Success Is Never Final: Empire, War, and Faith in Early Modern Europe

by PARKER GEOFFREY

• ISBN13: 9780465054770
• ISBN10: 0465054773
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-04-01
• Publisher: Perseus Books Group

Summary

Failure fascinates historians, especially when it follows fast on the heels of victory. In ten provocative essays, Geoffrey Parker chronicles notable moments in fifteenth-, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe when defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory. He paints a broad picture of empire, war, and religion in the early modern world.Parker groups his material into three sections. In the first, he examines the rise and fall of the first global empire, the Spanish Empire. In the second, he shows how the spread of the Western military innovation triggered resistance stronger than it could overcome. Finally, he tells of the failure of the Reformation to grow beyond its original, urban milieu.Success Is Never Final offers a rich and original view of the fluctuations of power in early modern Europe, and bold new thinking from one of our master historians.

Author Biography

Geoffrey Parker is Andreas Dorpalen Professor of History at Ohio State University, and previously held chairs at Yale University, the University of Illinois, the University of British Columbia, and at St. Andrews in Great Britain. The author or editor of thirty books, including The Military Revolution, The Dutch Revolt, and The Grand Strategy of Philip II, he is also a Fellow of the British Academy, a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Isabel the Catholic, and Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Alfonso the Wise. He lives in Columbus, Ohio.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	ix
List of tables	xi
Acknowledgements	xii
Note on conventions	xiii
Introduction	1	(15)
PART I PHILIP II: THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH
David or Goliath? Philip II and His World in the 1580s	16	(23)
Of Providence and Protestant Winds: The Spanish Armada of I588 and the Dutch Armada of 1688	39	(28)
Treason and Plot in Elizabethan Diplomacy: The Fame of Sir Edward Stafford' Reconsidered	67	(29)
Philip II, Maps and Power	96	(30)
PART II THE CENTURY OF THE SOLDIER
The Treaty of Lyon (1601) and the Spanish Road	126	(17)
The Etiquette of Atrocity: The Laws of War in Early Modern Europe	143	(26)
The `Military Revolution' in Seventeenth-century Ireland	169	(23)
The Artillery Fortress as an Engine of European Overseas Expansion, 1480-1750	192	(30)
PART III SIN, SALVATION AND SUCCESS DENIED
Success and Failure during the First Century of the Reformation	222	(31)
The `Kirk by Law Established' and the `Taming of Scotland': St Andrews, 1559-1600	253	(30)
Appendix: The Disciplinary Work of the St, Andrews Kirk-session, 1573-1600	283	(5)
Notes	288	(111)
Text acknowledgements	399	(1)
Index	400