On President-elect Trump’s glaring conflicts of interest….

“During his first administration, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s global business empire created an unprecedented number of conflicts of interest for a sitting president. Ethics experts worried that opportunists could try to curry favor by booking stays at Mr. Trump’s network of hotels, golf clubs and other properties,” according to The New York Times.

“Their predictions bore out: Foreign governments and lobbyists spent lavishly at his Washington hotel, which has since been sold, as well as at his Mar-a-Lago resort and other properties. The federal government itself also became an awkward customer by renting millions of dollars’ worth of rooms at his hotels and clubs.”

“Those concerns now seem almost quaint in light of some of Mr. Trump’s more recent business ventures. They include a publicly traded company, a cryptocurrency venture, new overseas real estate deals involving state-affiliated entities and numerous branding and licensing deals.”

Historians of early modern royalty, nobility, and state development will recognize many of the patterns of favor, corruption, patronage, and political influence described here. Here are a few key studies dealing with early modern political patronage and court culture:

Elias, Norbert. The Court Society. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1983.

Mulryne, J. R., and Elizabeth Goldring. Court Festivals of the European Renaissance: Art, Politics, and Performance. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002.

Fenlon, Iain. The Ceremonial City: History, Memory and Myth in Renaissance Venice. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007.

Cochrane, Eric. Florence in the Forgotten Centuries, 1527-1800. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1973.

Zorach, Rebecca. Blood, Milk, Ink, Gold: Abundance and Excess in the French Renaissance.  Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005.

Van Orden, Kate. Music, Discipline and Arms in Early Modern France. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005.

Watanabe-O’Kelly, Helen. Court Culture in Dresden: From Renaissance to Baroque. Houndmills: Palgrave, 2002.

Frieder, Braden K. Chivalry ad the Perfect Prince: Tournaments, Art, and Armor at the Spanish Habsburg Court. Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2008.

Strong, Roy. The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabeth Portraiture and Pageantry. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1977.

Peck, Linda Levy. Court Patronage and Corruption in Early Stuart England.  New York, NY: Routledge, 1990.

Duindam, Jeroen. Vienna and Versailles: The Courts of Europe’s Dynastic Rivals, 1550-1780. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Mukerji, Chandra. Territorial Ambitions and the Gardens of Versailles.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. Courtly Encounters: Translating Courtliness and Violence in Early Modern Eurasia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012.

Additional studies of court culture, political patronage, and state development in early modern France by Kristen Neuschel, Sharon Kettering, James B. Collins, Jonathan Dewald, and other historians are also relevant.

The New York Times reports on President-elect Trump’s conflicts of interest.