Changing Political Identities in the Upper Rhine Valley, 1560-1740

FAIN: FB-54170-09

Peter George Wallace
Hartwick College (Oneonta, NY 13820-4000)

I plan to complete a book manuscript on the effects of changing relations of power on urban elites in the Upper Rhine Valley before, during, and after the Thirty Years' War. The book is under contract with Brill Press of Leiden. Drawn from decades of research in regional civic archives, the manuscript traces changes in the political vocabulary of urban officials as they negotiated with neighbors, the Swiss confederate cantons, and royal French and imperial Austrian officials, who operated in the valley or at distant courts. New names and terminology evoked new political identities brought on by shifting territorial boundaries and competing political cultures: French, Imperial/Austrian and Swiss. The text's historical insights shed light on the gradual, complex, and contingent construction of modern national and regional political identities.