Agents beyond the State: The Writings of English Travelers, Soldiers, and Diplomats in Early Modern Europe Mark Netzloff

Agents beyond the State: The Writings of English Travelers, Soldiers, and Diplomats in Early Modern Europe – Ebook Instant Download/Delivery ISBN(s): 9780198857952,0198857950

Product details:

• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0198857950
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0198857952
• Author(s): Mark Netzloff

The early modern period is often seen as a pivotal stage in the emergence of a recognizably modern form of the state. Agents beyond the State returns to this context in order to examine the literary and social practices through which the early modern state was constituted. The state was defined not through the elaboration of theoretical models of sovereignty but rather as an effect of the literary and professional lives of its extraterritorial representatives. Netzloff focuses on the textual networks and literary production of three groups of extraterritorial agents: travelers and intelligence agents, mercenaries, and diplomats. These figures reveal the extent to which the administration of the English state as well as definitions of national culture were shaped by England’s military, commercial, and diplomatic relations in Europe and other regions across the globe. Netzloff emphasizes the transnational contexts of early modern state formation, from the Dutch Revolt and relations with Venice to the role of Catholic exiles and nonstate agents in diplomacy and international law. These global histories of travel, service, and labor additionally transformed definitions of domestic culture, from the social relations of classes and regions to the private sphere of households and families. Literary writing and state service were interconnected in the careers of Fynes Moryson, George Gascoigne, and Sir Henry Wotton, among others. As they entered the realm of print and addressed a reading public, they introduced the practices of governance to an emerging public sphere.

Table contents:

Introduction: Theorizing State Agents
0.1 Sovereignty, State Agents, and Practices of Governance
0.2 The State and Public Sphere
0.3 Stateless Persons and Nonstate Agents in the Law of Nations
0.4 Outline of Individual Chapters
1. The Information Economy of Early Modern Travel Writing
1.1 Irregular Travelers: Intelligence Networks and Travel Advice Literature
1.2 The Narrative Accounting of Fynes Moryson’s Itinerary
1.3 Thomas Coryat: Sociability, Labor, and the Market Speed of Print
2. The Mercenary State: English Soldiers in the Dutch Revolt
2.1 Early Modern England’s Forgotten Wars
2.2 George Gascoigne, Literary Mercenary
2.3 Delegation, Expertise, and the Extraterritorial Economies of War
2.4 Foreign Service and Domestic Households: Rycote and Penshurst
2.5 1596: Bringing the War Back Home
3. Friends and Enemies in the Global History of Diplomacy
3.1 The Ambassador’s Household: Sir Henry Wotton, Domesticity, and Diplomatic Writing
3.2 Catholic Exiles and the English State After the Gunpowder Plot
3.3 Lines of Amity: The Law of Nations in the Americas
Afterword: The Cosmopolitical Bureau
Bibliography
Index

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