Power elites and state building
By: edited by Wolfgang Reinhard.
Contributors: Reinhard, Wolfgang.; European Science Foundation.
Series: The origins of the modern state in Europe ;; theme D
Publisher: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Oxford [England]; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 316
Subjects: Power (Social sciences) -- Europe -- History.; Elite (Social sciences) -- Europe -- History.; State, The -- Origin.
Description: The 'Origins of the Modern State in Europe' series arises from an important international research programme sponsored by the European Science Foundation. The aim of the series, which comprises seven volumes, is to bring together specialists from different countries, who reinterpret from a comparative European perspective different aspects of the formation of the state over the long period from the beginning of the thirteenth to the end of the eighteenth century.

One of the main achievements of the research programme has been to overcome the long-established historiographical tendency to regard states mainly from the viewpoint of their twentieth-century borders.

The modern European state, defined by a continuous territory with a distinct borderline and complete external sovereignty, by the monopoly of every kind of legitimate use of force, and by a homogeneous mass of subjects each of whom has the same rights ad duties, is the outcome of a thousand years of shifting political power and developing notions of the state. This major study sets out to examine the processes of state formation and the creation of power elites.

A team of leading European historians explores the dominant institutions and ideologies of the past, and their role in the creation of the contemporary nation state.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [261]-306) and index.
"European Science Foundation."