The Familial State: Ruling Families and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe (The Wilder House Series in Politics, History and Culture) - Tapa dura

"This book is very attractive for sociologists and for economic and social historians interested in 'macro' contrasts and big relevant questions about social and political life." "In The Familial State Julia Adams provides a compelling and innovative account of state formation in early modern Europe by focusing our attention on two glaring anomalies. First, she focuses on the Dutch Republic, the economic and political miracle of early modern Europe that is too often overlooked or explained away in most accounts of state formation. Second, Adams takes seriously the patrimonial and patriarchal aspects of early modern states-a reality often noticed but rarely explained. By inserting the patrimonial into stories of state formation, Adams compels us to take gender seriously as part of the narrative of the rise of the modern state. Adams's is a book that we all have to take seriously, argue with, and ultimately appreciate. Unlike much of the previous generation of historical sociologists, Adams bases her claims on a mass of archival research. Historians as well as political scientists and sociologists will learn a great deal about the development of early modern states and empires not only in the Netherlands, but in France and Britain as well. Both theoretically and empirically, this is a book to be reckoned with." -- Steven Pincus, University of Chicago "Here is historical sociology at its most exciting and rewarding. Julia Adams brings a deep and scholarly approach to understanding the seventeenth-century Netherlands. But much more than this, she uses this 'potentially constructive case' as a study of the making of modernity that fundamentally challenges state formation theories. In her focus on the role of elite men, she systematically incorporates family and gender into structures of political economy. This fresh and compelling volume has all the makings of a classic in the field." -- Leonore Davidoff, University of Essex and Founding Editor of Gender and History "Seldom have two hundred pages displayed such ambitious goals and achieved them with such a remarkable fluency. Julia Adams examines state formation and familial institutions in three early modern European countries: the Netherlands, France, and England. In so doing, she restores the Dutch experience to the centrality that it commanded in the seventeenth century. The book also suggests to national historians and historical sociologists that a narrow focus just cannot answer the big questions posed by the very histories so ubiquitously practiced by the current generation of one-nation historians. Comfortable being both genuinely comparative and firmly grounded in her own field, historical sociology, Adams further argues that the old categories deployed by historical analysis-state structures, class, religion, and patronage-cannot address the complexity of power without also addressing gender-more precisely, patrimony-as a force of immense historical significance.... This is a book that should now become required reading in every graduate seminar in early modern European history. It challenges us all to think outside the box that is the history of the nation, and it rewards such thinking with fresh insight into issues of gender, class, and state formation. It is a triumph." -- Margaret C. Jacob * Journal of Modern History *