Dr Guy Rowlands
Guy Rowlands
M.A., D.Phil. (Oxon), F.R.Hist.S. - Lecturer
Contact Details
E-mail - gr30@st-andrews.ac.uk
Telephone - +44 (0)1334 462886
Fax - +44 (0)1334 462914
Teaching and Research Interests
Research interests lie principally in late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French history. His first book, The Dynastic State and the Army under Louis XIV. Royal Service and Private Interest, 1661 to 1701, used political, social, cultural and military approaches to examine how Louis XIV and his ministers were able to increase the size of the French army five-fold over a period of 30 years, and it stressed the importance of integrating the multiple private interests of noble families into calculations of how to organise the state. He has recently finished a second major study, on early eighteenth-century financial history, which will be published as The Financial Decline of a Great Power. War, Influence, and Money in Louis XIV's France (Oxford University Press, 2012-13). He has extensive interests in European international and transnational relations between the 1660s and the outbreak of the French Revolution (1789). He also maintains an interest in Jacobitism on the continent between 1688 and 1720. He is now embarked upon two projects: the first, a general study for non-specialists of the Mississippi Bubble in France (for the 2019-20 tercentenary of this crisis), and the second, a comprehensive scholarly treatment of the military enlightenment in eighteenth-century Europe.
Dr Rowlands served as Secretary of the UK-wide Society for the Study of French History in 2005-08, and serves on the editorial board of that Society's journal French History. He is also Director of the Centre for French History and Culture at St Andrews.
During the Academic Year 2007-2008 Dr Rowlands was a visiting scholar at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universitat Freiburg, Germany, as a Research Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
During the Academic Year 2010-11 he was a British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellow, and took up a Visiting Fellowship at the Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin.
Main Publications
- The Dynastic State and the Army under Louis XIV. Royal Service and Private Interest, 1661 to 1701 (Cambridge University Press, 2002) [co-winner of Royal Historical Society’s Gladstone Prize (2003) [Details]
- ‘The Ethos of Blood and Changing Values? Robe, épée and the French Armies, 1661 to 1715’ in Seventeenth-Century French Studies, 19 (1997)
- ‘Louis XIV, Aristocratic Power and the Elite Units of the French Army’ in French History, 13 (1999)
- ‘Louis XIV, Vittorio Amedeo II and French Military Failure in Italy, 1689-1696’ in English Historical Review, 115 (2000)
- ‘Louis XIV et la «stratégie de cabinet». Mythe et réalité’ in Revue historique des armées, 222 (2001)
- ‘An Army in Exile: Louis XIV and the Irish Forces of James II in France, 1691-1698’ in Royal Stuart Paper, 60 (2001)
- ‘The Monopolisation of Military Power in France, 1515-1715’ in (eds) Ronald G. Asch, Wulf Eckart Voß and Martin Wrede, Frieden und Krieg in der Frühen Neuzeit (Munich, 2001)
- ‘La guerre et la cour: l’ascension sociale et politique de la famille Le Tellier, 1661-1701’ in A. Tartié et al,Combattre, Gouverner, Ecrire. Etudes réunies en l'honneur de Jean Chagniot (Paris, 2003)
- ‘The Court and the Political Culture of the French Army under Louis XIV’ in European History 1477-1715. Court, Culture, Power and Diplomacy, 1 (2004)
- ‘The King’s Two Arms: French Amphibious Warfare in the Mediterranean under Louis XIV, 1664 to 1697’ in (eds) M. Fissel and D. Trim, Amphibious Warfare and European Expansion, 1000-1700: War, Commerce and State-Formation (2005)
- 'Les artères de l’armée: la trésorerie de l’Extraordinaire des Guerres pendant le règne de Louis XIV' in (ed.) Marie-Laure Legay, Les modalités de paiement de l’État moderne: adaptation et blocage d’un système comptable (2007)
- ‘France 1709: Le Crunch’ in History Today 59(2) (2009)
- 'Foreign Service in the Age of Absolute Monarchy: Louis XIV and his Forces Étrangères’, in War in History 17 (2010)
- 'Patronage, Absolutism and the Integration of France under Louis XIV. – The Role of the Army’ in (ed.s) Ronald G. Asch, Birgit Emich und Jens-Ivo Engels, Integration, Legitimation, Korruption: Politische Patronage in Früher Neuzeit und Moderne (2011)
- 'Moving Mars: the Logistical Geography of Louis XIV’s France’, in French History 25 (2011)
Dr Rowlands is also editor-in-chief of the St Andrews Studies in French History and Culture series of midigraphs, published by the Centre for French History and Culture.
Administrative Duties
Director, St Andrews Centre for French History and Culture
Course Co-Ordinator for MO1007
Teaching Duties
At undergradate level, participates in the teaching of First Level Modern History courses and offers the following Honours courses:
- The Decline and Fall of the French Old Regime
- French Absolutism: Richelieu to Louis XIV
Also teaches on the M.Litt. in Early Modern History (which he designed and launched), and on the M.Litt. in Reformation Studies.
Research Students
- Jennifer Powell McNutt, Church and Society in Eighteenth-Century Geneva, 1700-1789 (with Bruce Gordon) - completed 2008
- Phil McCluskey, French Military Occupations of Lorraine and Savoie, 1670-1714 - completed 2009
- Daniel Thomas, Family, Ambition and Service: the French Nobility and the Emergence of the Standing Army, c.1598-1635 (with Malcolm Walsby) - completed 2011
- John Condren, France and northern Italy, 1661-1690 - underway
- Caleb Karges, Anglo-Austrian Relations in the Era of the Spanish Succession - underway
Dr Rowlands welcomes enquiries for Masters or doctoral research in any of his areas of teaching and research interest (see above).
