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The Holy Roman Empire: A Very Short Introduction

Joachim Whaley

July 2018

ISBN: 9780198748762

176 pages
Paperback
174x111mm

In Stock

Very Short Introductions

Price: £8.99

This Very Short Introduction explores the thousand-year history of the Holy Roman Empire, from its origins in 800 as Charlemagne's Frankish kingdom, to its destruction by Napoleon. Throughout, Joachim Whaley analyses the empire's crucial impact and role in the history of European power and politics.

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Description

This Very Short Introduction explores the thousand-year history of the Holy Roman Empire, from its origins in 800 as Charlemagne's Frankish kingdom, to its destruction by Napoleon. Throughout, Joachim Whaley analyses the empire's crucial impact and role in the history of European power and politics.

  • Provides a clear overview of the history of the Holy Roman Empire from 800 to 1806, and its legacy for the two centuries since its dissolution
  • Shows how the empire developed as a German monarchy
  • Explains why the empire was misrepresented by German historians before 1945
  • Part of the Very Short Introductions series - over nine million copies sold worldwide

About the Author(s)

Joachim Whaley, Professor of German History and Thought, University of Cambridge

Joachim Whaley was brought up bilingually in English and German. He studied History at Christ's College, Cambridge, has taught at Cambridge since 1976, and is currently a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College. He is the author of several books on religious toleration in early modern Germany and on the Holy Roman Empire in the early modern period, all of which have been translated into German. He has written numerous articles on the religious and intellectual history of the German lands in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 2015.

Table of Contents

    Introduction - What was the Holy Roman Empire?
    1:Roman Empire and German Kingdom: From Charlemagne to the Ottonians
    2:The High Medieval Empire: From the Salians to the Hohenstaufen
    3:The Later Medieval Empire: The emergence of the Habsburgs
    4:The Early Modern Empire (1): From Maximilian I to the Thirty Years War
    5:The Early Modern Empire (2): From the Peace of Westphalia to 1806
    Conclusion: The Legacy of the Holy Roman Empire
    Maps
    Chronology
    Further Reading
    Index

Reviews

"By analysing and narrating the essentials of one of the most complex and long-lived of all European institutions, and moreover doing it lucidly and entertainingly, Whaley has performed something of a miracle." - Tim Blanning, University of Cambridge

"A crisp, authoritative and notably accessible introduction to the Holy Roman Empire, which occupied a central place in Europe's history for an entire millennium before its dissolution in 1806." - Professor Hamish Scott, FBA, Jesus College, Oxford.

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