Professor David Parrott

My initial area of research lay in seventeenth-century French history, and specifically on the impact that waging war had upon the structures of state and society during the ministry of Cardinal Richelieu (1624-42). These military and political interests drew me into the study of international politics, and I pursued subsequent research projects on the Thirty Years War and the role played by the North Italian states in European power-politics down to 1650, looking at areas such as the "military revolution", at small states, sovereignty and the international community, at the construction of fortifications, and the shaping of military cultures. More recently, the opportunity to give the Lees Knowles lectures in military history at Cambridge encouraged me to think more widely about the problems of mobilizing military resources, and led to my recent publications examining the almost universal decentralization and outsourcing of military force in early modern Europe.

My initial area of research lay in seventeenth-century French history, and specifically on the impact that waging war had upon the structures of state and society during the ministry of Cardinal Richelieu (1624-42). These military and political interests drew me into the study of international politics, and I pursued subsequent research projects on the Thirty Years War and the role played by the North Italian states in European power-politics down to 1650, looking at areas such as the "military revolution", at small states, sovereignty and the international community, at the construction of fortifications, and the shaping of military cultures. More recently, the opportunity to give the Lees Knowles lectures in military history at Cambridge encouraged me to think more widely about the problems of mobilizing military resources, and led to my recent publications examining the almost universal decentralization and outsourcing of military force in early modern Europe.

Between 2013 and 2016 I held a Leverhulme Senior Research Fellowship and used the opportunity that this provided to return to seventeenth-century French history, examining the political, military and cultural context of Cardinal Mazarin's "second ministry", from his return from exile in 1653 to the beginning of the personal rule of Louis XIV in 1661.  This research will fuel a number of publications, but at present I am completing a study of one particular year as decisive moment in political history: 1652 – France’s Catastrophe: the Cardinal, the Prince and the Crisis of the Fronde.