This text provides an examination of the rise of the centralized state and its effect on the power of the aristocracy in the British Isles and in France and its eastern periphery during the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. Arguing that states emerged in Western Europe as powerful political-geographical centres rather than nation-states or national states, Samuel Clark examines and compare the centres and peripheries of these two large regional zones, focusing not only on England and France but also on Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Savoy and the Southern Low Countries. The book aims to demonstrate how the state shaped the aristocracy and transformed its political, economic, cultural, and status power.
