This volume investigates the history of the representative assemblies of Sweden (the riksdag), Poland (the sejm) and Hungary (the diaeta) in the final period of the ancien régime. It concentrates on the practices and ideas of parliamentarism and constitutionalism, and examines the ideologies that motivated the members of these parliaments. Attempts at the suppression as well as the restoration of the estates’ power in all these three countries are examined, as well as, in the case of Hungary, the establishment of popular representation that eventually replaced the estates. These three early modern representative assemblies have never before been explored systematically in a comparative framework.
Author(s): István M. Szijártó, Wim Blockmans, László Kontler
Series: Routledge Research in Early Modern History
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 372
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction: parliamentarism in the age of absolutism
Riksdag, sejm and diaeta
Ideas and motivations
The later decades
Lessons, further questions and chances for progress
Comparing representative institutions: the historiography and the challenges
A grand theory
The representativity of privileged estates
New lines of thought: quantification and prosopography
An activity index
Towards a general framework
PART I: Institutions and political machineries
1 The peasant estate of Sweden: its rise and early modern evolution
The prominence of freeholders
Local/regional significance
Military significance (1434–1682)
Political usefulness and increasing independence (1560–1682)
Comparison with Denmark
The estate of the peasants during the Age of Greatness (1617–1718)
The estate of the peasants during the Age of Liberty (1719–1772)
Concluding remarks
2 The ‘common good’ or the particularism of the nobility? The political system of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the first half of the eighteenth century
Introduction
General assumptions governing the political system of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the first half of the eighteenth century
Main organs of political power in the eighteenth-century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: the sejm
The main organs of political power in the eighteenth-century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: the senate
The main organs of political power in the eighteenth-century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: sejmiki
The main organs of political power in the eighteenth-century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: the king
The main organs of political power in the eighteenth-century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: confederations
Final remarks
3 Instruments of conviction in the political culture of eighteenth-century Hungary
The preparations for the Pragmatica Sanctio
The passage of the Pragmatica Sanctio in Hungary – ‘arranged spontaneity’
Efforts at reform: ‘harmful novelties’ or attempts at modernisation?
Summary
4 The estates in the middle: populist absolutism and constitutionalism in early modern Swedish politics
The populist option
State-of-the-art state-building
Aristocratic constitutionalism
Commoner constitutionalism?
Queen Christina as King Lear
Peace and war: the trajectory of Caroline absolutism
Give peace a chance: the forbidden assembly and the Great Northern War
The commoner founding fathers
The peasantry’s grievances
The centre holds
Cooperating organizations
Conclusion and discussion
PART II: Concepts and motivations
5 From confession to constitution: the motivation of the Hungarian political elite in the middle of the eighteenth century
Eighteenth-century Hungary and the generative model
Motivation
Career paths
A chronology
6 Maria Theresa’s monarchy: between inheritable merit and remunerable loyalty
Whose meritocracy?
An omnipresent discourse on merits
The Order of St. Stephen and the petitioning strategies of merited subjects
In search of balance
7 Political ambition: the concept in Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws and its reception in Hungary (1748–1848)
Introduction
The early reception of Montesquieu in Hungary
‘The Soul of the Laws’: the 1833 translation in context
Montesquieu within the knowledge infrastructure of liberal improvement
Ambition in the political discourse of Reform Era Hungary
Conclusion
8 Domicilium libertatis or a threat to liberty? Eighteenth-century discussions on the role and place of the sejm within the system of government of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
“An assembly of the Commonwealth”
“One absolute mistress, the sejm”
Domicilium libertatis
“Of whom are the councils of state in the Commonwealth formed?”
“Not by their own power…”
“Depriving the nation of liberty”?
Conclusion
PART III: The eclipse, revival and transformation of estates’ politics
9 The growth of political instability and the royal coup in Sweden, c. 1760–1780
The foundations for political stability
The crisis of the 1760s
Political stability and instability in Sweden
10 Pragmatism triumphant: Hungary’s political culture in the age of the French Revolution
The political climate in early 1790
The diet at its opening
Assertive estates: the first phase of the diet
Resurgent crown: the second phase of the diet
The question of religion: the third phase of the diet
Conclusion
11 Role perception in the first modern Hungarian parliament, 1848–1849
A constitutional turn and a new political system
The parliament of popular representation
Representatives on their own role
Parliament under changing political conditions
Afterword
Index
