Daniel Nexon

This book attempts to analyze the effect of religious reformation on political power in 16th and 17th century Europe. One of its basic ideas is that dynastic empires exercised a weak form of indirect rule in their heterogenous realms. Nevertheless, resistance to the political power of the central dynasty was usually ineffective because no social movement could unite the different parts of the realm in a common uprising. The protestant reformation created such a movement.

In chapters 3-4 the author presents a nice theoretical framework for understanding this dynastic political framework, but the major flaw of this book is that he fails to utilize this model in the three detailed case studies he presents in chapters 5-7. The case studies assume prior familiarity with various personages in the Spanish and French royalty and nobility. In each case the author proceeds at breakneck pace from one crisis to the next, with no links between this narrative and his theoretical model of dynastic empires. I did not find these chapters at all informative. The author also draws unnecessary parallels between modern international politics and his historical study.

The author’s historical research certainly seems thorough but it can probably be best appreciated by professional historians. If he had painted his case studies with slightly broader brushstrokes, the different chapters of the book could have been interconnected better. I would recommend this book to general readers interested in the history of European political systems with the reservation that the different parts of the book don’t quite come together with the force and clarity that ideally could have been achieved.… (más)