This selection of articles is organized around three broad themes: the nature of the governing system in France ('Absolutism'); the political crisis of the mid-17th-century (the 'Fronde'); and the development of royal finance. The author first considers the growth of the French state in its ideological and institutional aspects, then the opposition such developments provoked, much centred on the figure of Cardinal Mazarin. In the last section particular attention is given to fiscal history, including a comparison of mid-18th-century France with the other states of Europe. Professor Bonney would argue that the 'fiscal imperative', the increased requirements posed by the costs of war, and the long-term consequences of fiscal growth may be seen as one of the decisive factors in the development of the modern state.

Europe is increasingly multi-ethnic and multi-faith, as well as multi-cultural. Western democracies now comprise a plurality of fundamental opinions and inherited cultures; it is not clear how (or if ) they can be related to each other without involving either oppression or anarchy. This debate requires historical understanding and a contemporary grasp of the points at issue amongst different cultures. By virtue of their proximity and frequent historical interaction, Britain and France lend themselves to comparative study. The studies in this volume collectively demonstrate that the affairs of religious minorities in these two countries were not only of concern to themselves and their national established churches. Rather, over a long-term period, they had a sustained impact on many other issues. All chapters illustrate the problematic shift from a persecutory to a pluralistic mentality.

This collection of twenty essays, of which five are in French, written by leading English and French literary and historical scholars, deconstructs the ethical and political framework supporting and circumscribing the actions of a powerful elite in France between the early 1600s and the final years of Louis XIV's reign. Reflecting a diversity of individual concerns, the essays are divided into two interrelated parts in acknowledgement of the complex tensions between codes of behaviour and political practice in the different theatrical spaces of government in the real and imaginary world. Together these contributions offer a radical double questioning of the absolute values in which were founded the authority of Church, King and nobility. The dual political and moral theme of this study is not new, but it is one that has always been highly regarded by historians and literary specialists alike. It is in fact one of the classic preoccupations of seventeenth-century studies, to which critics must always return, and to which students must always address themselves, if they are to comprehend the intellectual core of seventeenth-century French studies.

Since the Middle Ages the relationship between religion and politics has been one of the great themes of European politics. The path followed by European societies and states can very largely be read as a history of the forms this tense relationship took and of the problems it raised. Central to them, since the period of the Reformation at least, was the problem of how society and government dealt with religious and confessional pluralism. Even today -- especially in respect of the increasing number of Muslim fellow-citizens in the European Union -- this theme has considerable significance, even if it manifests itself in various different ways in each particular country.

The Prince Albert Society (Coburg) and The Centre for the History of Religions, Inter-Faith Dialogue and Pluralism (Leicester) address the history of the problematic relationship between religion and politics and the treatment of religious pluralism in politics, state and society. Taking Britain and Germany as examples, both historical and contemporary aspects of this theme are discussed. Five areas of interest offer a comparative perspective from a British and a German point of view. The themes are defined by various epochs which range from the period of the Reformation up to the present: state and church, tolerance and politics, colonialism and mission, totalitarianism and antisemitism, and co-existence today. Two essays present a historical survey over a long period of the past and offer the prospect on probable future developments in the 21st century.

In this volume an international team of scholars builds up a comprehensive analysis of the fiscal history of Europe over six centuries. It forms a fundamental starting-point for an understanding of the distinctiveness of the emerging European states, and highlights the issue of fiscal power as an essential prerequisite for the development of the modern state.

This is a major study of state finance throughout Europe from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century. It is an immensely ambitious comparative analysis of economic and fiscal development over many countries and several centuries, written by a team of leading European scholars.