<P> The term was coined by English Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm in his pair of 1954 articles entitled `` The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century '' published in Past and Present , and cemented by his contemporary , Hugh Trevor - Roper , in a 1959 article entitled `` The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century '' published in the same journal . Hobsbawm discussed an economic crisis in Europe ; Trevor - Roper saw a wider crisis , `` a crisis in the relations between society and the State '' . Trevor - Roper argued that the middle years of the 17th century in Western Europe saw a widespread break - down in politics , economics and society caused by a complex series of demographic , religious , economic and political problems . In this `` general crisis '' , various events such as the English Civil War , the Fronde in France , the climax of the Thirty Years ' War in the Holy Roman Empire and revolts against the Spanish Crown in Portugal , Naples and Catalonia were all manifestations of the same problem . The most important cause of the `` general crisis '' , in Trevor - Roper 's opinion , was the conflict between `` Court '' and `` Country '' ; that is between the increasingly powerful centralizing , bureaucratic , sovereign princely states represented by the court , and the traditional , regional , land - based aristocracy and gentry representing the country . In addition , the intellectual and religious changes introduced by the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation were important secondary causes of the `` general crisis '' . The `` general crisis '' thesis generated much controversy between those , such as the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm , who believed in the `` general crisis '' thesis but saw the problems of 17th - century Europe as being more social and economic in origin than Trevor - Roper would allow , and those who simply denied there was any `` general crisis '' . Current historians interested in the General Crisis include Geoffrey Parker , who has authored a book on the subject . </P>
the crisis of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in england included
relations between society and the State