Guy Rowlands

Who is Guy Rowlands?

Guy Rowlands is a British academic and historian specialising in the history of France. In 2002 he was the winner of the Gladstone Book Prize awarded annually by the Royal Historical Society. He serves as Secretary for the Society for the Study of French History and is Director of the Centre for French History and Culture at St Andrews University.

His research has mainly concerned seventeenth- and eighteenth- century France, especially France’s mobilisation for war between 1661 and 1783. He is best known for the book The Dynastic State and the Army under Louis XIV. Royal Service and Private Interest, 1661 to 1701 which analysed the growth of the army under Louis XIV and stressed the role of noble families in the organisation of the state.