Presents a biography of Richelieu up to the point where he took ministerial office for the second time in 1624.

First published in English in 1940, this fascinating memoir details Cardinal Richelieu’s rise to power from bishop to cardinal and King Louis XIII’s chief minister. Cardinal Armand Jean du Plessis, Duke of Richelieu and Fronsac (9 September 1585 - 4 December 1642), commonly referred to as Cardinal Richelieu, was a French clergyman, nobleman, and statesman. He was consecrated as a bishop in 1607 and was appointed Foreign Secretary in 1616. Richelieu soon rose in both the Catholic Church and the French government, becoming a cardinal in 1622, and King Louis XIII’s chief minister in 1624. He remained in office until his death in 1642; he was succeeded by Cardinal Mazarin, whose career he had fostered. “To the reader of this biography, Richelieu becomes one of the most cunning, far-seeing, and resourceful of statesmen. One sees how the cardinal, bent upon getting behind the wheel of state, overcomes powerful opposition and finally reaches his objective. This is a work by a skilled artist....His book reads like a novel of adventure.”—Franklin C. Palm, Journal of Modern History “Professor Burckhardt has wrought brilliantly. Himself a statesman, he is particularly felicitous in his lucid analysis of complicated diplomatic tangles and his intuitive understanding of political psychology.—Arthur M. Wilson, American Historical Review “A brilliant and profound study.”—Carl J. Friedrich in The Age of the Baroque, 1619-1660

Cardinal Richelieu is one of the best known and most studied statesmen in European history; his Spanish contemporary and rival, the Count-Duke of Olivares, one of the least known. The contrasting historical fortunes of the two men reflect the outcome of the great struggle in seventeenth-century Europe between France and Spain: the triumph of France assured the fame of Richelieu, while Spain's failure condemned Olivares to historical neglect. This fascinating book by the distinguished historian J. H. Elliott argues that contemporaries, for whom Olivares was at least as important as Richelieu, shared none of posterity's certainty about the inevitability of that outcome. His absorbing comparative portrait of the two men, as personalities and as statesmen, through their policies and their mutual struggle, offers unique insights into seventeenth-century Europe and the nature of power and statesmanship.

Each volume of the Dictionary of World Biography contains 250 entries on the lives of the individuals who shaped their times and left their mark on world history. This is not a who's who. Instead, each entry provides an in-depth essay on the life and career of the individual concerned. Essays commence with a quick reference section that provides basic facts on the individual's life and achievements. The extended biography places the life and works of the individual within an historical context, and the summary at the end of each essay provides a synopsis of the individual's place in history. All entries conclude with a fully annotated bibliography.

This book takes up a question raised about the nature of the European international system in the late eighteenth-early nineteenth centuries by Paul W. Schroeder's pathbreaking and controversial work, "The Transformation of European Politics, 1763 - 1848" (1994). Schroeder's central claim was that the European states system underwent a fundamental transformation in the revolutionary, Napoleonic, and Vienna eras from a system of competitive, conflictual power politics based purely on a shifting balance of power to a more consensual, stable, and peaceful set of relations based on legality, acknowledged rights and obligations, and shared norms. The contributors to this volume, while examining this claim, primarily extend the debate to the entire history of European and world international politics from the early seventeenth century to the present. If this transformation was real, they ask, was it only a temporary episode, or does it represent an example of other transformations or structural changes in international politics over the centuries down to the present day, and a possible model for change in the future?

How did the world come to be organized into sovereign states? Daniel Philpott argues that two historical revolutions in ideas are responsible. First, the Protestant Reformation ended medieval Christendom and brought a system of sovereign states in Europe, culminating at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. Second, ideas of equality and colonial nationalism brought a sweeping end to colonial empires around 1960, spreading the sovereign states system to the rest of the globe. In both cases, revolutions in ideas about legitimate political authority profoundly altered the "constitution" that establishes basic authority in the international system. Ideas exercised influence first by shaping popular identities, then by exercising social power upon the elites who could bring about new international constitutions. Swaths of early modern Europeans, for instance, arrived at Protestant beliefs, then fought against the temporal powers of the Church on behalf of the sovereignty of secular princes, who could overthrow the formidable remains of a unified medieval Christendom. In the second revolution, colonial nationalists, domestic opponents of empire, and rival superpowers pressured European cabinets to relinquish their colonies in the name of equality and nationalism, resulting in a global system of sovereign states. Bringing new theoretical and historical depth to the study of international relations, Philpott demonstrates that while shifts in military, economic, and other forms of material power cannot be overlooked, only ideas can explain how the world came to be organized into a system of sovereign states.