Absolute Monarchy on the Frontiers CB - (Studies in Early Modern European History) by Phil McCluskey (Hardcover)

About the Book

This book deals with the French military occupations of Lorraine and Savoy during the personal rule of Louis XIV (1661-1715). It investigates the aims and intentions of the French monarchy in occupying these regions, the problems of administering them, and French relations with key local elite groups.

Book Synopsis

French territorial ambitions and consequent military activity during the reign of Louis XIV ensured that a number of territories bordering on France were subject to military occupation for strategic reasons from the 1660s onwards. Drawing on extensive archival research, this study presents the occupation of two of these territories, Lorraine and Savoy, from a comparative perspective. It investigates the aims and intentions of the French monarchy in occupying these regions, the problems of administering them, and French relations with key local elite groups.

Absolute monarchy on the frontiers makes a significant contribution to understanding this crucial era in the development of civil-military relations. It also places the occupations of Lorraine and Savoy within the framework of recent scholarship on early modern border societies and frontiers, and on the practice of 'absolutism' at the frontiers of the French kingdom. The book will appeal particularly to scholars and students of early modern France and Europe.

From the Back Cover

This book deals with the French military occupations of Lorraine and Savoy during the personal rule of Louis XIV (1661-1715). It casts important new light on the aims and intentions (and also the limitations) of the French state in the seventeenth century, and makes a significant contribution to understanding a crucial era in the development of civil-military relations.

Absolute monarchy on the frontiers presents the occupations of Lorraine and Savoy from a comparative perspective, and draws on the experience of several other French occupations of the period, including those of Nice and Luxembourg. It places the occupations within the context of French frontier strategy and foreign policy in the seventeenth century, with particular reference to the French monarchy's relationship to Lorraine and Savoy as frontier states. It then charts the way the French government administered occupied territories, and how this differed from the practice of 'absolutism' within the kingdom. It also gives an account of how the French occupiers went about courting the interests of local elite groups - the nobilities, the financial and judicial elites and the clergy - and how far these efforts were successful. By investigating these groups this book provides a more wide-ranging view of military occupation in the early modern era, considering social, economic and religious questions, than has so far been available.

This book will appeal to upper-level undergraduate and postgraduate students and scholars of the political, social and military history of early modern France and Europe.

Review Quotes

To come

About the Author

Phil McCluskey is Lecturer in the History of Early Modern Europe at the University of Sheffield