Charles XI and Swedish Absolutism, 1660–1697
Charles XI and Swedish Absolutism, 1660–1697
$45.00
USDThe reading public outside Sweden knows little of that country's history, beyond the dramatic and short-lived era in the seventeenth century when Sweden under Gustavus Adolphus became a major European power by her intervention in the Thirty Years War. In the last decades of the seventeenth century another Swedish king, Charles XI, launched a less dramatic but remarkable bid to stabilize and secure Sweden's position as a major power in northern Europe and as master of the Baltic Sea. This project, which is almost unknown to students of history outside Sweden, involved a comprehensive overhaul of the government and institutions of the kingdom, on the basis of establishing Sweden as a model of absolute monarchy. This 1998 book gives an account of what was achieved under the absolutist direction of a distinctly unglamorous, but pious and conscientious ruler.
- An innovative study of a subject hitherto inaccessible to English readers
- The work of a senior, established historian who offers new insights into the government of early modern Europe
- Reveals Sweden in a new light, at odds with its current image as the model progressive, democratic government
Product details
March 2006Paperback
9780521024488
312 pages
229 × 153 × 19 mm
0.47kg
2 b/w illus. 1 map
Available
.jpg)
.jpg)
Table of Contents
- 1. Introduction: the historical background to Sweden's seventeenth-century crisis
- 2. The formative years: regency and war, 1660–79
- 3. The defining of the absolute monarchy
- 4. The financial reconstruction
- 5. The indelningswerk and the rebuilding of the armed forces
- 6. The search for external security, 1679–86
- 7. The consolidation of the absolutist system
- 8. Completing the superstructure
- 9. The royal government at work
- 10. The external territories under absolutism
- 11. The maturing of Charles XI's foreign policies
- 12. The last years of the reign
- 13. The absolutism of Charles XI
- Bibliography
- Index.
