Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of contributors
- 1 Introduction: culture and power during the long eighteenth century
- 2 When culture meets power: the Prussian coronation of 1701
- 3 Military culture in the Reich, c. 1680–1806
- 4 Diplomatic culture in old regime Europe
- 5 Early eighteenth-century Britain as a confessional state
- 6 ‘Ministers of Europe’: British strategic culture, 1714–1760
- 7 Confessional power and the power of confession: concealing and revealing the faith in Alpine Salzburg, 1730–1734
- 8 The transformation of the Aufklärung: from the idea of power to the power of ideas
- 9 Culture and Bürgerlichkeit in eighteenth-century Germany
- 10 The politics of language and the languages of politics: Latin and the vernaculars in eighteenth-century Hungary
- 11 ‘Silence, respect obedience’: political culture in Louis XV's France
- 12 Joseph II, petitions and the public sphere
- 13 The court nobility and the origins of the French Revolution
- 14 The French Revolution and the abolition of nobility
- 15 Foreign policy and political culture in later eighteenth-century France
- 16 Power and patronage in Mozart's La clemenza di Tito and Die Zauberflöte
- 17 Between Louis and Ludwig: from the culture of French power to the power of German culture, c. 1789–1848
- Index
3 - Military culture in the Reich, c. 1680–1806
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of contributors
- 1 Introduction: culture and power during the long eighteenth century
- 2 When culture meets power: the Prussian coronation of 1701
- 3 Military culture in the Reich, c. 1680–1806
- 4 Diplomatic culture in old regime Europe
- 5 Early eighteenth-century Britain as a confessional state
- 6 ‘Ministers of Europe’: British strategic culture, 1714–1760
- 7 Confessional power and the power of confession: concealing and revealing the faith in Alpine Salzburg, 1730–1734
- 8 The transformation of the Aufklärung: from the idea of power to the power of ideas
- 9 Culture and Bürgerlichkeit in eighteenth-century Germany
- 10 The politics of language and the languages of politics: Latin and the vernaculars in eighteenth-century Hungary
- 11 ‘Silence, respect obedience’: political culture in Louis XV's France
- 12 Joseph II, petitions and the public sphere
- 13 The court nobility and the origins of the French Revolution
- 14 The French Revolution and the abolition of nobility
- 15 Foreign policy and political culture in later eighteenth-century France
- 16 Power and patronage in Mozart's La clemenza di Tito and Die Zauberflöte
- 17 Between Louis and Ludwig: from the culture of French power to the power of German culture, c. 1789–1848
- Index
Summary
The subject of military culture has been neglected in recent writing on war and eighteenth-century central European society. A great deal is now known about the material conditions of German soldiers and their relationship to civilians, but this has yet to filter through to discussions of what might be considered military culture that is still presented through the paradigm of standing armies and absolutism. The primary focus is on Prussia as the defining German military power. The Hohenzollern monarchy is widely regarded as the most heavily militarised of all the old regime great powers. Military power not only created the state, but shaped its economic and social development, fostering a slavish subservience to authority and veneration of martial values, according to the influential ‘social militarisation’ thesis of Otto Büsch. The secondary focus is on the so-called ‘petty particularism’ (Kleinstaaterei) of the lesser principalities that are often perceived as debased, yet still more extreme versions of Prussia. Examples include Landgrave Ludwig IX of Hessen-Darmstadt and Duke Carl Eugen of Württemberg who dressed and drilled their ‘miniature armies’ in the Prussian manner. Better known are the ‘Hessians’ or auxiliaries from six principalities, including Hessen-Kassel, who fought for Britain against the American Revolutionaries and have long been regarded as the archetypal mercenaries of petty despots. In short, military culture is defined as ‘militarism’ and state power as despotic ‘absolutism’.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007
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