Power elites and state building1996

The 'Origins of the Modern State in Europe' series arises from an important international research programme sponsored by the European Science Foundation. The aim of the series, which comprises seven volumes, is to bring together specialists from different countries, who reinterpret from a comparative European perspective different aspects of the formation of the state over the long period from the beginning of the thirteenth to the end of the eighteenth century.

One of the main achievements of the research programme has been to overcome the long-established historiographical tendency to regard states mainly from the viewpoint of their twentieth-century borders.

The modern European state, defined by a continuous territory with a distinct borderline and complete external sovereignty, by...