Sicherheitsprobleme im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert

The 16th and 17th centuries, characterised as they were by political, social and religious upheaval, represent a key period for historical security studies. This era was shaped by discourses of threat as well as attempts to find answers to the multiple challenges to public order and security. Such insecurity was doubtlessly accentuated by religious and confessional conflicts, as this comparative study of France and the Holy Roman Empire shows. In fact, the range of contributions in this edited volume on ‘security problems’ demonstrates how much the frames within which the issue of security was raised became more and more diverse over the course of the two centuries. In a time of evident conflict, the notion of ‘security’ was deemed increasingly important, which ultimately made it a leading concept in early modern political culture.