The Familial State: Ruling Families and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe (The Wilder House Series in Politics, History and Culture) - Softcover

Adams, Julia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0801474043 ISBN 13: 9780801474040

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 2007

Synopsis

The seventeenth century was called the Dutch Golden Age. Over the course of eighty years, the tiny United Provinces of the Netherlands overthrew Spanish rule and became Europe's dominant power. Eventually, though, Dutch hegemony collapsed as quickly as it had risen. In The Familial State, Julia Adams explores the role that Holland's great families played in this dramatic history. She charts how family patriarchs―who were at the time both state-builders and merchant capitalists―shaped the first great wave of European colonialism, which in turn influenced European political development in innovative ways.

On the basis of massive archival work, Adams arrives at a profoundly gendered reading of the family/power structure of the Dutch elite and their companies, in particular the VOC or Dutch East India Company. In the United Provinces, she finds the first example of the power structure that would dominate the transitional states of early modern Europe―the "familial state." This organizational structure is typified, in her view, by "paternal political rule and multiple arrangements among the family heads."

About this title

About the Author

Julia Adams is Professor of Sociology at Yale University.

From the Back Cover

"Here is historical sociology at its most exciting and rewarding. Julia Adams brings a deep and scholarly approach to understanding the seventeenth-century Netherlands. But much more than this, she uses this `potentially constructive case' as a study of the making of modernity that fundamentally challenges state formation theories. In her focus on the role of elite men, she systematically incorporates family and gender into structures of political economy. This fresh and compelling volume has all the makings of a classic in the field."--Leonore Davidoff, University of Essex and Founding Editor of Gender and History

"In The Familial State Julia Adams provides a compelling and innovative account of state formation in early modern Europe by focusing our attention on two glaring anomalies. First, she focuses on the Dutch Republic, the economic and political miracle of early modern Europe that is too often overlooked or explained away in most accounts of state formation. Second, Adams takes seriously the patrimonial and patriarchal aspects of early modern states--a reality often noticed but rarely explained. By inserting the patrimonial into stories of state formation, Adams compels us to take gender seriously as part of the narrative of the rise of the modern state. Adams's is a book that we all have to take seriously, argue with, and ultimately appreciate. Unlike much of the previous generation of historical sociologists, Adams bases her claims on a mass of archival research. Historians as well as political scientists and sociologists will learn a great deal about the development of early modern states and empires not only in the Netherlands, but in France and Britain as well. Both theoretically and empirically, this is a book to be reckoned with."--Steven Pincus, University of Chicago

Edition details

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0801474043
• ISBN 13: 9780801474040
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 252