Les Origines Medievales de l'Etat Moderne (Critique de La Politique)

by Joseph R. Strayer, Jean-Philippe Genet (Preface), Michele Clement (Translation)

Medieviste de renom, Joseph R. Strayer n'a jamais cesse d'interroger la nature et le fonctionnement des grandes monarchies feodales en Europe occidentale. C'est a l'apogee de cette recherche ou l'erudition du specialiste s'est affrontee aux problemes de la theorie politique que J. R. Strayer a livre, dans Les Origines medievales de l'Etat moderne, le sens de ses travaux. Le propos de l'auteur se developpe dans trois A partir d'une opposition contrastee avec la Cite-Etat, d'une part, et l'Empire, de l'autre, comprendre ce qu'est l'Etat moderne et tenter de repondre a la question de sa naissance, que Strayer fait remonter au XIIe siecle. C'est au sein meme de la feodalite qu'est nee en France et en Angleterre cette forme politique specifique destinee a devenir un modele presque universel. Presenter l'hypothese nouvelle que les premieres institutions permanentes concernaient les affaires interieures et non les affaires exterieures. Justice et finance sont les lieux d'institutionnalisation de l'Etat et de constitution de la bureaucratie. Faire apparaitre combien le processus d'edification de l'Etat moderne prend son origine dans la destruction des appartenances familiales, locales et religieuses pour laisser surgir un nouveau loyalisme a l'egard de l'Etat. Si l'auteur tend a repondre de facon affirmative a la l'Etat est-il l'horizon politique indepassable de notre temps ?, il n'en rappelle pas moins que decrire un phenomene n'est pas signe qu'on l'approuve.

100 pages, Paperback

Published October 5, 2018

About the author

Joseph Reese Strayer taught at Princeton University for many decades, starting in the 1930s. He was chair of the history department (1941–1961) and president of the American Historical Association in 1971. Strayer has been credited with training a large percentage of the American medievalists profession; many of his students are still teaching and active. Notable students include Teofilo Ruiz, William Chester Jordan, and Richard W. Kaeuper. Norman F. Cantor often highlighted his status as a student of Strayer's, but several of Strayer's other pupils - who wish to remain anonymous for personal and professional reasons - have expressed their doubt that Strayer ever acknowledged Cantor as his student or that Cantor had any formal affiliation with him at all.

When not teaching medieval history at Princeton, Strayer was involved with the CIA, as a member of the CIA's Office of National Estimates. The extent of his involvement, at a time when the C.I.A was running covert operations to destabilize governments around the world (Iran, Brazil, Congo, Dominican Republic, Guyana and Chile), has never been fully assessed or verified.

Norman Cantor recognized three books as most important to Strayer's legacy: Feudalism (1965), which summarized three decades of his research and thinking on the topic; On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State (1970), in which he shows the relevance of medieval historical institutions to modern governmental institutions; and The Reign of Philip the Fair (1980), representing over 30 years of archival research and the most comprehensive work on the topic in any language - other than Jean Favier's Philippe le Bel (1978). Strayer was editor of the Dictionary of the Middle Ages, the largest and most comprehensive encyclopedia of the Middle Ages in the English language.