Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Note on the Text
Introduction
1. Constructing Status: Family Narratives, Family Myths
2. Constructing Identity: Henri de Rohan, 1579–1638
3. Women, Gender, and the Management of Dynastic Capital
4. Material Contexts: Wealth, Income, Strategies
5. Followers and Servants: Aristocracy as Collective Practice
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Jonathan Dewald is UB Distinguished Professor of History at the University at Buffalo. He is the author of Lost Worlds: The Emergence of French Social History, 1815–1970 (Penn State, 2006).
“Jonathan Dewald’s new monograph throws a multifaceted light on one
of the leading grandee families of early modern France. . . .
Dewald’s important study establishes with clarity and erudition how
the egos of high-ranking nobles helped to shape early modern France
and Europe, and shows how their grandiose actions would prompt
their overthrow in the wake of the revolution.”—Joanna Milstein
Renaissance Quarterly
“Dewald’s descriptive explications of the Rohan nobles’ characters
and lives capture the atmosphere of the time, colorfully conveying
the dynamics of court life, political maneuverings, violence, and
honor. This work is a welcomed addition to the field of early
modern French history.”—Carolyn Corretti Sixteenth Century
Journal
“Powerfully argued and written with his customary elegance and
precision, as well as with an eye for the telling example, Status,
Power, and Identity in Early Modern France: The Rohan Family,
1550–1715 confirms Dewald’s status as one of the leading scholars
of early modern elites.”—Charles Lipp American Historical
Review
“Jonathan Dewald’s Status, Power, and Identity in Early Modern
France demolishes the myth of comfortable stability for the Ancien
Régime elite, providing a template for future studies of elites in
any society. Using careful analysis of all forms of social capital,
his innovative methodology reveals the intricate exchanges among
king and aristocrats undergirding the French monarchical state. His
emphasis on the Rohan women, in particular, should open up new
research perspectives on gender and continuities of aristocratic
power. This new classic of social and political analysis freshens a
debate launched a generation ago by Sharon Kettering and will open
the twenty-first-century conversation on how to analyze clientage,
status, and power.”—James Collins, Georgetown University
“Jonathan Dewald has established himself as the premier historian
of the early modern European nobility. With this book, he delivers
a microhistory of one of its leading and most interesting families.
He uncovers not only how the Rohan managed to maintain their
prominence in the face of the vicissitudes of fortune and multiple
challenges that confronted them across several crucial generations
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries but also, perhaps most
intriguingly, how reinvention, self-fashioning, and historical
awareness were part and parcel of their continued success as one of
France’s preeminent clans. Dewald wears his learning lightly,
making this book both indispensable for scholars and eminently
accessible to students.”—Robert A. Schneider, Indiana
University
“In this lively historical account of how the distinguished and
powerful Rohan family was established in early modern France,
Jonathan Dewald tracks the amazing array of cultural moves and
social strategies that were deployed over generations by family
members—both the men and the women—equally charged with attaining
the crucial social capital for building the dynastic base from
which they worked to preserve their social status amid ups and
downs, including political blows from the outside and intrafamilial
rivalries, scandals, and litigation on the inside. These riveting
stories are historical gems that easily rival fictional
competitors.”—Sarah Hanley, University of Iowa
“No historian has more authority than Jonathan Dewald to write
about an early modern French ducal family. Here is his chef
d’oeuvre. By exploring the importance of family myths of origin,
and the lives of dedicated servants, Dewald had done what he has
never done before: the history of a family as a micro-state
society. The firmness and clarity of the social and economic
aspects of the Rohan dynasty reach deeper than the Rohan and their
managers knew.”—Orest Ranum, Johns Hopkins University
“An epic account of one of France's most notable—and
notorious—families. Writing with flair and an eye for detail,
Jonathan Dewald shows how the Rohan amassed power in the sixteenth
century and pulled themselves back from the brink of dynastic
disaster in the seventeenth century, which saw the great commander
Henri de Rohan and his brother, the duc de Soubise, in exile
without male heirs. In a perfect blend of political and cultural
history, this startling new account of the house of Rohan weaves
together public and private histories to elucidate the fragility of
social standing, the fortunes spent to acquire or maintain it, and
the provincial estates, esteemed bloodlines, military exploits, and
family myth-making that produced both hard cash and social capital.
A must-read for anyone interested in French aristocratic
society.”—Kate van Orden, Harvard University
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