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
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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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