A modern állam középkori és kora újkori gyökerei

Abstract

The formation and characteristics of the modern territorial state (Westphalian state, nation-state) have been researched extensively and deeply in historiography and social sciences. The rise of globalization and the decline of the Westphalian state shed new light on the problem of the European state-building process. In recent decades, there has been an increasing emphasis on the medieval origins of the modern state, which has made our knowledge on the European state development more refined. The present study seeks to produce results building on historical research and relevant even to political science, when it integrates the process of the modern state’s formation from medieval antecedents to the emergence of the modern nation-state. Five crucial issues are presented, which are distinct stages of the European state development: 1.) At the turn of the 12th-13th centuries medieval Western European “borders” have emerged, which still influences contemporary national borders. 2.) The results of state-building in Western Europe in the 12th-14th centuries are characteristic examples that medieval state initiatives were successful mainly in the financial and judicial fields, but not so much in the military and administrative fields. 3.) The birth of the European state system with the balance of power at the turn of the 15th-16th centuries can be considered as a turning point, because it has installed the dynamics of state-building into an international context. 4.) Military strength („military revolution”) proved to be a decisive factor for the early modern absolutist states, which explains the radical increase of the power techniques and political areas. 5.) The birth of the idea of a sovereign secular state in the 14th-17th centuries have given rise to a radical concept of power that has allowed for an unprecedented degree of control over the subjects. The expanding means of power of the early modern state prepared the formation of the modern nation-state in many aspects. The outlined model of state-building can only be interpreted in a European context, where instead of the „imperial pattern” a polycentric system of states emerged, which is responsible for the exceptional dynamics of European development.