The early modern Holy Roman Empire is no longer the neglected poor relation of Anglophone writing on German history. General studies remain rare, but important specialist works have appeared over the last decade, as well as the proceedings of major conferences. Yet, the Empire's relationship to German history remains problematic. Long condemned as a barrier to national development, the Empire has undergone a positive reappraisal since the 1960s by German-speaking historians and other scholars elsewhere. This trend has remained largely within the conventional approach of constitutional and institutional history, discovering that the Empire functioned rather better than previously thought. There has been a persistent preoccupation with high politics, though this is less pronounced for early modern history than it remains for much of medieval history. The Empire is frequently viewed from the window of the Imperial palace or the chancellory building, as a set of diverse jurisdictions and communities that somehow had to be governed, even if they could not be ruled directly. This has perpetuated a central feature of the traditional, more negative assessment, namely the presentation of the Imperial constitution and Imperial politics as a dualism of emperor and “princes”—the latter a shorthand for the numerous and varied component territories with a share in government as “Imperial Estates” (Reichsstände).

The Imperial Estates varied considerably in their degree of integration within the Imperial constitution. Several left the Empire during early modernity, while some were added, chiefly through the elevation of previously less politically privileged communities or jurisdictions. Thus, not only did the Empire shift geographically during the last three centuries of its existence, but its internal composition and structure also changed significantly. Therein lie many of the problems in writing its history and the controversy whether it is a valid framework for German history.

Joachim Whaley tackles these problems directly in his impressive and lucid synthesis. His book appears as part of the Oxford History of Early Modern Europe. Many readers will no doubt be familiar with Jonathan Israel's equally monumental history of the Dutch Republic that appeared in the same series in 1995. The publishers were perhaps hedging their bets on market recognition by placing “Germany” at the head of the title, rather than simply presenting this as a history of the Empire. For once, however, the title accurately reflects the author's interpretation. For Whaley, Germany and the Empire are virtually synonymous. He follows Georg Schmidt in distinguishing between an outer “feudal empire” of Imperial jurisdictions over Bohemia, northern Italy, and the Netherlands, and an inner, core “Reich of the German nation” (esp. vol. I, pp. 641–2). Like Schmidt, Whaley's primary questions are whether the Empire was a state and whether it was the focus of a German nation. And like Schmidt, his answers are both affirmative.

These two questions prompt a rich and informative narrative that encompasses all the major and many of the minor research questions posed across the last five decades. Though lightly footnoted, this is a work of impressive scholarship and considerable erudition. The combined bibliographies of the two volumes run to 106 pages with very few overlaps between them. Throughout, Whaley provides judicious, balanced analyses, backed by a wealth of illustrative detail. The first volume is dominated by the twin questions of Imperial and church reform. Like Thomas Brady, he sees these as interrelated with contemporaries seeking answers to both since the early fifteenth century. Whereas the theologians failed to find unity, the politicians crafted institutions that provided a common framework for the Empire until 1806. Whaley sees the decisive stage as 1495–1500, with the later legislation and institutions essentially building on the earlier work. The Reformation is covered from the perspective of Imperial politics, charting the search for solutions through Imperial institutions, confessional leagues, and negotiations between the Habsburgs and leading Imperial Estates. The outcome is presented as something created in common, including the actions of ordinary folk through the Peasants War and the “popular Reformation.” Peter Blickle's stress on communal institutions and the revolutionary dimension to events around 1525 is given a generally sympathetic reception. Charles V's Imperial policy is interpreted as a failure, with credit given to his brother Ferdinand I for retrieving the situation for both the Habsburgs and the Empire. There is unusually full and positive treatment of events after 1555, providing the most detailed coverage of this period in English currently available. The emphasis is on the relative success of the 1555 political and religious settlement and on the continued flexibility of Imperial institutions and the broader commitment to make the system work. “Nothing happened in the Reich between 1555 and 1618 to make a protracted war inevitable” (vol. I, p. 342). Eleven chapters are devoted to charting the Thirty Years' War, largely using the conventional periodization based around principal belligerents moving from Bohemian-Palatine, through Danish and Swedish, to a final French phase. The conflict is presented as related to, yet distinct from, conflicts elsewhere in Europe. The religious and political issues remained constant throughout and informed the peace treaties.

The decision to split the volumes at 1648 is because this is a convenient halfway point, rather than reflecting the traditional preoccupation with the Peace of Westphalia as the effective end of the Empire and a decisive turning point in German history. Throughout, Whaley downplays established patterns of disjunction (e.g., 1740) in favor of more subtle shifts over time. A major strength of the book is its rejection of the usual linear model of decline, with events merely as staging posts toward the Empire's supposedly inevitable collapse. The second volume opens with a detailed account of how Ferdinand III recovered the initiative after 1648 by working within the post-Westphalian constitution, rather than against it. Whaley's embrace of the dualist model of Imperial politics does become clearer at this stage as the sections within the second volume alternate between coverage of developments at the territorial level and those for the Empire as a whole. Whereas the first volume covers territorial development through the debates on confessionalization, territorial Estates, and nascent “state-building,” the second gives much more scope to ruler-subject interaction. All the usual suspects are present and correct: absolutism, social discipline, enlightened reform; however, the discussion is subtle, full of insight, and underpinned by a great variety of interesting and illuminating examples. Prussia is still there, but is considered considerably less advanced in its internal development than the Habsburg monarchy. The final sections examine the end of the Empire from the perspective of its potential viability. Various factors are included in the account, but the main emphasis is on the corrosive impact of France's decision to seize German property and jurisdictions left of the Rhine after 1790, which opened the question of compensation at the expense of the weaker Imperial Estates east of the river. Whaley suggests the Empire might still have been able to adapt if it were not for the relentless pace of the French Revolutionary Wars.

Throughout the Empire is presented as both a state and a nation, though with neither aspect conforming to the aspirations of later Germans. Considerable space is devoted to the development of German language, literature, and the communication of identity; however, the older notion that this merely constituted a “cultural nation” is firmly rejected. The Empire was a political home, too, offering a “multiplicity of interlocking and overlapping fatherlands” (vol. I, p. 14). The constitutional safeguards for the rights of Imperial Estates, communities, and individuals encouraged an association of local autonomy and identity with the Empire. I find these arguments convincing and agree that the association of Empire and Germany grew closer, especially by the later eighteenth century. I am not so sure, however, that this means we either should or can reduce the Empire to Germany. For one thing, it is clear that at least some Italians also identified with the Empire as safeguarding their local rights and identities. This did not make them “German,” but it did make them “Imperial citizens” as the inhabitants of San Remo claimed in 1770. It also seems illogical to include Austria, but exclude Bohemia, which belonged to the Habsburgs and was an electorate represented in the Reichstag. Clearly, there was a distinct Czech identity, but “Bohemian” nobles' marriage strategies extended to the German-speaking nobles of the Austrian lands and to many Imperial noble families, too. Further connections included feudal ties between Bohemia and Saxony, and important trade links with other parts of the Empire, as well as the Habsburg monarchy. Such arguments could also be advanced for links between the southern Netherlands and the Reich, with especially strong ties to Westphalia and parts of the Rhineland.

Similar problems appear in the discussion of the Empire's statehood. As Georg Schmidt has suggested, the really interesting question is not whether the Empire was a state, but rather what kind of polity was it. Here, Whaley offers perceptive and generally convincing answers. He is especially effective in dealing with the more overly enthusiastic claims made recently as to the modernity of its political institutions: “The informal monetary unions were in no way comparable with the modern eurozone of today; no Chausee was anything like an Autobahn” (vol. II, p. 436). “Much about the Holy Roman Empire that has seemed modern to some historians is in fact simply early modern” (vol. II, p. 650). Also sensible is the argument (esp. vol. II, p. 650) that the Empire was distinctive, but contained some elements similar to those in other states, notably Poland-Lithuania, the Swiss confederation, the Dutch Republic, and the Spanish and British composite states. Problems arise in identifying some of these distinctive features, however, and, again, these difficulties relate in part to the decision to reduce the Empire to Germany. Whaley avoids Schmidt's use of “Empire-State,” which has created more problems than it solves, but nonetheless follows his presentation of the Empire as a complimentary structure with a division of political labor between Emperor, territories, and common institutions. This is helpful in explaining how the constitution worked and what held the Empire together. Less certain is the reference to the Empire as a “feudal nexus” (Personnenverband) (vol. I, p. 51). The concept is not developed further, but in fact derives from Theodor Mayer's work from the 1930s, presenting the Empire as a Personnenverbandstaat, with this defined as a precursor to a “territorial state.” Mayer's concept has been influential, but not unproblematic since, as Otto Brunner argued, a feudal nexus was rarely entirely separate from territory, while, as Hagen Keller demonstrates, feudal ties bound the Emperor to groups as well as persons. And all this assuming we want to use the term “feudal” at all. More particularly, feudal ties were common across the Empire, delineating the Emperor's relations with all three original kingdoms of Germany, Italy, and Burgundy, and with their component lords, communities, and territories.

Additional problems arise with the term “federal,” which appears periodically throughout the book. Various associational forms were a major feature in Imperial politics and important for linking people and communities in the wider web of Imperial law and jurisdictions. These were not necessarily federal, however. There has been a long line of writers who have presented the Empire as a federation, or at least a polity with a strong federal element. This trend has become more pronounced since the 1970s and is generally a feature of the more positive assessments of the Empire as “modern.” Therein lies the problem, since federalism implies characteristics such as equality among members, as well as sovereignty. Whaley is rightly cautious of this, admitting that the term “federalism” is “also misleading and technically inaccurate” (vol. I, p. 40), not least because the princes were not sovereign (vol. I, pp. 48–9) despite the “federalist implication” of the Peace of Westphalia (vol. II, p. 10). The way out of this confusion of concepts is to see federalism as just one current within Imperial politics. It could strengthen the Empire, as in the associations of minor territories on a regional basis (through the Kreise), which assisted in the exercise of collective security against France and the Ottomans in the later seventeenth century. Federalism, however, was inherently inimical to the Empire as both a monarchy and a status hierarchy of Imperial Estates subject to the emperor, but not to his direct rule. Significantly, both the French-backed Confederation of the Rhine (1806) and the German Confederation (1815) were federations based on equal, sovereign status, lacking both the finely graduated status hierarchy and the stronger monarchy that characterized the Empire.

The elephant in this German room is the question of whether the Empire makes sense for social history. This was a question first posed seriously by Peter Moraw and Volker Press in the mid-1970s. It then rather disappeared from view only to resurface indirectly with the “cultural turn” of the past decade. Recent work on ritual and political culture has, partly inadvertently, moved back toward older, less positive interpretations of the Empire. One of the central charges of the older, especially Borussian view, was that the Empire was a fossilized aristocratic structure, whereas “real” history that affected daily life only occurred at the level of the territories, where taxes and recruits were levied; economy and society regulated; and goods and services produced, distributed, and consumed. Whaley's arguments that many Germans identified with the Empire as their wider fatherland already suggest it was more than an empty shell. His argument that Imperial laws provided general guidelines for local adaptation is one important way of moving beyond the assumption that the Empire could only have had an impact if it had engaged in daily life directly (which, of course, it rarely did). He gives only a brief mention of Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger's subtle reworking of the older depiction of the later Empire slowly afflicted with sclerosis, however. Whereas previous historians have dismissed the almost obsessive preoccupation with status as a sign of the Empire's irrelevance by the eighteenth century, Stollberg-Rilinger argues the Imperial Estates spent so much time over protocol precisely because it really did matter to them. She suggests that the Imperial constitution was becoming increasingly inflexible, not because institutions such as the Imperial courts no longer functioned (they did, and did so effectively), but because it was increasingly more difficult to adjust the formal status hierarchy to match political reality. This provides a neat and effective answer to the question of Imperial reform. The eighteenth century saw a lively debate on the potential reform of the Imperial constitution, showing, as Whaley also argues, that the Empire was still regarded as the appropriate political home for the German nation. None of the reform proposals was able to envisage anything substantially different from the existing system, however, and, more crucially, none of the Imperial Estates was prepared to relinquish an iota of its hallowed privileges and status to enable reforms to be implemented. The really interesting question now for research would be to investigate whether these political problems were in any way connected to the difficulties of broader social adjustments. This really would link social history to that of the Empire and people it with ordinary folk alongside princes, Imperial knights, and magistrates.

The two volumes share a common glossary, but otherwise stand alone with their own introductions, bibliographies, and pair of maps. The sheer size of this endeavor is necessary in many ways. The Imperial constitution is notoriously complex. Many of the problems with previous interpretations stem from a natural desire to reduce the story to a simpler clash between a declining monarchy and rising princely “states.” Whaley successfully avoids this and instead presents the Empire's history in all its rich and often contradictory detail. The sheer length of the work and its division into 125 (albeit usually relatively short) chapters give it something of the air of a handbook, however. The key arguments sometimes disappear within the narrative. Handling so much detail and following so many threads is never easy. The internal subdivisions are usually neat and effective, but in some places the sequence of topics flows less well. The long section on ideas of Imperial and church reform in the early fifteenth century in volume I follows the chapter on Maximilian I. The Thirty Years' War is interrupted between its outbreak and continuation by eleven chapters largely dealing with other issues. There is some repetition of detail with, for example, the same statistics on newspaper circulation (vol. II, pp. 438, 464) and the number of public officials (vol. II, pp. 468, 543) appearing twice. More importantly, tensions sometimes emerge between the desire to correct the long-standing negative assessment of the Empire and the high-political narrative which was, often, a story of failure. There are examples of this in the sections that discuss the problems with the 1555 settlement, especially those around 1600, with “The consensus falters, c. 1585–1603,” and “Paralysis, 1603–14” as consecutive chapter headings. These risk conveying a misleading impression. Those reading the text closely will see that Whaley emphasizes the continued faith in the Imperial constitution. I would suggest extending this by distinguishing more clearly between moderate pragmatists and a much smaller militant minority prepared to risk war. More generally, problems with particular institutions did not paralyze the entire constitutional framework, which contained many forums for negotiation, policy legitimation, and decision making.

These two volumes put the Empire firmly back into German history. They provide a richly detailed, judiciously balanced discussion of the last three centuries of the Empire's existence. The text is lively, accessible despite its length, and based on an impressive command of the literature. Whaley's history is a must for anyone with a serious interest in early modern Germany.