Államelmélet, politika és pamfletek a 17. századi Európában
Constitutional theory, politics, and pamphlets in the seventeenth century

Summary/Abstract: Although religiously and culturally colourful early modern Europe saw various systems of government, economic and social structures operating side by side, the idea of European unity appeared with an increasing frequency by the 17th century in works on philosophy and on the arts of politics, as well as in popular political pamphlets. The figure of the young crowned female suggested the idea of a coherent, organic whole from Spain to Constantinople, from England to Sicily. At the time of the Treaty of Westphalia, under the impact of the shock of the Thirty Years’ War, the need for the solution of conflicts and for the creation of a functioning union further increased in works on constitutional theory and in draft-treaties based on natural and human law. The public discourse around the peace negotiations resulted in the transformation of the discourse of journalism, and caused contemporary pamphlets to teem with new concepts of constitutional theory. The attitude of constitutional theory became understandable and natural for an increasingly broadening, educated stratum of society, if not for the common man. This duality, the presence of the elite and the wider public is aptly characterized by a series of pamphlets published in 1678 under the title ’Ratio Status or Political Vagabond’, which announced on its title page that threefaced Ratio Status had to take two expectations into consideration: the spirit of laws and the news reading public. The pamphlet pointed out that a certain kind of international publicity had come into being, which observed the power realignments in Europe in the context of domestic and international politics. Analysing basically current international relationships, the pamphlets emphasized situations of decision, turning points, presenting several alternatives, and giving readers the experience of thinking together and being insiders. At the end of the 17th century, the most popular, dialogical political pamphlets started to look rather like dramas with several actors, where courts were represented not by monarchs only but by a number of participants, with various interests and ideas. Besides the powerful elite, characteristic representatives of individual countries appeared in the theatre of politics and international publicity with parts of varying sizes indicating that the power realignment at the end of the century was being represented with its wider social bearings. The international public, in the process of being modernized, observed and appreciated the relationship and power status of Hungary and Transylvania, just liberated from the Turks, on the basis of a new scale of values and system of relations. These pamphlets not only presented military news and military performance, but emphasized the political possibilities of the Hungarian Kingdom, its relation to the Hapsburg Empire, as well as the international impact of domestic conflicts, and analysed the long-term alternatives. [...]

• Details
• Contents