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Conference Report
those features of early modern state-building processes in Germany
which are seen as conforming to a wider European pattern of state
growth. While refraining from any definite pronouncement on the
viability of the latter position, Asch sounded a note of caution. In particular,
he drew attention to the arguably unique nature of the coalescence
of interests which characterized the English case of joint
state-building by the central powers and the local élites.
The latter theme was taken up by Jeremy Black (Exeter), whose
paper implicitly tested the feasibility of John Brewer’s thesis of the
rise of the unified fiscal-military state against more complex models
of composite state-formation. In particular, Black demonstrated the
extent to which British domestic and colonial state-building processes
from 1688 to 1815 were shaped by mutual efforts to achieve and
maintain a balance between the agents involved. Contrasting and
comparing the British case with a wide range of European and non-
European examples of state-formation, Black indicated the problems
facing any attempt to adopt a schematic approach to British developments.
Eckhart Hellmuth’s (Munich) concluding paper took a discussion
of Otto Hintze’s theory of Prussian state formation and the
British response to it as a starting point for a comparison of
Anglo–German interpretations of national growth. John Brewer’s
account of the rise of the British fiscal-military state is shown to have
been inspired by Hintze’s Anglo–Prussian comparison. However,
Brewer’s account of how Britain’s economic and military rise to
world power status was sustained by a highly efficient fiscal and
administrative bureaucracy conclusively refuted Hintze’s thesis of a
‘weak’ British state as compared with its bureaucratic-absolutist
Prussian counterpart. Indicating some possible areas for further
research into the origins and nature of the modern state, Hellmuth
advocated taking a broader, less ‘Weberian’ view of states as ‘landscape(s)’
of long and uneven development. A closer analysis of hidden
time structures might help explain the long-term fate of the ‘pioneers’
and ‘late-comers’ of modern state formation.
The second section of the conference, chaired by Wolfgang J.
Mommsen (Düsseldorf), was devoted to the study of Max Weber. In
the last paper, M. Rainer Lepsius (Heidelberg) speculated on the
potential of a future paradigm of Weber’s value categories, while the
other two presentations looked at Weber’s intellectual role from his
death to his impact on present-day research. This section should be
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