Germany and the Holy Roman Empire Volume II: The Peace of Westphalia to the Dissolution of the Reich, 1648-1806

Germany and the Holy Roman Empire offers a striking new interpretation of a crucial era in German and European history, from the great reforms of 1495-1500 to the dissolution of the Reich in 1806. Over two volumes, Joachim Whaley rejects the notion that this was a long period of decline, and shows instead how imperial institutions developed in response to the crises of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, notably the Reformation and Thirty Years War. The impact of international developments on the Reich is also examined. Volume II begins with the Peace of Westphalia and concludes with the dissolution of the Reich. Whaley analyses the remarkable resurgence of the Reich after the Thirty Years War, which saw the Habsburg emperors achieve a new position of power and influence and which enabled the Reich to withstand the military threats posed by France and the Turks in the later seventeenth century. He gives a rich account of topics such as Pietism and baroque Catholicism, the German enlightenment, and the impact on the Empire and its territories of the French Revolution and Napolean. Whaley emphasizes the continuing viability of the Reich's institutions to the end, and the vitality of a political culture of freedom that has been routinely underestimated by historians of modern Germany.

1 - Historians and the Reich after the Thirty Years War
2 - The Last Years of Ferdinand III: Western Leagues and Northern Wars
3 - From Ferdinand III to Leopold I
4 - Leopold I and his Foreign Enemies
5 - A New Turkish Threat
6 - Renewed Conflict with France
7 - The Emperor, the Perpetual Reichstag, the Kreise, and Imperial Justice
8 - Imperial Networks: the Reichskirche and the Imperial Cities
9 - The Imperial Court at Vienna and Dynastic Elevations in the Reich
10 - The Nature of the Reich: Projects and Culture
11 - Interpretations of the Leopoldine Reic
12 - Two Wars and Three Emperors
13 - Leopold I, Joseph I, and the War of Spanish Succession
14 - Joseph I and the Government of the Reich
15 - Charles VI: Fruition or Decline?
16 - Conflicting Priorities: c.1714 - c.1730
17 - Charles VI and the Government of the Reich
18 - The Return of Confessional Politics?
19 - The Problem of the Austrian Succession
20 - The Ebb of Imperial Power 1733-1740?
21 - The Reich in Print
22 - An Age of Absolutism?
23 - Contemporary Perceptions: From Reconstruction to Early Enlightenment
24 - The Smaller Territories
25 - Austria and Brandenburg-Prussia
26 - The Revival of the Court and the Development of Territorial Government
27 - The Court: its Culture, its Functions, and its Critics
28 - The Development of Military Power
29 - Princes and Estates
30 - An Oppressed Peasantry?
31 - Government and Society
32 - Government and Economic Development
33 - Public and Private Enterprise
34 - Christian Polities: Baroque Catholicism
35 - Christian Polities: the Territories of the Reichskirche
36 - Christian Polities: Protestant Orthodoxy and Renewal
37 - From Coexistence to Toleration?
38 - Enlightenment and Patriotism
39 - Three Emperors and a King
40 - Silesian Wars, 1740-1763
41 - Managing the Reich without the Habsburgs: Charles VII (1742-45)
42 - The Return of the Habsburgs: Francis I (1745-1765)
43 - The Reich without Enemies? Germany and Europe 1763-1792
44 - Renewal: Joseph II 1765-c.1776
45 - The Great Reform Debate: Joseph II c. 1778-1790
46 - Restoration: Leopold II 1790-92
47 - Central and Intermediate Institutions of the Reich
48 - The Reich, the Public Sphere, and the Nation
49 - Enlightenment and the Problem of Reform
50 - Crisis and Opportunity
51 - The Challenge of the Enlightenment and the Public Sphere
52 - Protestant, Catholic and Jewish Aufklärung
53 - Aufklärung and Government
54 - Cameralism, Physiocracy, and the Provisioning of Society
55 - Economic Policy: Manufactures, Guilds, Welfare, and Taxation
56 - Administration, Law, and Justice
57 - Education and Toleration
58 - Courts and Culture
59 - The Impact of Reform: Immunity against Revolution?
60 - Ruptures and Continuities
61 - The Reich in the Revolutionary Wars
62 - Reverberations of the French Revolution: Unrest and Uprisings
63 - Reverberations of the French Revolution: Intellectuals
64 - Schemes for the Reform of the Reich in the 1790s
65 - The Peace of Lunéville (1801) and the Reichsdeputationshauptschluß (1803)
66 - The Transformation of the Reich 1803-05
67 - Final Attempts at Reform and the Dissolution of the Reich 1806

Joachim Whaley read History at Christ's College Cambridge. He held Fellowships in History at Christ's College and Robinson College before becoming a Lecturer in German in the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages at Cambridge, where he teaches German history, thought, and language. He is the author of Religious Toleration and Social Change in Hamburg 1529-1819 and of numerous articles on early modern and modern German history. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 1984, and Fellow of the British Academy in 2015.