Strategy and its Making in Early Modern Europe

To mark the return to St Andrew of Professor Geoffrey Parker for 3 months as a Carnegie Centenary Professor in the School of History, on 29-30 April 2016 a conference was organised by Guy Rowlands on “Strategy and its Making in Early Modern Europe”. This built on the work of several St Andrews staff in this field and on Geoffrey Parker’s renowned work on the grand strategy of the Spanish Habsburgs in the 16th and 17th centuries. Colleagues from around the UK and from North America converged on St Andrews to debate the extent to which strategy was discernible and coherent, and how it was decided upon and pursued in the early modern period, and to generate ideas for future research directions. Topics covered ranged from the Northern Wars through Bourbon France and Spain to the Ottoman empire, British North America and old regime literary influences upon Clausewitz, as well as Geoffrey Parker’s main fields of Habsburg Spain and the revolt of the Netherlands. No outputs arose from the conference, nor were any intended, but it informed work currently underway for a large publishing project on the history of strategy.

 

Conference Programme: