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Monarchy, Aristocracy and State in Europe 1300-1800 (Historical Connections)

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I read this book in two days' time, and I could not stop it till I finished. In that sense, I liked it a lot.

Pursuant to Hillay Zmora, until quite recently the reigning paradigm for approaching the various European nobilities has been one of a Crisis of Aristocracy but this paradigm is now itself in what looks like a terminal crisis.

Certainly, a wave of recent studies (e.g. Jonathan Dewald's European Nobility) shows that the nobles were dominant much longer than we suspected. Though small in absolute numbers, the nobility controlled most of the land and all of the politics on the Continent until well into the 19th century; facing similar probles, from one country and culture to the next nobles responded to them in very similar ways.

Throughout the period examined, we see in this book that the fisco-militaries exigencies of the age brought monarchy and nobility into close interdependence. The very oportunities, then, which the expansion of the state opened up for nobles to consolidate their hold on power, also enmeshed them in the structure and operation of the state, which was as much an arena for the regulation of conflicts inside the ruling class as an instrument of class domination (the exploitation of the population to the mutual profit of rulers and ruling classes underlay much of the co-operation between them).

In that line, Hillay Zmora, for instance, dispels the myth of the XVIIth century kings' absolutist power. In general, his work is a more accurate view of monarchy, nobility, and the state contrary to Historian Norbert Elias' classic works "Court Society" and "The Civilizing Process" which have presented a problematic view of the Early Modern court, and with it, a false view of Early Modern monarchy.

Other books that I would recommend to read would be Myths of Power. Norbert Elias and the Early Modern European Court " and "Vienna and Versailles : The Courts of Europe's Dynastic Rivals, 1550-1780 (New Studies in European History)" by Jeroen Duindam (whose books present a more accurate view of monarchy, nobility, the court and the state contrary to that provided by Elias's "The Court Society"); "State and Status: The "Rise of State and Aristocratic Power in Western Europe", by S. Clark;"Nobilities in Transition 1550-1700: Courtiers and Rebels in Britain and Europe" by Ronald G. Asch; and "The Persistence of the Ancient Regime" by Arno J. Mayer (covering approximately the 1815-1914 period.