France (Baltimore, 2010)

Steensgard, N., 'Violence and the Rise of Capitalism: F. C. Lane's Theory of Protection and Tribute', Review : Journal of the Fernand Braudel Center 5 (1981), 247-73

Tallett, Frank, War and Society in Early-Modern Europe (London, 1992)

Tallett, Frank, and D. J. B. Trim, eds, European Warfare 1350-1750 (Cambridge, 2010)

Thomson, Janice, E., Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns: State-Building and Extraterritorial Violence in Early Modern Europe (Princeton, N.J, 1994)

Tilly, Charles, Coercion, Capital, and European States, A.D.990-1992, rev. ed. (Oxford, 1992)

Tlusty, B. Ann, The Martial Ethic in Early Modern Germany: Civic Duty and the Right of Arms (Basingstoke, 2011)

Ulbricht, O., 'The Experience of Violence during the Thirty Years War: A Look at the Civilian Victims', in J. Canning, H. Lehmann, and J. Winter, eds, Power, Violence and Mass Death in Pre-modern and Modern Times (Farnham, 2004), 97–128.

Weber, Max, 'Politics as Vocation', in Max Weber's Complete Writings on Academic and Political Vocations, ed. John Dreijmanis, trans. Gordon C. Wells (New York, 2008), pp. 126-166

Wilson, Peter H., ed. and trans., The Thirty Years War: A Sourcebook (Houndmills, 2010)

Wolfthal, Diane, 'Jacques Callot's Miseries of War', The Art Bulletin 59/2 (1977), 222-233.

Zmora, Hillary, State and Nobility in Early Modern Germany: The Knightly Feud in Franconia, 1440-1567 (Cambridge, 1997)

Altdorfer, Battle of Alexander, 1529