Papers by Marianne Klerk
Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, May 4, 2020
War in History
Fiscal-military hubs were cities characterized by the clustering of specific expertise and resour... more Fiscal-military hubs were cities characterized by the clustering of specific expertise and resources, which became centres where states, and semi-state and non-state actors arranged the transfer of war-making resources in early modern Europe. Using this concept enables the study of the business of war to shift the locus beyond the state towards a transnational history, while integrating political, military, economic, and cultural aspects that have generally been studied separately. By examining the hub, we can untangle the full complexity of this business, and reveal its actors, networks, assets, prices, routes, culture, and rules of conduct.
From the late sixteenth up to the end of the seventeenth century Europeans experienced a crisis o... more From the late sixteenth up to the end of the seventeenth century Europeans experienced a crisis of the rule of law. The intensification of warfare forced early modern Europeans to reconceptualise civil order. The Reformation and the subsequent brutal religious civil wars led to a growing need for alternatives to divine law and divinely-inspired natural law as ordering principles of society. Contemporaries increasingly claimed that coercion and sovereign authority of government were necessary to prevent society from falling apart. Often these claims were verbalised by the terminology of ‘reason of state’. Authors started to address socio-political entities characterised by the unity of the population combined with a certain area and possessing specific laws. Theoretical reflections upon the nature of civil order gradually produced notions of civil association such as the legal person of the ‘state’. From the 1630s onwards, authors increasingly defined relations between princes in ter...
Fiscal-military hubs were cities characterized by the clustering of specific expertise and resour... more Fiscal-military hubs were cities characterized by the clustering of specific expertise and resources, which became centres where states, and semi-state and non-state actors arranged the transfer of war-making resources in early modern Europe. Using this concept enables the study of the business of war to shift the locus beyond the state towards a transnational history, while integrating political, military, economic, and cultural aspects that have generally been studied separately. By examining the hub, we can untangle the full complexity of this business, and reveal its actors, networks, assets, prices, routes, culture, and rules of conduct.
markdownabstractThe purpose of this thesis is to explore changes in understandings of ‘interest’ ... more markdownabstractThe purpose of this thesis is to explore changes in understandings of ‘interest’ and ‘reason of state’; not as abstract and coherent theories about modernisation and a secularised conception of the political, but as responses to very practical and immediate political problems, challenges and crises, producing quite unintended consequences. It does so through the adaptive reference to and reliance upon Henri Duc de Rohan who provided, as it is argued, a vocabulary organised into a way of seeing the political world that was itself stimulated and constrained by a perceived crisis, both national and ‘international’, secular as well as religious.
War in History, 2020
Fiscal-military hubs were cities characterized by the clustering of specific expertise and resour... more Fiscal-military hubs were cities characterized by the clustering of specific expertise and resources, which became centres where states, and semi-state and non-state actors arranged the transfer of war-making resources in early modern Europe. Using this concept enables the study of the business of war to shift the locus beyond the state towards a transnational history, while integrating political, military, economic, and cultural aspects that have generally been studied separately. By examining the hub, we can untangle the full complexity of this business, and reveal its actors, networks, assets, prices, routes, culture, and rules of conduct.
Subsidies, diplomacy, and state formation in Europe, 1494–1789, 2020
This chapter offers a different perspective on the study of subsidies by looking beyond the inter... more This chapter offers a different perspective on the study of subsidies by looking beyond the interstate level, adding a new dimension to our understanding of the development of the state system. Not only were subsidies arranged by state and non-state agents; this contribution argues that subsidies along with other war-making resources were organized in specific urban European centres, here referred to as ‘fiscal-military hubs’. By shifting focus from entrepreneurs to fiscal-military hubs we may obtain further insights into resource mobilization, in particular the relationship between the business of war and European state formation.
From the late sixteenth up to the end of the seventeenth century Europeans experienced a crisis o... more From the late sixteenth up to the end of the seventeenth century Europeans experienced a crisis of the rule of law. The intensification of warfare forced early modern Europeans to reconceptualise civil order. The Reformation and the subsequent brutal religious civil wars led to a growing need for alternatives to divine law and divinely-inspired natural law as ordering principles of society. Contemporaries increasingly claimed that coercion and sovereign authority of government were necessary to prevent society from falling apart. Often these claims were verbalised by the terminology of ‘reason of state’. Authors started to address socio-political entities characterised by the unity of the population combined with a certain area and possessing specific laws. Theoretical reflections upon the nature of civil order gradually produced notions of civil association such as the legal person of the ‘state’. From the 1630s onwards, authors increasingly defined relations between princes in terms of ‘interests of states’ instead of confessional or dynastic interests. In the last third of the seventeenth century, however, authors began using this terminology in defence of the rule of law that seemed threatened by confessional strife, the European arms- and war race, coercive princely politics, and despotism, all embodied by Louis XIV. The objective of this paper is to elucidate the function of reason of state, especially interest of state, in the writings of the Huguenot military leader Henri de Rohan, the Dutch textile merchant Pieter de la Court and the Dutch jurist Petrus Valkenier against the background of what it actually implied. Reason of state arguments did not mirror early modern ‘state building’, but they constituted a fashionable political mode of reasoning, they explained the chaos of shifting power structures and attempted to persuade readers to take sides in internal and external political power struggles triggered by the early modern intensification of warfare. Moreover, this paper will give an insight into the outcome of Valkenier’s reason of state argumentation: an attempt to reconstruct the rule of law.
Events, Seminars, Talks by Marianne Klerk
by Joris Oddens, Alessandro Metlica, Enrico Zucchi, Giovanni Florio, Giorgia Gallucci, Andrea Colopi, Helmer Helmers, Arthur Weststeijn, Marianne Klerk, Suzanne van de Meerendonk, Alexander Dencher, and Stijn Bussels This workshop focuses on representations of
power in the 17th-century Dutch Republic.
The questio... more This workshop focuses on representations of
power in the 17th-century Dutch Republic.
The question how power is represented sparks
the interest of scholars working in a wide range
of disciplines. This workshop brings together
political, cultural, and intellectual historians,
literary scholars and art historians. It aims to
stimulate a cross-disciplinary dialogue about
representations in art, literature, ritual and
other media. The participants have been
invited to reflect on the challenge of
representing power in a republican state, in an
age when monarchy was the dominant state
model. The third day will be devoted to the
presentation and discussion of the ongoing
ERC-project Republics on the Stage of Kings
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Papers by Marianne Klerk
Events, Seminars, Talks by Marianne Klerk
power in the 17th-century Dutch Republic.
The question how power is represented sparks
the interest of scholars working in a wide range
of disciplines. This workshop brings together
political, cultural, and intellectual historians,
literary scholars and art historians. It aims to
stimulate a cross-disciplinary dialogue about
representations in art, literature, ritual and
other media. The participants have been
invited to reflect on the challenge of
representing power in a republican state, in an
age when monarchy was the dominant state
model. The third day will be devoted to the
presentation and discussion of the ongoing
ERC-project Republics on the Stage of Kings
power in the 17th-century Dutch Republic.
The question how power is represented sparks
the interest of scholars working in a wide range
of disciplines. This workshop brings together
political, cultural, and intellectual historians,
literary scholars and art historians. It aims to
stimulate a cross-disciplinary dialogue about
representations in art, literature, ritual and
other media. The participants have been
invited to reflect on the challenge of
representing power in a republican state, in an
age when monarchy was the dominant state
model. The third day will be devoted to the
presentation and discussion of the ongoing
ERC-project Republics on the Stage of Kings