Introduction / Peter H. Wilson and R.J.W. Evans -- Turning points -- The Westphalian Peace: Augsburg Mark II or celebrated armistice? / Lothar Höbelt -- The Holy Roman Empire as model for Saint-Pierre's projet pour rendre la paix perpétuelle en Europe / Peter Schröder -- 'Once we were Trojans!' Contemporary reactions to the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation / Wolfgang Burgdorf -- Habsburg governance -- Inside the empire and for the house of Austria: the Buquoy Family from the Spanish low countries to Bohemia / Olivier Chaline -- The Habsburg Court in Vienna: Kaiserhof or Reichshof? / Jeroen Duindam -- Bohemia and the Empire: acceptance and rejection / Jaroslav Pánek -- Bohemia, Silesia and the Empire: negotiating princely dignity on the eastern periphery / Petr Maťa -- Separation and symbiosis: the Habsburg monarchy and the empire in the seventeenth century / Thomas Winkelbauer -- Cores and peripheries -- State-building within the Empire: the cases of Brandenburg-Prussia and Savoy-Sardinia / Sven Externbrink -- Core and periphery: The Netherlands and the Empire from the late fifteenth to the early seventeenth century / Nicolette Mout -- The imperial system in early modern Northern Italy: a web of dukedoms, fiefs and enclaves along the Po / Blythe Raviola -- Neighbours -- The impact of war: The Holy Roman Empire and Poland-Lithuania, c1600-1806 / Robert Frost -- An 'Old Empire' on the periphery of the Old Empire: The Kingdom of Hungary and the Holy Roman Empire in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries / Géza Pálffy -- The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Electoral Saxony in the early eighteenth century: crisis and co-operation / Adam Perłakowski -- The Northern Periphery: German cultural influences on the Danish-Norwegian Kingdom during the Enlightenment / Thomas Munck -- Imperial culture and identity -- Centres or periphery? Art and architecture in the Empire / Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann -- Where the jewels of the German imperial princes come from? aspects of material cultural in the empire / Kim Siebenhüner -- Portraiture at the Imperial Court in the first half of the 17th Century / Friedrich Polleross -- Epilogue international system and imperial system in the 'short' eighteenth century: two worlds? / Heinz Duchhardt