Early modern democracy in the Grisons : social order and political language in a Swiss mountain canton, 1470-1620
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Early modern democracy in the Grisons : social order and political language in a Swiss mountain canton, 1470-1620
(Cambridge studies in early modern history / edited by John Elliott, Olwen Hufton, and H.G. Koenigsberger)
Cambridge University Press, 1995
Available at 12 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 253-280) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
The Freestate of the Three Leagues in the Grisons, a rural confederation in the Swiss Alps, was one of the most unusual political entities in early modern Europe. In the sixteenth century, its inhabitants enjoyed popular sovereignty and remarkable local autonomy, and many of them insisted on political equality among citizens, and on political leaders' responsibilities to their communities. The author of this 1995 book uses pamphlets and political documents to trace the Freestate's evolution, focusing on its institutional structure and on the political language used by its inhabitants. This language included radical statements about 'democracy' and rule by the 'common man'. Even so, the Freestate participated in contemporary European political developments; but because it was different, it provides new perspectives on political ideas in sixteenth-century Europe. It represents a political culture distinct from both absolutism and later liberal ideas.
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of illustrations
- Note on languages, orthography and abbreviations
- Introduction: social order, politics, and political language in the Grisons, 1470-1520
- 1. Communalism and other political models in Europe and the Grisons
- 2. Rhaetia to 1520: geography, society, history
- 3. Local practice and federal government in the Freestate
- 4. From consolidation to communal politics, c. 1580-1620
- 5. Elite power and popular constraint in sixteenth-century Rhaetia
- 6. Reform, communal action and crisis, c. 1580-1620
- 7. Political language and political cosmology during the crisis years, 1617-22
- Conclusion: democracy in early modern Rhaetia.
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