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State-Building, Conquest, and Royal Sovereignty in Prussia, 1815–1871
Jasper Heinzen
The Historical Journal
Since Bodin, scholars have been debating whether sovereignty is indivisible or rather decentred, multiple, and shared. This article adds to practice-oriented conceptualizations of sovereignty, which acknowledge the existence of jurisdictional pluralism in nineteenth-century state-building. Borrowing from imperial history, it contrasts the nominal supremacy of the Prussian crown – as embodied by the monarchical principle – with the residual sovereign rights of potentates that had lost their lands in Germany's successive wars of unification. The possession of ‘bare sovereignty’ allowed such mediatized princes and exiled rulers to maintain a presence in the lives of their former subjects. They did so by exercising privileges and functions of royalty which left vague in whose name was being governed. The Hohenzollerns for their part struggled (and to a certain extent proved unwilling) to assert exclusive dominion because right of conquest-based justifications had no firm standing in...
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Sovereignty and the Legal Legacies of Empire in Early Nineteenth-Century Prussia
Charlotte Johann
The Historical Journal, 2021
The traceless disappearance of the Holy Roman Empire from the map and the minds of nineteenth-century Germany was until recently a pervasive historiographical trope. Revisionist scholarship has since uncovered the empire's modern afterlife as a model for federative political order and archetype of the greater German (großdeutsche) nation. This article identifies a different kind of legacy, by examining the empire's role in shaping the constitutional configuration of an individual successor state – Prussia. In a debate over Prussia's unwritten historical constitution unfolding in the 1840s, narratives of the empire's constitutional history became the basis on which the juridical structure of the kingdom's sovereignty was negotiated by jurists and political actors. These included, among others, King Frederick William IV and his brother William, the leaders of the German historical school of jurisprudence Savigny and Eichhorn, and the Prussian statesman Kamptz. The ...
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The Paradox of a United Colonial Nation-State: A Case from Saxon Particularism and Prussian Realpolitik
Martin Trenkov
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The Evolution of State Legitimacy and the Impact on the Nature of 18th and 19th Century Warfare
PATRICK J A M E S CHRISTIAN
Sociologist Max Webber theorized that modern states owe their existence to revolutions in military affairs, and historian Philip Bobbitt countered that military strategy is a determinant, along with law and history, of how a state is constituted. This essay suggests that how a state is constituted is a function of the determination of internal and external legitimacy, and that law, war and history are not only determinants of this legitimacy, but are themselves changed by the evolution of state legitimacy.
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Brandenburg-Prussia, 1466-1806: The Rise of a Composite State by Karin Friedrich (Review)
Brian Sandberg
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The Making of Prussian Absolutism: Confessional Conflict and State Autonomy under the Great Elector, 1640-1688
Philip Gorski
Gorski, The Protestant Ethic Revisited, 2013
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The origins of an illusion: British policy and opinion, and the development of Prussian liberalism, 1848-1871
Scott W . Murray
1990
The massive h i s t o r i o g r a p h y d e a l i n g with the problem of Germany's development In the f i r s t h a l f of t w e n t i e t h century has been s t r o n g l y Influenced by the n o t i o n that c e r t a i n p e c u l i a r n a t i o n a l c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s l e d Germany down a Sonderweq, or " s p e c i a l path," which diverged from that of other Western European n a t i o n s . However, by h e l p i n g to focus s c h o l a r l y a t t e n t i o n on v a r i o u s p o l i t i c a l , s o c i a l and I n t e l l e c t u a l developments which took place i n Germany i n the nine t e e n t h century, the Sonderweq t h e s i s has d i s t r a c t e d s c h o l a r s from examining more c l o s e l y the p o s s i b l e Impact which the I n t e r p l a y of I n t e r n a t i o n a l r e l a t i o n s had on Germany's development d u r i n g t h i s p i v o t a l p e r i o d . The present study examines the extent to which B r i t i s h f o ...
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The Rise and Downfall of Prussia
Mohamed Jalizada
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Defensive realism and the Concert of Europe
Matthew Rendall
Review of International Studies, 2006
Why do great powers expand? Offensive realist John Mearsheimer claims that states wage an eternal struggle for power, and that those strong enough to seek regional hegemony nearly always do. Mearsheimer’s evidence, however, displays a selection bias. Examining four crises between 1814 and 1840, I show that the balance of power restrained Russia, Prussia and France. Yet all three also exercised self-restraint; Russia, in particular, passed up chances to bid for hegemony in 1815 and to topple Ottoman Turkey in 1829. Defensive realism gives a better account of the Concert of Europe, because it combines structural realism with non-realist theories of state preferences.
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Fighting a Just War in the Midst of an Unreasonable International Strife: World War I and the Collapse of the Central European System of the Triple Imperial Dominion
Multitudinis Usus
Journal of Military Ethics, 2020
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