Report
Teaser, summary, work performed and final results
Periodic Reporting for period 2 - STATE (Lordship and the Rise of States in Western Europe, 1300-1600)
Teaser
The project STATE pursues a new interpretation of state formation in Western Europe between 1300 and 1600. This project is considered as the key phase in the genesis of the modern state, as various polities now centralized fiscal and military resources under their command...
Summary
The project STATE pursues a new interpretation of state formation in Western Europe between 1300 and 1600. This project is considered as the key phase in the genesis of the modern state, as various polities now centralized fiscal and military resources under their command. While there is debate whether this was primarily a top-down process carried by princes, or a bottom-up process carried by popular representation, scholars agree that state building was exclusively a process of centralization. This assumption is questioned in this project with the working hypothesis that the emerging states of Western Europe could only acquire sufficient support among established elites if they also decentralized much of their legal authority through a process in which princes created a growing number of privately owned seigneuries as “states-within-states†for the benefit of elites who in return contributed to state building.
Empirically speaking, this project investigates the interplay between states and seigneurial elites in four regions – Flanders, Guelders (both in the Low Countries), Normandy, and Languedoc (both in France) – and the sample will be expanded by using data set from previous research on Warwickshire (England) and various parts of France. The time scope is restricted to ca. 1350-1550, and the project pays privileged attention to three key variables that shaped the relations between princes and power elites in different combinations all over Europe, namely 1) different trajectories in state formation; 2) different trajectories in urbanization; 3) different socio-economic organizations. This comparative analysis allows to test whether fiscal and military centralization was facilitated by a progressively confederal organization of government.
This project is important for society because the state – next to capitalism – is one of the defining characteristics of the modern world. Developing explanations for the rise of the state that pay equal attention to the effects of decentralisation and to the effects of centralization are relevant to current debates on the (dis)advantages of federal forms of government in the modern world (e.g. the EU or the USA as important federal projects of governance).
At the current stage of the project, that is, halfway the project’s five-year time span, much headway has been made with the gathering and processing of the extensive data sets necessary to answer the question. Next to this, a comparative framework is being developed in dialogue with the extensive secondary literature on state and society in France, the Low Countries, and England. In the second half of the project, the insights and theses from the current historiography will be cross-checked with the results of our analysis of lordships and their holders for the outlined case-studies. The project’s output will start to take full shape from 2020 onwards, with 1) a series of articles on individual case-studies (e.g. two articles on Guelders), 2) two doctoral dissertations on lordship in Normandy and Languedoc in the fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century, 3) a synthetic monograph that compares the outlined case-studies; 4) an international conference (scheduled for 3-5 September 2020) and concomitant conference proceedings in which the project’s research on the Low Countries, and France will be compared with the available research for other European polities.
Work performed
\"The first 2,5 years of this five-year project were largely dedicated to 1) the development of the project\'s database; 2) the data gathering for the four key case-studies (Normandy, Languedoc, Flanders, and Guelders); 3) the processing of the vast historiography on elites and state formation in The Low Countries, France, and England. Each of the milestones outlined in the project\'s proposal have been reached, thanks to modifications that are outlined in detail in in the \"\"problems and difficulties\"\"-section. Next to this, the PI and the two doctoral researchers have been developing the project\'s first publications, most of whom are still in draft stages. The expectation here is that the fourth an fifth year will see the first published output of the project. Last but not least, the planning of the project\'s conference is well underway: we have managed to attract the key scholarly authorities on lordship and state formation for a conference that will be held at Ghent on 3-5 September 2020. The two doctoral students are successfully taking their first steps in the conference circuit, and they are being coached to produce their first dissertation chapters and articles in the fourth and fifth year of the project.\"
Final results
With the progress outlined above, the project is well on track to develop a unique comparative data set on lay lordship for various regions of Western Europe between 1350 and 1550, and as outlined in the original proposal, this data set will help to test deep-rooted assumptions about the local dimension of pre-modern state formation.