The noble enterprise of state building : Reconsidering the rise and fall of the modern state in Prussia and Poland

Comparative Politics

Volumn 44, Issue 1, 2011, Pages 21-38

  Wheeler, Nicholas C ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 82955237571     PISSN: 00104159     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5129/001041510X13815229366480     Document Type: Article

References (111)

1. Michael Hechter and William Brustein, "Regional Modes of Production and Patterns of State Formation in Western Europe," American Journal of Sociology, 85 (March 1980): 1061-94.
2. Daniel H. Nexon, The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires and International Change (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. 6-8.
3. Joseph Strayer, On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970);
4. Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, trans. L.A. Manyon (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1961);
5. also see Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, 15th 18th Century, Vols. 1 -3 (New York: Harper and Row, 1979).
6. Hendrik Spruyt, the Sovereign State and Its Competitors (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994).
7. Ronald G. Asch, ed., Nobilities in Transition 1550-1700: Courtiers and Rebels in Britain and Europe (London: Arnold Publishing, 2003);
8. Wolfgang Reinhard, ed., Power Elites and State Building (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996);
9. Orest Subtelny, Domination of Eastern Europe: Native Nobilities and Foreign Absolutism, 1500-1715 (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1986);
10. Albert Goodwin, ed., The European Nobility in the Eighteenth Century (London: Adam and Charles Black Publishing, 1953).
11. Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 22-27.
12. William H. McNeill, Europe's Steppe Frontier 1500-1800;
13. David Kirby, Northern Europe in the Early Modern Period: The Baltic World, 1492-1772;
14. and Robert Bideleux and Ian Jeffries, A History of Eastern Europe: Crisis and Change (New York: Routledge, 1998).
15. Relationships between centralized rulers and private holders of important resources were often based on short-term considerations and temporary alliances rather than longer term forms of loyalty or legal norms. Weber's assumption of a linear trajectory from medieval kingdom to modern statehood is an ideal-type construct, and the historical evidence suggests that societies experienced numerous expansions and contractions of centralized rule throughout the early modern period. For more on Weber's discussion, see Max Weber, Economy and Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), pp. 904-08.
16. For a more thorough discussion of the historical development of Brandenburg-Prussia, see Christopher Clark, Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006);
17. also see F. L. Carsten, "The Great Elector and the Foundation of Hohenzollem Despotism," The English Historical Review, 65 (April 1950): 175-202;
18. Hans Rosenberg, Bureaucracy, Aristocracy and Autocracy: The Prussian Experience 1660-1815 (London: Beacon Publishing, 1972);
19. Otto Hintze, "The State in Historical Perspective," in Reinhard Bendix et al., eds., State and Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), pp. 154-69;
20. and William W Hagen, "How Mighty the Junkers? Peasant Rents and Seigniorial Profits in Sixteenth-Century Brandenburg," Past and Present, 108 (August 1985): 89-93.
21. Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (New York: Verso Publishing, 1974);
22. Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World System I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World Economy in the Sixteenth Century (London: Academic Press Inc., 1974);
23. Robert Brenner, "Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe," in T. H. Ashton and C. H. E. Philpin, eds., The Brenner Debate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
24. Wladislaw Konopoczynski, "Wielkopolska w dobie Rzeczypospolitej szlacheckiej," Roczniki Historyczne, 1 (1925): 77-78.
25. Perry Anderson, p. 284.
26. Brian Downing, Military Revolution and Political Change (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992);
27. John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War Money and the English State (London: Routledge, 1989);
28. Bruce D. Porter, War and the Rise of the State: The Military Foundations of Modern Politics (New York: Free Press, 1994).
29. Downing, p. 92.
30. Jerzy Topolski, Polska w czasach nowożytnych 1500-1795 (Poznan: Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 1994);
31. nd ed. (Warsaw: PWN, 1991);
32. and Norman Davies, God's Playground: A History of Poland, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
33. Downing, pp. 155-56.
34. Charles Tilly, The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975);
35. Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital and European States: AD 990-1992 (Cambridge: Blackwell Publishing, 1990);
36. Thomas Ertman, Birth of the Leviathan: Building States and Regimes in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
37. Ertman, p. 285.
38. See Otto Hintze, "Die Hohenzollem und der Adel" (1913)
39. in Otto Hintze, Regierung und Verwaltung (Göttingen, 1967). The same theory is used by F. L. Carsten in his work, Origins of Prussia (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1954).
40. A similar account of the competition and conflict among merchants is detailed is Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London's Overseas Traders, 1550-1663 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).
41. Peter Evans, Dietrich Reuschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol, eds., Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
42. Robert Berdahl, the Politics of the Prussian Nobility: The Development of a Conservative Ideology 1770-1848 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988);
43. Margaret Sherman, The Rise of Brandenburg-Prussia (London: Routledge, 1995);
44. Michael Showalter, "Prussia's Army: Continuity and Change, 1713-1830," in Philip G. Dwyer, ed., The Rise of Prussia, 1700-1830 (New York: Longman, 2000), pp. 220-35.
45. The four predominant forms and organizations of power that I use here build upon Michael Mann's discussion of the importance of political, economic, military, and ideological power and the organization of the state. For more on Mann's definitions and discussion of the organizations associated with these forms of power, see The Sources of Social Power; Volume I: A History of Power from the Beginning to 1760 A.D. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 18-28.
46. During the sixteenth century, the Estates dramatically increased their power vis-à-vis the Electors of Brandenburg through a number of concessions. For more on these developments, see Peter-Michael Hahn, "Landesstaat und Ständetum im Kurfürstentum Brandenburg während des 16. und 17 Jahrhundert," in Peter Baumgart, ed., Ständetum und Staatsbildung in Brandeburg-Preussen. Ergebnisse einer international Factagung (Berlin, 1983);
47. and Carsten, pp. 165-78.
48. For more specific detail on the devastation in the Brandenburg countryside, see Clark, pp. 19-37.
49. Derek McKay, The Great Elector Frederick William of Brandenburg-Prussia (Harlow, UK: Pearson, 2001);
50. Martin Philippson, Der Grosse Kurfürst Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg, (3 vols. Berlin, 1897-1903).
51. Sidney B. Fay, "The Beginnings of the Standing Army in Prussia," The American Historical Review, 22 (July 1917): 763-77;
52. McKay, pp. 136-37;
53. Philippson, Der Grosse Kurfürst Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg, vol. 2, p. 165.
54. Edgar Melton, "The Junkers of Brandenburg-Prussia, 1600-1806," in H. M. Scott, ed., The European Nobilities in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (London: Palgrave, 2007), p. 132.
55. Rodney Gothlief, "Frederick William I and the Beginnings of Prussian Absolutism, 1713-1740," in Philip G. Dwyer, The Rise of Prussia, 1700-1830 (London: Longman, 2000), p. 59.
56. Henryk Litwin, "The Polish Magnates, 1454-1648: The Shaping of an Estate," Acta Poloniae Historica, 53 (1986): 63-92.
57. Stanislaw Plaza, "Changes in the Political System of the Polish Commonwealth after the Extinction of the Jagielionian Dynasty," Acta Poloniae Histórica, 52 (1985): 65-86. For a more positive view of the rise of the Polish state,
58. see Józef A. Gierowski, The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Eighteenth Century: From Anarchy to Well-organized State (Krakow: Nakladem Polskiej Akademii Umiejȩtności, 1996);
59. Władisław Konopoczyński, Dzieje Polski nowożytnej (London: B. Swiderski, 1958-59);
60. Michal Bobrzyński, Dzieje Polski (Warsaw: Panstowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1974).
61. Wladislaw Czaplinski, The Polish Parliament at the Summit of its Development: 16th and 17th Centuries (Wroclaw: Zaklad Narodowy im. Ossolinskich, 1985);
62. Henryk Olszewski, Sejm Rzeczypospolitej epoki oligarchii, 1652-1763: prawo, praktyka, teoria, programy (Poznań, 1966).
63. The liberum veto was premised on the idea that unanimous consent was necessary in all decisions reached by the Sejm. See Norman Davies, God's Playground: The Origins to 1795 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 246-84.
64. Jerzy Lukowski, Liberty's Folly: The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Eighteenth Century (London: Routledge, 1991), pp. 95-100.
65. See also Hagen, 1989, p. 317;
66. Melton, 2007, pp. 138-39.;
67. Georg Gruneberg, Die Prignitz und ihre städtische Bevölkerung im 17 Jahrhundert (Lenzen, 1999);
68. Edgar Melton, "The Decline of Prussian Gutsherrschaft and the Rise of the Junker Rural Patron, 1750-1806," German History, 12 (1994): 334-50;
69. William W Hagen, Ordinary Prussians: Brandenburg Junkers and villagers, 1500-1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
70. William W Hagen, "The Junkers' Faithless Servants: Peasant Insubordination and the Breakdown of Serfdom in Brandenburg-Prussia, 1763-1811," in Richard J. Evans and W Robert Lee, eds., The German Peasantry: Conflict and Community in Rural Society from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century (London: Routledge, 1986), pp. 71-101.
71. Some of the older ruling families in Brandenburg hesitated in providing service to the Great Elector, while nobles in other provinces maintained loyal ties with other German princes. See Peter-Michael Hahn, Fürstliche Territorialhoheit und lokale Adelsgewalt : die herrschaftliche Durchdringung des ländlichen Raumes zwischen Elbe und Aller (1300-1700) (Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1989).
72. Most of the highest ranking officers came from approximately ten of the larger Junker families. By the end of the eighteenth century approximately 70 percent of the Brandenburg nobility and 60 percent of the East Prussian nobility were either active or former officers. See Frank Göse, "Zwischen Garnison und Rittergut. Aspekte der Verknüpfung von Adelsforschung und Militärgestchichte am Beispiel Brandenburg-Preußens," in R. Pröve, ed., Klio in Uniform? Probleme und Perspectiven einer modernen Militärgeschichte der frühen Neuzeit (Cologne, 1997), pp. 109-42.
73. For a comparison of Prussia's canton system with others in Europe, see John Childs, Armies and Warfare in Europe, 1648-1789 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1982), pp. 50-55;
74. Gothlief, "Prussian Absolutism," p. 59.
75. Traditional analyses contend that the creation of the canton system led to a "strict militarization" of Prussian society. See Otto Busch, Military System and Social Life in Old Regime Prussia, 1713-1807: The Beginnings of the Social Militarization of Prusso-German Society, trans, by J. G. Gagliardo (Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1997). More recent works demonstrate that the militarization of Prussian society may not have been as strict as Busch claims.
76. See Peter H. Wilson, "Social Militarization in Eighteenth Century Germany," German History, Vol. 18 (February 2000): 1-39;
77. Jurgen Kloosterhuis, "Zwischen Aufruhr und Akzeptanz: Zur Ausformung und Einbettung des Kantonsystems in die Wirtschafts- und Sozialstrukturen des preußischen Westfalen," in B. R. Kroener and R. Pröve, eds., Krieg und Frieden. Militär und Gesellschaft in der Frühen Neuzeit (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1996).
78. Phillip S. Gorski, The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Rise of the State in Early Modem Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003).
79. Otto Hintze, p. 280. Some scholars refer to the cooperation and agreement between the royal administration and the provincial nobility as a latent form of the Estates-style government that existed during the early part of the seventeenth century. For more on this, see Wolfgang Neugebauer, Politischer Windel Im Osten. Ost- und Westpreussen von den alten Ständen zum Konstitutionalismus (Stuttgart, 1992), pp. 65-86;
80. and Clark, pp. 111-12.
81. Clark, p. 113.
82. There were earlier conflicts between magnate elites and the lesser nobility over questions regarding the kingdom's financial and judicial systems and the laws governing the possession of property. Wealthy magnates, who held offices in the royal administration and had acquired their wealth and power by managing royal demesnes that had been leased or granted to them by the Polish king, wanted the authority over the royal lands to be inheritable, while representatives of the lesser nobility advocated for those lands to be turned back to the royal household following a nobleman's death. The establishment of the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth in 1569 exacerbated tensions and brought Lithuanian nobles into the conflict over the structure and scope of the state and the privileges of the nobility. See Aleksander Gieysztor et al., History of Poland (Warsaw: PWN, 1968);
83. The Cambridge History of Poland, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1941;
84. Adam Zamoyski, The Polish Way: A Thousand-Year History of the Poles and their Culture (London: John Murray, 1987);
85. and James Miller, "The Polish Nobility and the Renaissance Monarchy: The Execution of Laws Movement," in A. F. Upton, ed., Parliaments, Estates and Representation, Vol. 3 (London: Ashgate, 1996).
86. For more on the constitutional development of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, see Robert I. Frost, "Liberty without License? The Failure of Polish Democratic Thought in the Seventeenth Century," in Biskupski and Pula, eds., Polish Democratic Thought from the Renaissance to the Great Emigration (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1990);
87. Wladyslaw Czaplinski, ed., The Polish Parliament at the Summit of Its Development 16th 17th Centuries (Wroclaw: Ossolineum, 1985);
88. and Henryk Olszewski, "Reflections on the Theory and Practice of Seym Debate in Poland from the 16th to 18th Centuries," Acta Polonia Histórica, 48 (1983): 57-75.
89. The most well-known accounts that stress Russia's exceptional rise during the early modern period include Richard Pipes, Russia Under the Old Regime (New York: Penguin Books, 1996);
90. Vasilii O. Kliuchevskii, A Course in Russian History: The Seventeenth Century, trans, by Natalie Duddington (New York: M.E. Sharp, 1994);
91. Jarmo Kotilaine and Marshall Poe, eds., Modernizing Muscovy: Reform and Social Change in Seventeenth Century Russia (London: Routledge, 2004);
92. Valerie A. Kivelson, Autocracy in the Provinces: The Muscovite Gentry and Political Culture in the Seventeenth Century (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996). For more on the Russian nobility, see
93. Robert O. Crummey, Aristocrats and Servitors: The Boyar Elite in Russia, 1613-1689 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983);
94. Marshall T. Poe, O.E. Kosheleva, Russell Martin, and Boris Nikolaevich Morozov, eds., The Russian Elite in the Seventeenth Century (Helsinki: Finnish Academy of Arts and Letters, 2004);
95. G. P. Kotoshikhin, O Rossii v tsartvovaniye Alekseya Mikhailovlcha (The Hague: Mouton, 1969)
96. ; and Ann Kleimola, "Up Through Servitude: The Changing Condition of the Muscovite Elite in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries," Russian History, 6 (1979): 210-29.
97. For a general overview of Hungary's historical transition, see Bálint Hóman and Gyula Szekfü, Magyar történet [Hungarian History], 5 vols., (Budapest: Kiralyi Magyar Egyetemi Nyomda, 1935-36);
98. Zsuzsanna Újváry, Nagy két császár birodalm, között: a hosszú hárborútól Bethlen Gabor haláláig (Budapest: Gondolât, 1984);
99. Jánoš Bárta Jr., A kétfejú sas ámyékában: az abszolitizmustól a felvilágosádig, 1711-1780 (Budapest: Gondolat, 1984);
100. R. J. W Evans, The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1550-1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979);
101. R. J. W. Evans, Austria, Hungary and the Habsburgs: Essays on Central Europe, c. 1683-1867 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
102. Henrik Marczali, Hungary in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Arno Press, 1971);
103. also Evá H. Balázs, Hungary and the Habsburgs, 765-1800: An Experiment in Enlightened Absolutism, trans, by Tim Wilkinson (Budapest: Central European Press, 1997).
104. Béla Köpeczi, Agnes Várkonyi and Lajos Hopp, eds. Rakoczi-tanulmanyok (Budapest: Akademiai Kiado, 1980).
105. Kálmán Benda, ed., Europa es a Rakoczi-Szabadsagharv, (Budapest: Akademiai Kiado, 1980).
106. Peter Schimert, "The Early Modern Hungarian Nobility," in H. M. Scott, ed., the European Nobilities in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, Vol. II: Northern, Central and Eastern Europe (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 210-48;
107. Colin Imber, Keiko Kiyotaki, and Rhoads Murphey, eds., Frontiers of Ottoman Studies: State, Province and the West (New york: I.B. Tauris, 2005), pp. 41-46;
108. Horst Haselsteiner, "Cooperation and Confrontation between Rulers and Noble Estates," in Peter F. Singer, ed., A History of Hungary (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994), pp. 138-73.
109. Francis Fukuyama, State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), p. 1.
110. For a more thorough discussion of the limits of applying the European model of state-building to Latin America, see Miguel Centeno, Blood and Debt: Wir and the Nation-State in Latin America (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002);
111. for more on the limits of applying to Africa cases, see Jeffry Herbst, States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).