Providing a comprehensive and engaging account of personal unions, composite monarchies and multiple rule in premodern Europe: Unions and Divisions. New Forms of Rule in Medieval and Renaissance Europe uses a comparative approach to examine the phenomena of the medieval and renaissance unions in a pan-European overview.

In the later Middle Ages, genealogical coincidences led to caesuras in various dynastic successions. Solutions to these were found, above all, in new constellations which saw one political entity becoming co-managed by the ruler of another in the form of a personal union. In the premodern period, such solutions were characterised by two factors in particular: on the one hand, the entry of two countries into a union did not constitute a military annexation - even though claims to the throne were all too often imposed by force; on the other hand, the new unitarian constellation retained, at least de jure, the independence of its respective components. The twenty-four essays, ranging in scope from Scandinavia to Iberia, from England and France to Central and Eastern Europe, examine whether the respective unions were the result of careful planning and deliberations in the face of a long-foreseen succession crisis or whether they emerged from dynamic developments that were largely reactive and dependent upon various random factors and circumstances. Each union is assessed to provide an understanding, for students and researchers, of the political and social forces involved in the respective countries and investigates how the unions were reflected in contemporary literature (pamphlets, memoranda, chronicles, diaries etc.), propaganda and in legal and historical discourses.

This volume is essential reading for students and researchers interested in the history of monarchy, political history and social and cultural histories in premodern Europe.

About the Author

Paul Srodecki holds a Ph.D. from Giessen University, Germany, and has also been working as an Assistant Professor, Research Fellow and Lecturer in Medieval and Eastern European History at various other academic institutions, including the universities of Kiel, Germany, and Ostrava, Czechia. He has published several treatises on alterity and alienity discourses as well as historical deconstruction.

Norbert Kersken was a teaching and research fellow at the Herder Institute for Historical Research on East-Central Europe in Marburg and at the University of Giessen, both in Germany, until 2021. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Munster, Germany, with a dissertation on medieval national historiography.

Rimvydas Petrauskas is professor of medieval history and (since 2020) rector of Vilnius University, Lithuania. His main research interests include the political and social histories of the grand duchy of Lithuania from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries as well as the image of the Middle Ages in modern society.

Book Information
ISBN 9781032057521
Author Paul Srodecki
Format Paperback
Page Count 366
Imprint Routledge
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
Weight(grams) 860g