In this detailed study, Henry Heller challenges the dominant approach to the history of early modern France, that of the Annales school, with its emphasis on long-term economic and cultural forces. He reexamines the history of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in France, and finds a surprising degree of economic, technological and scientific innovation. At the same time, he contests the view that the religious conflicts of the period ought only to be understood in strictly religious terms.