State and Society in Early Modern Scotland
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press
Published:23rd Sep '99
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
This is the first full scholarly study of state formation and the exercise of state power in Scotland. It sets the Scottish state in a British and European context, revealing that Scotland -- like larger and better-known states -- developed a more integrated governmental system in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This study provides an invaluable new contribution to the history of Scotland. Julian Goodare shows how the magnates ceased to exercise autonomous local power, and instead managed the new administrative structure through client networks. The state no longer drew its main revenues from land, but developed new taxes; its fighting forces were modernized and detached from landed power. With the Reformation, powerful church institutions were created, and were gradually integrated into the state. The states territorial integrity increased, giving it a closer and more troubled relationship with the Highlands. Scotland remained a sovereign state even after the union of crowns in 1603, but it was finally absorbed by England in 1707, and Dr Goodare examines the long-term context of this development.
Investigating both the experience and the exercise of absolute power, Goodare has produced a masterly account of the symbiotic relationship that subsisted between the absolutist state and the early modern society it ruled ... Challenging conventional historiographical dichotomies, Goodare also provides an insightful account of church-state relations under James VI. * Parliamentary History *
An important contribution to our understanding of the Scottish polity, its institutions of governance, the dynamic qualities of political and social change in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ... this is a book that carves out for Scotland its own revolution in governance. * Scottish Archives, The Journal of the Scottish Records Association *
Its overall quality and the soundness of its argument are the text's most important strengths. State and Society in Early Modern Scotland is engaging and informative, providing a wealth of detail and systematizing that detail into a compelling account of the rise of a centralized sovereign state in early modern Scotland. * Sixteenth Century Journal *
Well-written, insightful study ... Goodare provides a wide-ranging, well-argued, and convincing account of the establishment of a centralized state in Scotland. * Sixteenth Century Journal *
This is a serious book that does address profound questions about the nature of government in early modern Scotland. * Scottish Historical Review *
ISBN: 9780198207627
Dimensions: 224mm x 146mm x 25mm
Weight: 573g
384 pages