NIU history professor Brian Sandberg has a written a new book that explores warrior values and violence in French noble culture during the early modern era.
Sandberg will deliver a talk on the book – titled “Warrior Pursuits: Noble Culture and Civil Conflict in Early Modern France” (Johns Hopkins University Press) – at 2:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 19, in the Thurgood Marshall Gallery of Swen Parson Hall.
The book offers a cultural history of civil warfare in early 17th-century France, examining how warrior nobles’ practices of violence shaped provincial society and the royal state between 1598 and 1635.
Sandberg’s extensive archival research on noble families in the southern provinces of Guyenne and Languedoc reveals that violence continued to be a way of life for many French nobles, challenging previous scholarship that depicts a progressive “civilizing” of noble culture. He argues that southern French nobles engaged in warrior pursuits — social and cultural practices of violence designed to raise personal military forces and to engage in civil warfare in order to advance various political and religious goals.
More information on the book can be found on the publisher’s Web site.
