ABSTRACT
Providing a comprehensive and engaging account of personal unions, composite monarchies and multiple rule in premodern Europe: Unions and Divisions. New Forms of Rule in Medieval and Renaissance Europe uses a comparative approach to examine the phenomena of the medieval and renaissance unions in a pan-European overview.
In the later Middle Ages, genealogical coincidences led to caesuras in various dynastic successions. Solutions to these were found, above all, in new constellations which saw one political entity becoming co-managed by the ruler of another in the form of a personal union. In the premodern period, such solutions were characterised by two factors in particular: on the one hand, the entry of two countries into a union did not constitute a military annexation — even though claims to the throne were all too often imposed by force; on the other hand, the new unitarian constellation retained, at least de jure, the independence of its respective components. The twenty-four essays, ranging in scope from Scandinavia to Iberia, from England and France to Central and Eastern Europe, examine whether the respective unions were the result of careful planning and deliberations in the face of a long-foreseen succession crisis or whether they emerged from dynamic developments that were largely reactive and dependent upon various random factors and circumstances. Each union is assessed to provide an understanding, for students and researchers, of the political and social forces involved in the respective countries and investigates how the unions were reflected in contemporary literature (pamphlets, memoranda, chronicles, diaries etc.), propaganda and in legal and historical discourses.
This volume is essential reading for students and researchers interested in the history of monarchy, political history and social and cultural histories in premodern Europe.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|52 pages
Conceptual and Theoretical Frameworks
part II|52 pages
Between Coercion and Raison d'État
chapter 7|8 pages
Bishop, Administrator, Guardian
part III|89 pages
Between Aspiration and Reality
chapter 11|15 pages
The Foreign Policy of the Last Přemyslids
chapter 13|13 pages
An Autonomous Dependency
chapter 14|9 pages
Enfeoffment as a Tool in the Safeguarding of Power?
part IV|70 pages
Between Coincidence and Intention
chapter 15|13 pages
Wenceslas II Přemyslid and Louis I of Anjou
part V|76 pages
Between Dynastic Extension and Overstretching