KINGS AND CLASSES: CROWN AUTONOMY, STATE POLICIES, AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN WESTERN EUROPEAN ABSOLUTISMS (ENGLAND, FRANCE, SWEDEN, SPAIN).
Name:
azu_td_8712887_sip1_m.pdf
Size:
12.71Mb
Format:
PDF
Description:
azu_td_8712887_sip1_m.pdf
Author
KISER, EDGAR VANCE.Issue Date
1987Keywords
Feudalism -- Europe -- History.Capitalism -- Europe -- History.
Prerogative, Royal -- Europe -- History.
Despotism -- History.
Economic history.
Advisor
Stinchcombe, ArtBergesen, Al
Metadata
Show full item recordPublisher
The University of Arizona.Rights
Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author.Abstract
This dissertation explores the role of Absolutist states in the transition from feudalism to capitalism in Western Europe. Three general questions are addressed: (1) what are the determinants of variations in the autonomy of rulers? (2) what are the consequences of variations in autonomy for states policies? and (3) what are the effects of various state policies on economic development? A new theoretical framework, based on a synthesis of the neoclassical economic literature on principal-agent relations and current organizational theory in sociology, is developed to answer these three questions. Case studies of Absolutism in England, France, Sweden, and Spain are used to illustrate the explanatory power of the theory.Type
textDissertation-Reproduction (electronic)
Degree Name
Ph.D.Degree Level
doctoralDegree Program
SociologyGraduate College
Degree Grantor
University of ArizonaCollections
Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
The Red Jews: Apocalypticism and antisemitism in medieval and early modern Germany.Gow, Andrew Colin.; Oberman, Heiko A.; Weinstein, Donald; Bernstein, Alan (The University of Arizona., 1993)The Red Jews are a legendary people; this is their history. From the late thirteenth to the late sixteenth century, vernacular German texts depicted the Red Jews, a conflation of the Biblical ten lost tribes of Israel and Gog and Magog, as a savage and unnaturally foul nation, who are enclosed in the 'Caspian Mountains', where they had been walled up by Alexander the Great. At the end of time, they will break out and serve the Antichrist, causing great destruction and suffering in the world. The hostile identification (c. 1165) of Jews with the apocalyptic destroyers of Ezekiel 38-39 and Revelation 20 expresses a new and virulent antisemitism that was integrated into the powerful apocalyptic traditions of Christianity. None of the few scholars who have noticed the Red Jews in medieval and early modern vernacular texts has sought out, collected and examined the complete body of medieval and early-modern sources that feature the Red Jews. This study provides a long-term analysis of the intimate connections between antisemitism and apocalypticism via a forgotten and submerged piece of German 'medievalia', the Red Jews. The legend gradually dissipated. Until the beginning of the seventeenth century it was a medieval lens through which Germans saw events relating to the Turkish threat in the East; after that time, the Red Jews disappeared from European texts.
-
Farmers, Hunters, and Colonists: Interaction Between the Southwest and the Southern PlainsSpielmann, Katherine A. (University of Arizona Press (Tucson, AZ), 1991)
-
Tracking Technology and Society along the Ottoman Anatolian Railroad, 1890-1914Darling, Linda T.; Schweig, Alexander; Clancy-Smith, Julia A.; Fortna, Benjamin C.; Weiner, Douglas (The University of Arizona., 2019)The construction of the Ottoman Anatolian Railroad, along with its extension, the Baghdad Railroad, is often considered a case of foreign-driven modernization and pseudo-colonial investment in the Ottoman Empire and is assigned primary importance as a diplomatic problem aggravating tensions between the European powers in the run-up to World War I. Far less scrutiny has been given to the railroad’s intersections with and effects on the fabric of Anatolian society. This dissertation not only fills this gap in the research, but also challenges the view of technological modernization as an alien imposition upon the Ottoman Empire. It argues for the participation of a variety of agents, including many locals both reacting to and involved in creating the social and economic transformations occurring around them. I argue that provincial Anatolian modernity was an ad hoc co-creation between multiple actors rather than something solely imposed from outside or from above by foreign powers or by the Ottoman state. My research addresses the period of the construction and the first two decades of the Anatolian Railroad’s operation (1890-1914) in three districts (sancaks) of Western and Central Anatolia in order to understand the social history of technology in the late Ottoman Empire. The railroad had a profound impact on numerous aspects of Ottoman society, including labor migration, urbanization, industrialization, refugee settlement, and the intensification of export agriculture. I use the theoretical lens of the social construction of technology to argue for the relevance of the use of the railroad to questions of its “ownership.” In addition, Actor Network Theory indicates the inextricable entanglement of society and technology with each other. With these theroretical tools, I specifically examine changes in trade routes and in the relative importance of various population centers, the use of the railroad to re-settle Muslim refugees, the roles of foreigners settling in the area, and changing patterns in agriculture as well as the “labor” of banditry. Weaving all these elements together through interconnected networks allows us to see the long-debated trope of Ottoman modernization in a more complex manner, so that it is not reduced to having a single or small number of causative agents. Instead, it is conceived of as the product of numerous factors and agents often unconsciously collaborating in the collective transform of the region.