Fragile princely government in late Medieval Europe

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Martin Kintzinger
• Subject Area: Medieval History
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 555919625

The volume collects texts in result of the papers and discussions at a conference in autumn 2022. The leading research goal was a comparative study on the fragility of political order in late medieval Europe. The methodological background is the deconstruction of the up to now predominant differentiation between successful and failed statebuilding (failed states). It focused on a history of progress leading to modern states and on strong, imposing rulers. Within the last years debates, the discussions have been changed from an analytic allocation of failure to a contemporary introspection as a fragile order (fragile states; fragility studies). The fragility of government does not necessarily stand for failure. It recently is taken as an expression of flexibility leading to pragmatically reacting on external challenges as well as situationally negotiating between different interest groups. Personal weakness of a prince did not inevitably lead to a weakness of the political order. Detailed recent studies already showed that rulers, who were suggested to be extraordinary strong, in fact brought damage to their reign because of a lack of flexibility. In contrast, political orders characterized by negotiations between status groups could finally lead to durability. The methodological focus of the conference has got an unexpected current value by recent incidents of global history, in particular the Russian occupation of the Ukraine. Therefore, but first of all as a programmatic approach, the subject must necessarily be realized as a comparative analysis between different reigns within Europe. In particular the connection between western and central Europe should be respected. The volume therefore brings together well recognized authors for the history of Bohemia, Lithuania, northern and southern Italy, Swede, Norway and the Baltic Sea, the so-called State of the Teutonic Order in Prussia, France, the Netherlands and Luxembourg as well as the German Kingdom. An exemplary and comparative study on the expansion of the Iberian reigns to the Canaries finally opens the perspective to non-European history and the transition to the early modern period. The volume offers for the first time a systematical comparative analysis on the fragility of political orders in medieval Europe and can therefore be taken as a handbook on its topic.

• DFG Programme: Publication Grants
• Participating Person: Dr. Klara Hübner