The Making of Polities: Europe, 1300-1500

This major survey of political life in late medieval Europe provides a framework for understanding the developments that shaped this turbulent period. Rather than emphasising crisis, decline, disorder or the birth of the modern state, this account centres on the mixed results of political and governmental growth across the continent. The age of the Hundred Years War, schism and revolt was also a time of rapid growth in jurisdiction, taxation and representation, of spreading literacy and evolving political technique. This mixture of state formation and political convulsion lay at the heart of the 'making of polities'. Offering a full introduction to political events and processes from the fourteenth century to the sixteenth, this book combines a broad, comparative account with discussion of individual regions and states, including eastern and northern Europe alongside the more familiar west and south.

Author: John Watts
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 05/01/2009
Pages: 484
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.32lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.40w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9780521796644

Review Citation(s):
Choice 05/01/2010

About the Author
Watts, John: - John Watts is a Fellow and Tutor in History, Corpus Christi College, Oxford. His previous publications include Henry VI and the Politics of Kingship (1996) and, as editor, Power and Identity in the Middle Ages (2007).