The Origins of the Modern State in Europe series arises from an important international research programme sponsored by the European Science Foundation.
The aim of the projected seven-volume series is to bring together specialists from different countries, to reinterpret, from a comparative European perspective, different aspects of the formation of the state over the long period from the beginning of the thirteenth to the end of the eighteenth century.
One of the main achievements of the research programme has been to overcome the traditional tendency to regard states mainly from the viewpoint of their twentieth-century borders.
In its chronological and geographical span this is a unique undertaking.
Wim Blockmans and Jean-Philippe Genet
