Recent concerns about cultural identity underline the ongoing political and social importance of the question of how, and with whom, people identify. Changing and conflicting identities were highly relevant for premodern Europe. Paradoxically, the more powerful states became, the more their rulers tended to depend on good relations with their social elites. Since such elites often identified themselves primarily with local communities, regions or other group interests, the creation of (proto)national loyalties was problematic. Well-advised rulers, therefore,  expended considerable energy on creating loyalty through patronage networks increasingly based on  their courts. New forms were added to traditional media for delivering political messages, such as pageants and spectacles. The wide circulation of pamphlets and newspapers gradually changed the nature of political communication, creating new forms of religious and political engagement.

In the centuries between 1000 and 1800, state borders certainly were not the primary focus of collective identification. On the one hand, regions within composite states continued to compete with one another, whereas, on the other hand, transnational networks often proved to be surprisingly resistant to political division. Even while their rulers were at war, trade networks continued to tie together Spanish, Flemish, and Dutch economic and financial interests. From the fifteenth-century onwards the world of Europeans expanded to include the Americas, African and Asian coastal areas. However, at the same time the Mediterranean continued to serve as a conduit for commercial, political and cultural exchanges between Muslim North-Africa and West Asia with Europe.

Cultural networks transcended national borders. Until 1520, Europe shared one dominant religion. Soon, the schism in the Roman Chuch would  create transnational interest groups and streams of refugees while  it also reinforced new confessional alliances in international politics. Süleyman the Law-abiding watched the rise of Lutheranism with interest;  Francis I of France actively sought his alliance, an initiative soon followed by the English and the Dutch. Throughout this period, a recognizably European intellectual culture prevailed, which played an essential role in the fast transfer of knowledge, religious and political ideas.

In this world of constantly changing borders, strong local political traditions, profitable transnational trade, and dense networks of international relations, ‘identity’ was never monolithic. The  changing relationship between local identities and the centres of royal or imperial power was a key issue everywhere in Europe, from relatively unitary states such as France and England to the composite monarchies ruled by the Habsburgs. It forms an overarching theme in the historical research of the medievalists and early modernists at Leiden University. Currently our research focuses on three dimensions of collective identity. The first touches on relations between subjects and rulers. Research projects study the interdependence between local administrations and supralocal/regional elite formation; the tensions caused by attempts at political and administrative centralization; and the intercultural comparison of dynastic empires that rose in Europe, West South-Asia, and East-Asia. The second dimension concerns the operation of trade networks, that increasingly were subjected to the realities and requirements of international politics. Cultural identities and cultural transfers are the third dimension. Here, a major focus is on the way in which Europeans engaged with the past, through historical writing, but also through other cultural practices. A major research project on memory and identity formation examines the lasting social, political and cultural impact of civil war on early modern identities.