Customer Reviews

The Holy Roman Empire 1495-1806 (Studies in European History)

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The 'book's' description: "The Holy Roman Empire lasted for over a millennium, yet its development and institutions are still commonly dismissed as largely irrelevant to broader historical issues. Recent scholarship challenges this view but until now has failed to provide a convincing interpretation of the political structure which provided the framework within which such major events as the Reformation and the Thirty Years War developed. Drawing on a wealth of specialist studies, Peter Wilson offers an alternative way of looking at the Empire, seeing it not as a failed monarchy or flawed forerunner of a later German nation-state, but on its own terms as a multi-layered structure combining monarchical, hierarchical and federal elements. Key stages in the Empire's development are explained within the context of wider European history." is fine as far as it goes, except that:
a) this is a massive overstatement
b) it's a significant fraction of the length of the 'book' itself.

I'll confess: caveat emptor. For $27 I had an expectation of a Toynbee or Norwich-sized volume on the History of the Holy Roman Empire. I did NOT expressly look at the length of the work, and had I done so I'm certain I'd have passed on this purchase.

Saying this is 112 pages is massively overstating it - discounting the extensive bibiliography, there are only about 70 pages of actual text - roughly $0.40 PER PAGE.

As the author states in his concluding paragraph: "The lack of a suitable framework to do justice to the Empire's diverse elements has proved a major stumbling block [to writing an all-encompassing history]; an obstacle this book has attempted to smooth out of the way."

So there you have it. This is NOT a history, as the blurb purports. Rather, it is a discussion of the FRAMEWORK of topics around the HRE, accompanied by an extensive bibliography. This probably would be useful at a less-offensive price that was comparable to it's worth, perhaps $5 or $8. But to charge the current price for this book is heinous.

DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK.

I am an academic in a different field. I am no expert, but I have been interested in the Holy Roman Empire for about three years now. No, this is not a comprehensive history of the Holy Roman Empire. To the best of my knowledge, none exists in English. And with good reason. If you count the "knights of the Empire" (landowners possessing on average a hundred acres), then the Holy Roman Empire was composed of 2,000 "sovereign" states post 1648 (Palmer, A History of the Modern World). In other words, the empire was so fragmented (even before 1648) that a historian can only realistically focus on political units smaller than the entire empire: specific regions, independent cities, etc.

Even more frustrating is that these "sovereign" states were nevertheless part of a larger, yet extraordinarily weak, institutional structure (the Holy Roman Empire). So, we are not dealing with truly sovereign states, but relatively autonomous polities whose rulers focused a great deal of their attention and resources on empire-wide politics. Therefore, understanding each autonomous polity requires an understanding of the insanely complex web of political interactions across these polities.

Moreover, because the empire was quite weak, its internal politics were "porous," subject to encroachment by Europe's kingdoms, city-states, etc. Hopefully you are beginning to see the problem of a single, comprehensive history.

Wilson's work is part of Palgrave's "Studies in European History" series, which provides brief overviews of historical topics. The brief book is an excellent INTRODUCTION which primarily focuses on the institutional organization of the empire. I personally consider knowledge of this institutional organization to be essential before further exploring aspects of the empire's history.

Moreover, each book in Palgrave's "Studies in European History" series provides a detailed bibliography to steer students and readers towards more specialized works. I found this bibliography invaluable for the Holy Roman Empire.

At $26.95, Palgrave is price gouging you. This seems to be a trait this publisher shares, along with Oxford, and it frankly pisses me off. Buy this used or rent it from the library if you do not want to pay this outrageous sum. As an academic nerd, I can justify the price based on the bibliography.

The 70 pages of text is quite clear yet still complicated. It will take a while to read and digest. Then use the bibliography to branch off into other areas of this interesting political entity.

I will readily agree that this is a well written paper with a great deal of information. However, it is basically a doctoral paper rather than a true book. I expect I could find something similar in a college archive. The price is extraordinarily high for what amounts to a 70 page paper. I wouldn't buy it for more than $10.

This excellent book was written by a Reader in Early Modern History at the University of Sunderland in the United Kingdom. It successfully refutes the impression held by many that the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (800-1806) was a geopolitical failure. Quite to the contrary, this First German Empire was a multinational and internationally non-aggressive state which had rich traditions and a developed political structure which allowed for provincial and local rights. In many ways, the modern Weimar Republic (1919-1933) and Federal Republic of Germany (1949-Present) look back to this first Empire in the form of their own legislative and judicial institutions. The Holy Roman-German Emperors were by no means absolute monarchs, but had their executive power held in check by the national legislature (the "Reichstag," which met most often in the city of Regensburg in Southern Germany), the courts, the provinces and by the Imperial Cities.