Courses

Prerequisites: None, but (reading) knowledge of languages other than English is very helpful.

In the 1980s and 1990s, a number of studies questioned much of what we thought we knew about the rise of the modern state. By the early 21^st century, tax states, fiscal states, and fiscal-military states have expanded way beyond their original spatiotemporal settings and are now covering both virtually the entire globe as well as the entirety of the early modern and modern periods while, as a consequence, their conceptual clarity as well as their analytical usefulness have suffered.

In this course we will look, first, at what may arguably be considered the ‘modern’ European state. Emphasis, second, is given to the period after the Peace of Westphalia (1648), in particular focusing on the interrelated debates on bureacracy, economic development, social relations, and warfare. Third, we will focus on the scholarly debates that accompanied the development of these theories since the 19^th century. In combination, this allows us to better understand what Charles Tilly in his Coercion, Capital, and European States (1992) labelled the ‘eventual convergence’ on that one seemingly superiod form ‘the national state’ (58, my emphasis). And, finally, we will also seek to further improve our own skills’ in researching, analysing, and interpreting primary and secondary sources as well as writing skills.