Short Oxford History of Italy Early Modern

This volume provides a fresh and dynamic account of Early Modern Italy, covering such themes as politics, Italy's experience of the absolutist state, the Counter-Reformation, society and economy in both town and country, family and gender, the arts and intellectual life, popular culture, and Italy's distinctive role in Europe. Early Modern Italian history has traditionally been presented in the context of the absence of a unified Italian state, foreign domination and of relative decline to former wealth and power. This new volume calls on a wealth of recent research to portray the complex history of the early modern Italian states on their own terms. A leading team of historians traces Italian material and cultural bonds of identity and solidarity beyond their common political narrative - from the Reformation through the hopes and frustrations of reform, renewal and restructuring of social and economic power to the eventual collapse of the Old Regime.