Overview

How did courts navigate reform, revolution, warfare, and restoration between 1780 and 1830? Not only does this volume reveal reforming princes, plotting royals, and the careers of household dignitaries; it also examines the political and social roles of women at court and the experiences of regime change and exile. Reconsidering the history of monarchy and the court in the early nineteenth century, Courts and Politics in an Age of Turmoil broadens the definition of politics to include court sociability and women. It concludes that historians of the nineteenth century can no longer take for granted the political marginalization of the court. Contributors include Nigel Aston, Jeroen Duindam, Kristine Dyrmann, Mikołaj Getka-Kenig, William D. Godsey, Vincent Haegele, Philip Mansel, Heidi Mehrkens, Fabian Persson, Quinten Somsen, Thibaut Trétout, Damien Tricoire, Charles-Eloi Vial, and Joost Welten.

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Jeroen Duindam (Leiden) examines the comparative history of courts and rulers, in early modern Europe and from a global perspective. Among his works are Dynasty. A Very Short Introduction (2019); Dynasties: A Global History of Power 1300-1800 (2016); Vienna and Versailles (2003); and Myths of Power (1995). Quinten Somsen obtained his PhD at Leiden University in June 2025 with a dissertation entitled Asserting Princely Power in Hesse-Kassel and the Dutch Republic: The Courts of Landgrave Wilhelm IX and Stadholder Willem V in Comparison (c. 1770–1806). His main fields of interest are the political history of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and the Dutch Republic. He was a member of the Monarchy in Turmoil team at Leiden’s Institute for History. He will join the History Department at the Radboud University in Nijmegen as a lecturer for the 2025/26 semester. Joost Welten is Research Associate at the Institute for Habsburg and Balkan Studies at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He is currently writing a monograph on the Habsburg dynasty during the revolutionary and Napoleonic period. His publications include Dansen rond de troon van Willem I: de hoven in Den Haag en Brussel (2023) and Die vergessenen Prinzessinnen von Thorn (1700-1794) (2021).

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