Wim Blockmans – författare

The world of the first half of the sixteenth century was exceptionally dynamic. Voyages of discovery made the world larger; science and technology were revolutionized; Christian thought underwent a powerful renewal; the population and economy grew. And in the midst of this constellation of change, one man - the Emperor Charles V - ruled a conglomeration of territory more extensive than that previously held by any ruler in European history. What can one person, given an inordinate amount of power by quirk of fate, achieve? How much freedom did he in fact have? Did it help him reach his objectives? What unwanted results ensued from his actions? The relationship between the will of an individual and the power of structures in times of such mutability is at the core of Blockman's enquiry. He brings to the task a range of languages - without which it is scarcely possible to do justice to Charles's widespread, linguistically diverse imperium - a keen awareness of the most recent findings in modern scholarship, and the fruits of a professional lifetime's reflection.

The Routledge Handbook of Maritime Trade around Europe 1300-1600 explores the links between maritime trading networks around Europe, from the Mediterranean and the Atlantic to the North and Baltic Seas. Maritime trade routes connected diverse geographical and cultural spheres, contributing to a more integrated Europe in both cultural and material terms. This volume explores networks’ economic functions alongside their intercultural exchanges, contacts and practical arrangements in ports on the European coasts. The collection takes as its central question how shippers and merchants were able to connect regional and interregional trade circuits around and beyond Europe in the late medieval period. It is divided into four parts, with chapters in Part I looking across broad themes such as ships and sailing routes, maritime law, financial linkages and linguistic exchanges. In the following parts - divided into the Mediterranean, the Baltic Sea, and the Atlantic and North Seas - contributors present case studies addressing themes including conflict resolution, relations between different types of main ports and their hinterland, the local institutional arrangements supporting maritime trade, and the advantages and challenges of locations around the continent. The volume concludes with a summary that points to the extraterritorial character of trading systems during this fascinating period of expansion. Drawing together an international team of contributors, The Routledge Handbook of Maritime Trade around Europe is a vital contribution to the study of maritime history and the history of trade. It is essential reading for students and scholars in these fields.

The emergence of the state in Europe is a topic that has engaged historians since the establishment of the discipline of history. Yet the primary focus of has nearly always been to take a top-down approach, whereby the formation and consolidation of public institutions is viewed as the outcome of activities by princes and other social elites. Yet, as the essays in this collection show, such an approach does not provide a complete picture. By investigating the importance of local and individual initiatives that contributed to state building from the late middle ages through to the nineteenth century, this volume shows how popular pressure could influence those in power to develop new institutional structures. By not privileging the role of warfare and of elite coercion for state building, it is possible to question the traditional top-down model and explore the degree to which central agencies might have been more important for state representation than for state practice. The studies included in this collection treat many parts of Europe and deal with different phases in the period between the late middle ages and the nineteenth century. Beginning with a critical review of state historiography, the introduction then sets out the concept of 'empowering interactions' which is then explored in the subsequent case studies and a number of historiographical, methodological and theoretical essays. Taken as a whole this collection provides a fascinating platform to reconsider the relationships between top-down and bottom-up processes in the history of the European state.

They were, in the words of one contemporary observer, "the Promised Lands." In all of Europe, only Northern Italy could rival the economic power and cultural wealth of the Low Countries in the later Middle Ages. In The Promised Lands, Wim Blockmans and Walter Prevenier trace the relations between the cultural and economic developments of the Low Countries and the political evolution of the region under the rule of the dukes of Burgundy. Combining political, diplomatic, administrative, economic, social, artistic, and cultural history, Blockmans and Prevenier have synthesized the most recent research on the subject-much of it their own-to produce the most accessible and authoritative book in English on the subject. This is an updated and revised translation of a classic work first published in 1988, now expanded and reoriented toward a broader international readership.

Introduction to Medieval Europe 300–1500 provides a comprehensive survey of this complex and varied formative period of European history within a global context, covering themes as diverse as barbarian migrations, the impact of Christianisation, the formation of nations and states, the emergence of an expansionist commercial economy, the growth of cities, the Crusades, the effects of plague and the intellectual and cultural dynamism of the Middle Ages. The book explores the driving forces behind the formation of medieval society and the directions in which it developed and changed. In doing this, the authors cover a wide geographic expanse, including Western interactions with the Byzantine Empire, the Islamic World, North Africa and Asia. This fourth edition has been fully updated to reflect moves toward teaching the Middle Ages in a global context and contains a wealth of new features and topics that help to bring this fascinating era to life, including:West Europe’s catching up through intensive exchange with the Mediterranean Islamic worldgrowth of autonomous cities and civic libertiesemergence of an empirical and rational worldviewclimate change and intercontinental pandemicsEuropean exchange with Africa and Asiachapter introductions to support students’ understanding of the topicsa fully updated glossary to give modern students the confidence and language to discuss medieval historyClear and stimulating, the fourth edition of Introduction to Medieval Europe is the ideal companion to studying the entirety of medieval history at undergraduate level.

Introduction to Medieval Europe 300–1500 provides a comprehensive survey of this complex and varied formative period of European history within a global context, covering themes as diverse as barbarian migrations, the impact of Christianisation, the formation of nations and states, the emergence of an expansionist commercial economy, the growth of cities, the Crusades, the effects of plague and the intellectual and cultural dynamism of the Middle Ages. The book explores the driving forces behind the formation of medieval society and the directions in which it developed and changed. In doing this, the authors cover a wide geographic expanse, including Western interactions with the Byzantine Empire, the Islamic World, North Africa and Asia. This fourth edition has been fully updated to reflect moves toward teaching the Middle Ages in a global context and contains a wealth of new features and topics that help to bring this fascinating era to life, including:West Europe’s catching up through intensive exchange with the Mediterranean Islamic worldgrowth of autonomous cities and civic libertiesemergence of an empirical and rational worldviewclimate change and intercontinental pandemicsEuropean exchange with Africa and Asiachapter introductions to support students’ understanding of the topicsa fully updated glossary to give modern students the confidence and language to discuss medieval historyClear and stimulating, the fourth edition of Introduction to Medieval Europe is the ideal companion to studying the entirety of medieval history at undergraduate level.

Over the last two centuries, Europe has developed various forms of political representation from which democratic parliamentary systems gradually emerged. This book unravels the conditions, scale and impact under which political participation of common burghers and peasants emerged.Political participation in Europe before the Revolutions moved away from the traditional focus on ‘Three Estates’ which has often blurred the interpretation of popular participation’s role in societies. This book instead examines Europe’s key political variants such as high levels of commercialization and urbanization, combined with a balance of powers between competing categories of actors in society controlling relatively independent resources which lead to political participation forming across the continent. Instead of starting from any ideal type of political participation, this book focuses on the variation through time and space, its composition and activity, helps to explain the functions particular institutional settings fulfilled. The time frame 1100–1800 sheds light on the long-term evolutions such as institutional inertia and processes of oligarchizing. To reveal a correlation of economic and demographical growth with the claim of rising social classes to voice their interests. It also points to the opposite tendency: the formation of fiscalmilitary monarchical states.This book is essential reading for those interested in the formation of Europe’s political structures and students of premodern political history.

Over the last two centuries, Europe has developed various forms of political representation from which democratic parliamentary systems gradually emerged. This book unravels the conditions, scale and impact under which political participation of common burghers and peasants emerged.Political participation in Europe before the Revolutions moved away from the traditional focus on ‘Three Estates’ which has often blurred the interpretation of popular participation’s role in societies. This book instead examines Europe’s key political variants such as high levels of commercialization and urbanization, combined with a balance of powers between competing categories of actors in society controlling relatively independent resources which lead to political participation forming across the continent. Instead of starting from any ideal type of political participation, this book focuses on the variation through time and space, its composition and activity, helps to explain the functions particular institutional settings fulfilled. The time frame 1100–1800 sheds light on the long-term evolutions such as institutional inertia and processes of oligarchizing. To reveal a correlation of economic and demographical growth with the claim of rising social classes to voice their interests. It also points to the opposite tendency: the formation of fiscalmilitary monarchical states.This book is essential reading for those interested in the formation of Europe’s political structures and students of premodern political history.

This volume investigates the history of the representative assemblies of Sweden (the riksdag), Poland (the sejm) and Hungary (the diaeta) in the final period of the ancien régime. It concentrates on the practices and ideas of parliamentarism and constitutionalism, and examines the ideologies that motivated the members of these parliaments. Attempts at the suppression as well as the restoration of the estates’ power in all these three countries are examined, as well as, in the case of Hungary, the establishment of popular representation that eventually replaced the estates. These three early modern representative assemblies have never before been explored systematically in a comparative framework.

This volume investigates the history of the parliamentary assemblies of Sweden, Poland and Hungary in the final period of the ancien régime, offering an analysis of these three representative assemblies in a systematic comparative framework for the first time.The book studies the Polish sejm, the Swedish riksdag and the Hungarian diaeta, focusing on the eighteenth century with retrospective consideration of developments in the previous century and a forward-looking gaze at the events of the following era. While Volume I of this series mapped the institutional framework and focused on the MPs’ motivation, this book concentrates on the forms and practices that characterized these three representative institutions, with special attention paid to the questions of free mandate and majority voting. The freedom of mandates and the emergence of majority voting are explored in comparative studies (England and Poland) or parallel chapters (Sweden and Hungary), and the most important prerogative of these representative assemblies, a control on extraordinary taxes, is explored in parallel for Sweden and Hungary.Intended for specialist readers, postgraduate students and scholars, this research will be of particular interest to those studying early modern European history and political history.

The mass media are playing an increasingly central role in modern political life that expands beyond their traditional function as mediators between the world of politics and the citizens. This volume explores the extent and circumstances under which the media affects public policy; whether the political impact of the media is confined to the public representation of politics or whether their influence goes further to also affect the substance of political decisions. It provides an in-depth understanding of the conditions under which the media might, or might not, play a role in the policy process and what the nature of their influence is. Bringing together conceptual and methodological approaches from both political science and communications studies, this book presents an interdisciplinary perspective. It presents empirical evidence of the processes involved in the interaction between mass communication and policy and features case studies from Western Europe and the US and across different policy fields.The book will be of interest to students of public policy, political communication and comparative politics.

The Routledge Handbook of Maritime Trade around Europe 1300-1600 explores the links between maritime trading networks around Europe, from the Mediterranean and the Atlantic to the North and Baltic Seas. Maritime trade routes connected diverse geographical and cultural spheres, contributing to a more integrated Europe in both cultural and material terms. This volume explores networks’ economic functions alongside their intercultural exchanges, contacts and practical arrangements in ports on the European coasts. The collection takes as its central question how shippers and merchants were able to connect regional and interregional trade circuits around and beyond Europe in the late medieval period. It is divided into four parts, with chapters in Part I looking across broad themes such as ships and sailing routes, maritime law, financial linkages and linguistic exchanges. In the following parts - divided into the Mediterranean, the Baltic Sea, and the Atlantic and North Seas - contributors present case studies addressing themes including conflict resolution, relations between different types of main ports and their hinterland, the local institutional arrangements supporting maritime trade, and the advantages and challenges of locations around the continent. The volume concludes with a summary that points to the extraterritorial character of trading systems during this fascinating period of expansion. Drawing together an international team of contributors, The Routledge Handbook of Maritime Trade around Europe is a vital contribution to the study of maritime history and the history of trade. It is essential reading for students and scholars in these fields.