Collections of essays are sometimes disappointing. Some articles are good, some are not, some are up-to-date, and others are obsolete. This collection of essays is terrific. They are gathered from a conference held in Leipzig in 2002, but the scholarship has been updated since then. The issue is absolutism in the Habsburg monarchy in the early modern period. The inspiration came from Nicholas Henshall's The Myth of Absolutism: Change and Continuity in Early Modern Europe (London, 1992), in which the author argues that absolutism is not the break from the Middle Ages that scholars often portray it as being. Another inspiration was the opening of the archives in the former Eastern Bloc countries. These archives encouraged scholars from everywhere to take a fresh look at the assumptions surrounding absolutism in the Habsburg monarchy.

This work contains articles on various aspects of absolutism, each of which offers fresh insights and new information. The general conclusions are: (1) Ferdinand I (1503–64) laid the foundations of a stronger central government through his administrative and military reforms—a claim that might seem anachronistic to some scholars; (2) the nobility of the Crownlands—even Bohemia and Hungary—were more likely to cooperate with the Crown in the establishment of strong central control because the Crown provided stability and security; (3) a prime motivation in the creation of the modern Habsburg state was the Turkish threat, which required a government willing to establish an army capable of defending the state as a whole and to acquire the resources necessary to support that army; and (4) the study of high politics can still generate challenging and rewarding scholarship that helps us understand the nature of government in the early modern period.

The introductory essay by Petr Mat'a and Thomas Winkelbauer is exceptionally helpful. It details the historiography, both new and old, on absolutism and raises a number of questions that will challenge scholars who wish to pursue research into the nature of the monarchy at this time. I was particularly impressed by the footnotes, which constitute an extensive bibliography of the most recent scholarship on absolutism.

I would like to comment on all of the articles in this book because they all deserve praise, but I do not have the space for that. Therefore, I will offer remarks on those that I especially liked, which should in no way detract from the others. Jaroslav Pánek argues against the idea that Bohemia was integrated into the monarchy only after the Battle of the White Mountain in 1620 and the Landesordnung of 1627. Ferdinand I created centralized governmental agencies in 1527, which established the Crownlands as a unified system, not just a collection of provinces with the same Landesherr. Pánek notes that traditionally the Bohemian kingship was not elective but hereditary, so the Habsburgs violated no constitutional rights when they restored Habsburg rule to Bohemia in the 1620s. In another article, Thomas Knoz makes a similar argument, pointing out that Ferdinand I created an absolutism that drew in, rather than excluded, the estates and the nobility.

Karin MacHardy argues that not even the France of Louis XIV could be considered a paradigm for absolutism because Louis XIV also had to make compromises with the nobility, clergy, and bourgeoisie to finance his bureaucracy and army. The Habsburgs were no different, and we can understand the evolution of the Habsburg state best not as a series of laws but as a result of consultations among ruler, elites, and subjects. She adds that estates did not oppose but helped strengthen the central government because both ruler and subjects recognized that improving the whole, as well as the parts, would benefit everyone.

Thomas Winkelbauer provides a comprehensive history of Austrian finances in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and points out how war and the needs of the army inspired financial change and reform. As wars became increasingly costly, the monarchy created the institutions to pay for them; and those institutions laid the foundations for a great expansion of revenue in the later eighteenth century and for the growth of the economy that would supply that revenue. Winkelbauer argues that the structure of Habsburg government after 1620 had already reached the point where the major disputes were not between court and estates but, rather, contests over which ministers of the central administration could gain the ear of the emperor.

This is just a sample of what is in this book, and I encourage all those interested in Habsburg history to read all of it. It has provocative ideas, recommendations on future avenues for research, and good information.