{"product_id":"milan-undone-contested-sovereignties-in-the-italian-wars-28-i-tatti-studies-in-italian-renaissance-history-9780674248724","title":"Milan Undone Contested Sovereignties in the","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1499, Milan was an independent state with a stable government. But over the next thirty years, it descended into chaos amid the Italian Wars. John Gagné details Milan’s social and political breakdown. The Renaissance may have been the cradle of the modern nation-state, but it was also a time when sophisticated sovereigns collapsed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA compelling, important, and masterly executed scholarly work on a tumultuous period in the history of a central Italian and European polity during the first phase of the Italian Wars…Gagné’s \u003ci\u003eMilan Undone\u003c\/i\u003e is certainly an admirable scholarly addition to this still modest corpus of studies. -- Idan Sherer * Journal of Modern History *\u003cbr\u003eA magisterial story that combines a rigorous theoretical underpinning with the voices of those who lived through these challenging times. The book is compellingly written in wonderful prose. It is impossible to remain unmoved by the accounts of sordid power struggles and the economic hardships suffered by the beleaguered civilian population…\u003ci\u003eMilan Undone\u003c\/i\u003e is a formidable achievement by a scholar who has already made his mark in the field of Italian Renaissance studies. This new book will amplify his standing as a major expert on sixteenth-century Milan and on the early modern state more generally. -- Carolyn James * Annali d’Italianistica *\u003cbr\u003eOne might think that the study of state formation would offer nothing new, but Gagné brings something fresh to the perspective by homing in on [the] collapses and what he terms as the ‘surfeit of sovereignty’ in the first three decades of the sixteenth century…Using an impressive collection of sources, \u003ci\u003eMilan Undone\u003c\/i\u003e presents a tangled thread of a half-finished, unrealized state. -- Amanda Madden * Renaissance and Reformation *\u003cbr\u003eGagné has written a wonderful book: a cultural history of war or a political history in the round, it is pithy, witty, and extremely well researched, managing to be engaging, lively, and relentlessly downbeat all at the same time. Milan at the time of the French invasion and occupation and the Italian wars is ultimately consolidated (legally), but is ‘utterly undone’ through warfare and through the weakness, rapaciousness, forgetfulness, and ineptitude of public actors. -- Oren Margolis, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Politics of Culture in Quattrocento Europe\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEvery now and then there comes along a contribution that transforms an entire field of research, opening up long vistas and making us see everything in a new light. \u003ci\u003eMilan Undone\u003c\/i\u003e is destined to become a landmark book of this kind. Gagné convincingly argues that the instability that accompanied the Italian Wars led to a state of ‘flickering sovereignty’ in Milan, where the key underpinnings of society, including the notion of political authority itself, were thrown into confusion. -- Gary Ianziti, author of \u003ci\u003eWriting History in Renaissance Italy\u003c\/i\u003e","brand":"Harvard University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49403569537367,"sku":"9780674248724","price":38.21,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780674248724.jpg?v=1730483859","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/milan-undone-contested-sovereignties-in-the-italian-wars-28-i-tatti-studies-in-italian-renaissance-history-9780674248724","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}