Introduction

One may well ask why it is only in the 1980s and early 1990s that the emergence of the modern state out of the crucible of prolonged European warfare on an unprecedented scale has become once more a growing focus of historical attention. If one looks back at the trends in historiography over the past thirty years, it is clear that the rush to social history was a mixed blessing. It certainly produced works of outstanding quality and opened up many new fields of enquiry into the past. Unfortunately, however, as Brewer points out, this asking of new questions was accompanied by a neglect – indeed, in some cases a positive denigration – of critically important older areas of historical enquiry. The most important of these was the evolution of the state as a quasi-independent agent, especially in its capacity to levy taxes and make wars.