The volume addresses the local exercise of power by the Habsburgs from a transnational perspective. It specifically focuses on the peripheries of the Habsburg power complex, examining rural and small-town conditions and the officials operating there, but in very different regions of the world. The 14 contributions investigate examples from Austria, Southern Germany, and Switzerland, the Netherlands, the Iberian Peninsula, as well as from Central and South America. The contributions explore from a comparative perspective what was specifically Habsburg about the Habsburg power complex and discuss the relationship between central authorities and their outposts in a pre-modern political system.