Marc Bloch, French Rural History: An Essay on Its Basic Characteristics (1966, reprinted 1978; originally published in French, 1931); Jack M. Potter, May N. Diaz, and George M. Foster (eds.), Peasant Society (1967); Pierre Goubert, The French Peasantry in the Seventeenth Century (1986; originally published in French, 1982); and Jerome Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia: From the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century (1961, reprinted 1971), are important studies of peasant life. The economic and social conditions in the urban areas are the subject of Gaston Roupnel, La Ville et la campagne au XVIIe siècle: étude sur les populations du pays dijonnais (1955); Orest Ranum, Paris in the Age of Absolutism (1968, reprinted 1979); and Gerald L. Burke, The Making of Dutch Towns: A Study in Urban Development from the Tenth to the Seventeenth Centuries (1956). The early modern aristocracy is studied in A. Goodwin (ed.), The European Nobility in the Eighteenth Century: Studies of the Nobilities of the Major European States in the Pre-Reform Era, 2nd ed. (1967); and Guy Chaussinand-Nogaret, The French Nobility in the Eighteenth Century: From Feudalism to Enlightenment (1985; originally published in French, 1976). Economic questions are examined in the appropriate volumes of The Cambridge Economic History of Europe series (1966– ); Peter Earle (ed.), Essays in European Economic History, 1500–1800 (1974); and B.H. Slicher Van Bath, The Agrarian History of Western Europe, A.D. 500–1850 (1963). G.N. Clark, Science and Social Welfare in the Age of Newton, 2nd ed. (1949, reissued 1970), looks at the connections between science and technology. Commerce and trade and their significance as characteristics of the home countries are discussed in D.C. Coleman (ed.), Revisions in Mercantilism (1969); Ralph Davis, The Rise of the Atlantic Economies (1973); J.H. Parry, Trade and Dominion: The European Oversea Empires in the Eighteenth Century (1971); and C.R. Boxer, The Dutch Seaborne Empire, 1600–1800 (1965, reprinted 1977).
Gerald R. Cragg, The Church and the Age of Reason, 1648–1789 (1960, reprinted 1985), provides a concise overview of the subject; a comprehensive treatment is offered in E. Préclin and E. Jarry, Les Luttes politiques et doctrinales aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, 2 vol. (1955–56). Specific significant topics in church history are surveyed in A.G. Dickens, The Counter Reformation (1968, reissued 1979); Jean Delumeau, Catholicism Between Luther and Voltaire: A New View of the Counter-Reformation (1977, originally published in French, 1971); Émile G. Léonard, A History of Protestantism: The Reformation (1965; originally published in French, 1961); Robert O. Crummey, The Old Believers & the World of Antichrist: The Vyg Community & the Russian State, 1694–1855 (1970); Jean Orcibal, Louis XIV et les Protestants: la cabale des accommodeurs de religion, la caisse des conversions, la révocation de l’Édit de Nantes (1951); Mack Holt, The French Wars of Religion (1993); Barbara Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots in Sixteenth-Century Paris (1991); James Brodrick, The Progress of the Jesuits, 1556–79 (1947, reprinted 1986); Henry Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition (1965, reissued 1976); Henry Kamen, Philip of Spain (1997); and John McManners, French Ecclesiastical Society Under the Ancien Régime: A Study of Angers in the Eighteenth Century (1960).
Political questions are discussed in Theodore K. Rabb, The Struggle for Stability in Early Modern Europe (1975); J.H. Shennan, The Origins of the Modern European State, 1450–1725 (1974); and A.R. Myers, Parliaments and Estates in Europe to 1789 (1975). Ragnhild Hatton (ed.), Louis XIV and Absolutism (1976), is a collection of articles, mostly translated from French. William F. Church, Richelieu and Reason of State (1973), is another study of absolutism. Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 vol. (1978), is a political history. Trevor Aston (ed.), Crisis in Europe, 1560–1660 (1965, reissued 1975); Geoffrey Parker and Lesley M. Smith (eds.), The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century (1978); Perez Zagorin, Rebels and Rulers, 1500–1660, 2 vol. (1982); and Roland Mousnier, Peasant Uprisings in Seventeenth-Century France, Russia, and China (1971; originally published in French, 1967), are studies of resistance and revolts.
Diplomacy tends to be subsumed into general histories. Albert Sorel, Europe and the French Revolution: The Political Traditions of the Old Régime (1969; originally published in French, 1885); Jill Lisk, The Struggle for Supremacy in the Baltic, 1600–1725 (1967); Derek McKay and H.M. Scott, The Rise of the Great Powers, 1648–1815 (1983); Ragnhild Hatton (ed.), Louis XIV and Europe (1976); J.S. Bromley and E.H. Kossmann (eds.), Britain and the Netherlands in Europe and Asia (1968); and Mark A. Thomson et al., William III and Louis XIV: Essays 1680–1720 (1968), examine the main outlines of early modern diplomacy. A starting point for the study of war is Michael Roberts, The Military Revolution, 1560–1660 (1956). A later contribution to the ensuing debate is Geoffrey Parker, Spain and the Netherlands, 1559–1659, rev. ed. (1990). The effects of war are treated in G.N. Clark, War and Society in the Seventeenth Century (1958, reprinted 1985); André Corvisier, Armies and Societies in Europe, 1494–1789 (1979; originally published in French, 1976); H.W. Koch, The Rise of Modern Warfare, 1618–1815 (1981); John Childs, Armies and Warfare in Europe, 1648–1789 (1982); Christopher Duffy, The Army of Frederick the Great (1974); and Jeremy Black, European Warfare, 1660–1815 (1994), and A Military Revolution? Military Change and European Society, 1550–1800 (1991).