Anatomy of a Divergence

Chapter 8 argues that the final years of the sixteenth century and the first decade of the seventeenth century brought about one of the great misunderstandings of the early modern period: the reading of Kōṭṭe’s suzerainty-based imperial project, by the Habsburg authorities, as a project of sovereignty-oriented conquest. The resulting wars that dragged on during the following decades resulted largely from this widening gap in political culture. Key to an understanding of this gap is the emerging European notion of territory as a fundament of the dynastic state. To illustrate this, two maps are explored with a view to the underlying conceptions of political space. The shift from ‘Native Ground’ to colonial ground had a major impact both on the local political system and the global empire.