The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern European History, 1350-1750 Volume II: Cultures and Power Oxford Handbooks Series

This Handbook re-examines the concept of early modern history in a European and global context. The term 'early modern' has been familiar, especially in Anglophone scholarship, for four decades and is securely established in teaching, research, and scholarly publishing. More recently, however, the unity implied in the notion has fragmented, while the usefulness and even the validity of the term, and the historical periodisation which it incorporates, have been questioned. The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern European History, 1350-1750 provides an account of the development of the subject during the past half-century, but primarily offers an integrated and comprehensive survey of present knowledge, together with some suggestions as to how the field is developing. It aims both to interrogate the notion of 'early modernity' itself and to survey early modern Europe as an established field of study. The overriding aim will be to establish that 'early modern' is not simply a chronological label but possesses a substantive integrity. Volume II is devoted to 'Cultures and Power', opening with chapters on philosophy, science, art and architecture, music, and the Enlightenment. Subsequent sections examine 'Europe beyond Europe', with the transformation of contact with other continents during the first global age, and military and political developments, notably the expansion of state power.

Hamish Scott has published extensively on eighteenth-century international relations, government and enlightened absolutism, and on the early modern nobility. He taught for many years at the University of St Andrews, and is now a Senior Research Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. A Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, he is currently completing a major study, Forming Aristocracy: The Reconfiguration of the European Nobility, which is to be published by Oxford University Press.