Leonhard Horowski

I have for some time been searching for a book which describes how dynastic political systems work. What happens if a monarch sits at the top of a social hierarchy where everyone accepts that power and privilege should be distributed based on family relationships?

This book probably provides best starting point for answering that question. It's a somewhat unusual history book in that the author presents a series of narratives which are only loosely connected to each other. His aim is not to provide any kind of comprehensive analysis, but instead to illuminate the inner workings of European courts in the 17th and 18th centuries by describing how selected individuals acted in particular circumstances. It is a mixture of social, economic, biographical and military history. This approach is valuable because it builds a gradual understanding of how these people thought. A dynastic system directs personal talent and ambition toward marriage affairs because that is the only acceptable route to social advancement. Other talents and ambitions - for example in the fields of administration, trade, and even warfare - are not as useful. Some of the persons whose stories are recounted in this book were monarchs, but the majority were courtlings who sat one, two, three or four levels below the monarch in the hierarchy, still high enough to be free of any kind of manual labor. I think this was a wise choice by the author because this is the level where the most interesting power games were played.

I've read lots of boring history books that write about 17th and 18th century European monarchies as if the only person who ever did anything political was the monarch who was in charge of the state. This book nicely demonstrates how myopic that perspective can be. The history of politics should not just recount what the state does. It should also explain how power was distributed within the state (or the family dynasty) and how this system of distribution could perpetuate itself without being challenged. The author remarks on a couple of occasions that the internal stability of these dynastic societies is, from our 20th century vantage point, quite surprising. He does his best to explain its roots.

On a couple of occasions scattered here and there throughout the book the author draws general conclusions about dynastic societies. I would have preferred to read even more of these summaries. But since the book is more than 1000 pages long, it certainly contains enough case studies to allow anyone to draw their own theoretical conclusions about how dynastic political systems work.… (altro)