Rebellious Prussians : urban political culture under Frederick the Great and his successors
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Rebellious Prussians : urban political culture under Frederick the Great and his successors
Oxford University Press, 2013
Available at / 3 libraries
-
No Libraries matched.
- Remove all filters.
Note
Bibliography: p. [199]-215
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Prussian discipline is legendary. Central to debates about modern German history is the view that an oppressive Prussian state cast a shadow on the development of civil society. In particular, historians have seen the absence of a revolution in the eighteenth century as a symptom of a delayed and incomplete emancipation of the Prussian bourgeoisie. Prussia's urban dwellers have often been portrayed as poor relations of the self-reliant and assertive bourgeois of
Western Europe and the Atlantic world. Economically backward and politically oppressed, they were allegedly in no position to challenge the iron grip of the state and question the authority of the Hohenzollern dynasty.
Drawing from extensive and original research, Florian Schui challenges the accepted view and argues that Prussians in the eighteenth century were much more willing to challenge the state than has been recognised. Schui explores several instances where urban Prussians successfully resisted government policies and forced Frederick the Great and his successors to give in to their demands. Rebellious Prussians thus sheds light on a little-known historical reality in which weak Hohenzollern
monarchs - and a still weaker Prussian bureaucracy - were confronted with prosperous, fearless, argumentative, and occasionally violent Prussian burghers.
Such conflicts between state and citizens were by no means unique to Prussia. Rather the events in Prussia were, on many levels, connected to similar contemporary developments in other parts of Europe and North America. Florian Schui systematically explores these links and thus develops a new European and Atlantic perspective on Prussian history in the eighteenth century.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- 1. The paradoxes of state building
- 2. Urban navel gazing
- 3. Official perspectives on the towns
- 4. Taxation and its discontents
- 5. Religion and the state
- 6. A Prussian on liberty
- Conclusion: 'Le Sonderweg est mort, vive le Sonderweg?'
- Bibliography
- Index
by "Nielsen BookData"
