How well-integrated was the sixteenth-century Holy Roman Empire?

The analysis presented in this article uses attendance at imperial diets (1521-1613) to estimate how politically well-integrated the Holy Roman Empire was. In doing so, it tests two conceptualisations of the political geography of the Empire: Moraw’s distinction between zones ‘close to’ and ‘distant from’ the monarch and its application to early modern history, and Schmidt’s distinction between an ‘Empire of the German nation’ and a larger ‘feudal Empire’. The analysis finds that Moraw’s zones retained at most a transient importance. Extending his model to early modern history thus risks misrepresenting political geography. The analysis also finds that geographical distance had a significant influence on the representation of the estates at the diets, with those geographically close to the diets attending increasingly often and those located in the geographical periphery increasingly staying away. Moreover, geographical distance had a consistent, strong, and significant effect on the personal presence of rulers. The Empire thus developed a well-integrated core that had the potential to form a state such as the one conceptualised by Schmidt, while the outlying regions were in increasing danger of dropping away.