Chapter 3 introduces Sigismund von Herberstein, Habsburg diplomat and humanist scholar. After two embassies to Muscovy (1517, 1526) where Herberstein assiduously observed his surroundings, he composed an account of Muscovy (Rerum moscoviticarum commentarii, 1549) that became the standard reference for the next half-century or more. This chapter explores how he composed his work as a “chorography,” and how he assembled sources, how he interpreted Russian rulers, religion and society.

This chapter aims to define the limits of religious toleration of the Eastern Orthodox Church in those areas of Europe which remained outside of direct Ottoman or Muscovite rule in the early modern period. The rudimentary confessional balance that had obtained between the Eastern and the Latin Churches in the kingdom of Poland, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Transylvanian principality and the kingdom of Hungary was disturbed by the arrival of Protestantism in the second quarter of the sixteenth century. The growing numerical strength and political influence of Evangelical nobles and burgesses necessitated the introduction of toleration as a state policy. When it was set in place, however, the politically emasculated believers of the Eastern Church were either effectively excluded from, or found themselves on the bottom rung of a tiered system of, official toleration. The survival of Orthodox privilege in Moldavia and Wallachia, and the full religious toleration granted by the Habsburgs to the South Slav peoples in exchange for their support in defending the imperial frontiers from the Ottomans, underscore the significance of political authority and instruments of violence in the hands of local élites for the preservation of traditional Orthodox identity.

Like the rest of Northern Europe, the Low Countries experienced a wide variety of religious reform movements in the sixteenth century: humanism, Anabaptism, Lutheranism, Reformed Protestantism and Catholic reform. In many respects, with its urban and rural diversity, the Netherlands could be seen as a microcosm of Reformation Europe as a whole. What made the case of the Low Countries distinct, however, was the political context: religious rebellion took place against the backdrop of the integration and disintegration of the Habsburg composite state in the Netherlands. Religious dissent grew inextricably entangled with political opposition to the centralising efforts of the Habsburg dynasty. This state of affairs led to the two key features of the Reformation in the Low Countries that distinguished from the rest of Europe: (1) an unusually harsh degree of official prosecution of Protestant heresy, and (2) the creation, by century’s end, of two distinct states, the Southern Netherlands and the Dutch Republic, because of the wars that Reformation at least partially instigated. Thus, while the ideas and qualities of the various reform movements in the Netherlands differed little from the rest of Europe, their outcome proved quite distinctive.

With the passage of the Viceregno under the control of the Habsburgs in 1707, cultural and artistic exchanges between Naples and Vienna intensified. Sources related to the makeup of the Cappella Reale show two significant trends: the growth of the string section and the introduction and increasing relevance of wind instruments. New documents record the early career in Naples of Francesco Geminiani in connection with the beginnings of the operatic season at the Teatro de’ Fiorentini, where the virtuoso is employed as first violin. Following the outset of the War of the Spanish Succession, Neapolitan musicians were summoned to the Real Capilla of Barcelona, the splendid music chapel established by Archduke Charles of Habsburg to assert his claims to the Spanish throne. When Charles became emperor in 1711 some of these musicians joined the Imperial Chapel in Vienna. The lists of personnel of the Hofmusikkapelle show that a number of virtuosi from Naples formed the core of the string section and contributed to the cosmopolitanism of that ensemble. The prestige of the Neapolitan string school is confirmed by the appointment of Giovanni Antonio Piani, who moved from Paris to Vienna in 1721, at the helm of the Imperial Chapel.

Germany can serve as short-hand for the “Holy Roman Empire” in the eighteenth century. Long dismissed as a constitutional “monstrosity,” the Empire in reality proved a surprisingly durable fixture of Europe’s Old Regime political and dynastic firmament. Within its confines there existed a multiplicity of sub-units that ranged in size and importance from the Great Powers of Austria and Prussia, to tiny independent principalities and city states. Some of these might be considered vibrant, and others stagnant. Some were ruled by princes who deserved the label “enlightened,” whilst others were governed by despots. A generalization that holds for the Empire as a whole is that it encouraged a political culture distinguished by its legalism and its localism. These characteristics were hardly effective when confronting the challenges posed by the French Revolution, whose real impact on Germany began in 1792 with the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars. These wars ultimately destroyed the Empire, thereby paving the way for the transformation of Germany that occurred under the hegemony of Napoleon.

This chapter pushes the book’s argument beyond the traditional medieval/modern dividing line around the year 1500 by examining advocates’ corrupt practices of justice and protection in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. While acknowledging that the volume of administrative evidence grows exponentially in this period and regional administrations became better developed, it nevertheless shows that various abuses that had been happening for centuries continued into this period. These abuses included local acts of violence that provide clear evidence for the ongoing difficulties that met attempts by imperial and princely authorities to govern effectively on the ground in their territories. This chapter, therefore, calls attention to the flaws in traditional historical narratives about a sharp dividing line between a medieval period of feudalism and lordship and a modern period of government, bureaucracy and strong states.

This chapter returns to the theme of Chapter 7 and argues that church, town and territorial advocates during the period 1250 to 1500 were accused of committing many of the same types of violent acts as advocates of the preceding period, further challenging medieval historians’ arguments about the rise of government and bureaucracy during this period. It also calls into question scholars’ claims about the emergence of bourgeois society as marking a break with older, corrupt practices of justice and protection. It begins with a general survey of the evidence for advocatial violence between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries and then focuses on three case studies to highlight continuity with earlier centuries. One case study concerns the territorial advocate Peter of Hagenbach, who was tried and executed in 1474 for his abuses of power.

This chapter surveys the proliferation of different types of advocates from the late thirteenth century onward, not only in the German-speaking lands but also along the Baltic coast. It begins by demonstrating that, despite churches and monasteries’ efforts to buy back their advocacies from local nobles, many church advocacies survived throughout the period 1250 to 1500. It then turns to urban advocates, who were responsible for providing protection and exercising justice in many towns in the German-speaking lands, and territorial advocates, who exercised authority on some large conglomerations of royal and aristocratic estates. The central argument of this chapter is that these new types of advocates should not be understood as officeholders in developing bureaucracies. Although there is evidence of rulers trying to hold these advocates accountable, the sources on their local activities show them pursuing many of the same corrupt practices of justice and protection as advocates of the period before 1250.

This chapter examines the wars that broke out in the Netherlands, at least partly because of reformation, during the final third of the sixteenth century. Militant Reformed Protestantism established itself in the Low Countries, especially in the western provinces, by the early 1560s. In 1566, the “wonderyear,” political and religious protest erupted into the open, as nobles protested Habsburg religious policy and Reformed militants sacked churches in an iconoclastic fury. This in turn caused Philip II to install a military regime, led by the Duke of Alba, in order to suppress rebellion and heresy. In 1572 the rebels won territory in the north, and by 1580 gained control of the northwestern half of the region, where Reformed militants instituted a revolutionary reformation to root out Catholicism. Sectarianism in turn caused a breakdown of the rebel alliance, and by the mid-1580s the Habsburg had successfully retaken most of Flanders and Brabant. By 1590 a military stalemate had bifurcated the Netherlands, with the rebels in control of the seven northern provinces and the Habsburgs in control of the ten southern provinces. Each region would follow its own religious trajectory.

This chapter introduces the setting and context of the narrative. The Low Countries were a heavily urbanized corner of Europe situated at the delta of several of the continent’s major river systems. The region was economically prosperous, thanks to well-developed systems of trade, manufacturing and agriculture. Its three million inhabitants were linguistically and ethnically diverse and ranged from high-ranking nobles to middling business to hardscrabble farmers. The region was divided economically between an urban, commercial, maritime west and a rural, agricultural east. Political power was local and decentralized, although the Habsburg dynasty, especially Charles V, was engaged in an ongoing effort to centralized and consolidate their dynastic power at the expense of local nobles and city governments. The chapter also describes the vibrant state of late medieval Christianity in the region, including lay enthusiasm for devotional practice and the emergence of Christian humanism.

This chapter traces Chinggisid influences throughout the globalising world order of the sixteenth century. It shows that the European timeline – so foundational to IR – cannot be thought of as free from influences from Asia. As this chapter clearly demonstrates, Charles V and the Habsburgs were very much shaped by their competition with the Ottomans. The chapter then moves to the north and discusses the influences of Chinggisid sovereignty model on Muscovy, specifically on Ivan IV. It also catches up with sixteenth-century developments in Inner Asia and Ming China. The sixteenth-century order, with its centre of gravity in the post-Timurid empires of west Asia, fragmented in the seventeenth century, during the long period of 'general crisis' (often associated with climate change) which frayed both the material and ideational connections across Eurasia. Though some Asian polities were relatively unaffected by this period of crisis and others bounced back economically, no world ordering projects were successfully launched out of the East after this period. This was a major contributor to the perception of Eastern decline.

Peter the Great’s son Aleksei, born 1690, was given a European education. With no brothers, he was the heir, though Peter sent his mother to a convent. From 1707 Aleksei participated in court events and in the administration of the state. Foreign courts and Peter sought a bride, and he married Charlotte of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel in 1711. Their first son, Peter, was born in 1715. The same year Peter’s second wife, Ekaterina, bore a son, also named Peter. Aleksei was the hope of oppositional elements among the elite, and his conflicts with his father led to his flight to the Habsburgs in 1716. Returned to Russia, the heir was tried and condemned, but died in prison in 1718. Tsar Peter proclaimed his son Peter as the heir, but he died in 1719. Peter and his half-brother Ivan V had both produced many daughters, and the heir was not obvious. Peter’s grandson by Aleksei, Petr Alekseevich, was alive and healthy.