Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 42

[cahn]

Last post, we had (among other things) Danish kings and their favorites; Louis XIV and Philippe d'Orléans; reviews of a very shippy book about Katte, a bad Jacobite novel, and a great book about clothing; a fic about Émilie du Châtelet and Voltaire; and a review of a set of entertaining Youtube history videos about Frederick the Great.

Comments

Re: Swedish politics

[mildred_of_midgard]

and of course I can no longer remember either the source or the scholar who cited it. *frowny face* )

Found it! I finally remembered how I could do a full-text search of everything I'd read in the last year. Before I forget again, the source is Polen zwischen Preussen und Russland: Souveränitätskrise und Reformpolitik 1736-1752, by Michael Müller, and the thing I was reading that cited it was Rene Hanke's essay "Diplomatie gegen Preußen: Sachsen-Polens Außenpolitik 1740-1748" in the collection of essays Das Reich und seine Territorialstaaten im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert, edited by Harm Klueting. The passage:

Nevertheless, matters were not at all as the widespread view would have it, according to which the "liberum veto" of a single representative was available at any time as an arbitrary means of dissolving the Reichstag without resolutions. Michael G. Muller's research has shown that the matter was by no means this simple.

Since I've encountered the widespread view a number of times, this surprised me and I made a mental note to check it out at some point.