Europas habsburgisches Jahrhundert, 1450-1550 [Europe's Habsburg Century]

This textbook details how the Habsburg dynasty emerged as the most important and most powerful of Europe's aristocratic families. Covering the reigns of emperors Frederick III (r. 1452-92), Maximilian I (r. 1508-19), and Charles V (r. 1519/30-58), this book is a first attempt to construct a transnational and transimperial account of events and developments that span at least three different historiographic traditions (Austrian, German, and Spanish) and both the Old and New Worlds. In going beyond the traditional periodisation, I am in effect arguing that the decades between 1450 and 1550 constituted an era of great fluidity, which contributed to the Habsburg dynasty’s meteoric rise, but, equally so, once the shock of the new confessional and geographical realities had been overcome, early modern history evolved along more traditional paths.