Do women have a history? Did women have a renaissance? These were provocative questions when they were raised in the heyday of women's studies in the 1970s. But how relevant does gender remain to premodern history in the twenty-first century? This book considers this question in eight new case studies that span the European continent from 1400 to 1800. An introductory essay examines the category of gender in historiography and specifically within premodern historiography, as well as the issue of source material for historians of the period. The eight individual essays seek to examine gender in relation to emerging fields and theoretical considerations, as well as how premodern history contributes to traditional concepts and theories within women's and gender studies, such as patriarchy.

As a medical, economic, spiritual and demographic crisis, plague affected practically every aspect of an early modern community whether on a local, regional or national scale. Its study therefore affords opportunities for the reassessment of many aspects of the pre-modern world. This book examines the incidence and effects of plague in an early modern Scottish community by analysing civic, medical and social responses to epidemics in the north-east port of Aberdeen, focusing on the period 1500-1650. While Aberdeen's experience of plague was in many ways similar to that of other towns throughout Europe, certain idiosyncrasies in the city make it a particularly interesting case study, which challenges several assumptions about early modern mentalities.

This book, first published in 1974, is a study of the two states which dominated the northern and western regions of Sudan from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century: the Funj kingdom of Sinnar and the Keira sultanate of Dar Fur. Until now the history of these two states has been neglected in comparison with that of the western states of the Sudanic Belt. The authors spent years researching the documentation of the period and the present book is a concise survey of their findings, comprising history, literature, politics, economics, trade and religion.

This book explores perceptions of toleration and self-identity through an analysis of otherness' real experience of Italian travellers, Catholic missionaries and Maltese proto-journalists within Mediterranean border-spaces. Employing a multidisciplinary approach, which integrates the analysis of original and unpublished archival documentation with early modern European travel literature, the book shows how fluid subjects and border groups adapted to new environments, often generating information that made the Ottomans and their system of values real and dignified to an Italian audience. The interdisciplinary combining of historical methodology with the tools of comparative literature, anthropology and folklore studies provides a fresh perspective on concepts of tolerance as experienced in the early modern Mediterranean.

The recent wave of interest in oral history and return to the active subject as a topic in historical practice raises a number of questions about the status and function of scholarly history in our societies. This articles in this volume, originally pubished in 1990, and which originally appeared in History and Anthropology, Volume 2, Part 2, discuss what contributions, meanings and consequences emerge from scholarly history turning to living memory, and what the relationships are between history and memory.

Manila, 1645 reconstructs what the city of Manila was like before the earthquakes of the mid-seventeenth century. The book demonstrates the importance of addressing the history of Southeast Asia as a multi-layered framework, rather than a series of entangled histories. In doing so, Manila is contextualized not merely as a Spanish settlement connected to New Spain via America, but instead within Southeast Asia, situated between the Chinese and the Sulu Seas, and located in the centre of commercial routes used by Armenian, Dutch, and Portuguese traders. This historical and geographical context is crucial to understanding later cultural dialogues. Urban planning, housing and architecture, and social networks in the city are also examined. The book will appeal to students and scholars interested in early modern history, global history and architectural history.

In Part 1 of this book, originally published in 1980, the focus is on certain claims of R. G. Collingwood regarding the nature of historical understanding, of Charles Beard about the possibility of an objective reconstruction of the past, and of J. W. N. Watkins concerning the reducibility of what historians say about social events and processes to what could have been said about relevant human individuals. Part 2 analyses the way certain historians have distinguished between causes and other explanatory conditions in disputing A. J. P. Taylor's account of the origins of the Second World War. Part 3 discusses the attempt of Oswald Spengler in Decline of the West to determine the meaning or significance of the historical process as a whole, in the criticism of which many themes of the earlier chapters recur.

Through a study of horses, the book reveals how an important and growing aristocratic estate was managed, where the aristocrat at the centre of it - William Cavendish - travelled and how he spent his time, and how horses were oneof the means by which he asserted his social status. This book, by a leading authority on early modern social and cultural history, examines in detail how an important English aristocrat managed his horses. At the same time, it discusses how horses and the uses to which they were put were a very significant social statement and a forceful assertion of status and the right to political power. Based on detailed original research in the archives of Chatsworth House, the book explores the breeding and rearing, the buying and selling, and the care and maintenance of horses, showing how these activities fitted in to the overall management of the earl's large estates. It outlines the uses of horses as the earl and his retinue travelled to and from family, the county assizes and quarter sessions, social visits and London for "the season" and to attend Court and Parliament. It also considers the use of horses in sport: hawking, hunting, racing and the other ways in which visitors were entertained. Overall, the book provides a great deal of detail on the management of horses in the period and also on the yearly cycle of activities of a typical aristocrat engaged in service, pleasure and power. PETER EDWARDS is an Emeritus Professor of Early Modern British Social History at the University of Roehampton. He has published numerous books including The Horse Trade of Tudor and Stuart England and Horse and Man in Early Modern England.

The first important scholarly consideration of Enlightenment historiography of the twentieth century, this book, originally published in 1926, critically examines the ideas of Voltaire, Hume, Robertston and Gibbon with respect to the theory and practice of historiography. The substantial introduction outlines the main differences between the ideals of these literary-philosophical schools and those which prevailed among historians in the early 20th century. The author argues that history can never be devoid of philosphical and literary interest, and that if it concerns itself merely with the stablishment of fact, will be a discipline of "contracting horizons".

Reflecting on the Battle of Montgomery, Sir Thomas Myddelton - who had jointly commanded the victorious Parliamentarian Army - later described it as: 'as great a victory as hath been gained in any part of the kingdom'. Fought on 18 September 1644 in mid-Wales, Montgomery was the largest engagement in the Principality during the First English Civil War of 1642 to 1646. In terms of numbers engaged, in its outcome and impact, it was also a particularly significant regional battle of the war. Notwithstanding its importance, historians have largely overlooked Montgomery. Consequently, it is rarely mentioned in studies of the mid-17th century British Civil Wars. Moreover, where attention has been accorded to the battle and the preceding campaign, both have often been sketched over or misinterpreted. To fully explain the course and context of events, The Battle of Montgomery, 1644: The English Civil War in the Welsh Borderlands therefore presents the most detailed reconstruction and interpretation of this important battle published to date. An addition to Helion & Company's 'Century of the Soldier' series, comprising titles breaking new ground in exploring 17th-century military history, The Battle of Montgomery, 1644 similarly adopts a fresh approach. Making extensive use of contemporary sources - many of which are referenced here for the first time - the campaign, the armies and their commanders are fully considered before the battle is investigated; here, because the site has not been certainly located, the author uses fieldwork and archival information to propose the most likely battlefield before examining the course of the engagement in the context of contemporary tactics and weaponry. While the battle is the main subject, The Battle of Montgomery, 1644 also considers the wider war in Northerly Wales and the North-West and West Midlands of England - a region that remains underrepresented in Civil War historiography. Extensively illustrated, including specially commissioned artwork, The Battle of Montgomery, 1644 will be welcomed by readers interested in the history of the British Civil Wars; by living history enthusiasts of the period; by wargamers and model makers; and by those curious about the history of Wales and the English borderlands.

First published in 1854, this comprehensive work charts over three volumes the history of poor relief in England from the Saxon period through to the establishment of the Poor Law Amendment Act in 1834 and its reception. This edition, updated in 1898, also includes a biography of the author, Sir George Nicholls. Volume I examines poor relief from the Saxon period to the reign of Queen Anne. This set of books will be of interest to those studying the history of the British welfare state and social policy.

The sixteenth century was a critical period both for Spain's formation and for the imperial dominance of her Crown. Spanish monarchs ruled far and wide, spreading agents and culture across Europe and the wider world. Yet in Italy they encountered another culture whose achievements were even prouder and whose aspirations often even grander than their own. Italians, the nominally subaltern group, did not readily accept Spanish dominance and exercised considerable agency over how imperial Spanish identity developed within their borders. In the end Italians' views sometimes even shaped how their Spanish colonizers eventually came to see themselves. The essays collected here evaluate the broad range of contexts in which Spaniards were present in early modern Italy. They consider diplomacy, sanctity, art, politics and even popular verse. Each essay excavates how Italians who came into contact with the Spanish crown's power perceived and interacted with the wider range of identities brought amongst them by its servants and subjects. Together they demonstrate what influenced and what determined Italians' responses to Spain; they show Spanish Italy in its full transcultural glory and how its inhabitants projected its culture - throughout the sixteenth century and beyond.

In 1482, Abu Abdallah Muhammad XI became the twenty-third Muslim King of Granada. He would be the last. This is the first history of the ruler, known as Boabdil, whose disastrous reign and bitter defeat brought seven centuries of Moorish Spain to an end. It is an action-packed story of intrigue, treachery, cruelty, cunning, courtliness, bravery and tragedy.

Basing her vivid account on original documents and sources, Elizabeth Drayson traces the origins and development of Islamic Spain. She describes the thirteenth-century founding of the Nasrid dynasty, the cultured and stable society it created, and the feuding which threatened it and had all but destroyed it by 1482, when Boabdil seized the throne. The new Sultan faced betrayals by his family, factions in the Alhambra palace, and ever more powerful onslaughts from the forces of Ferdinand and Isabella, monarchs of the newly united kingdoms of Castile and Aragon.

By stratagem, diplomacy, courage and strength of will Boabdil prolonged his reign for ten years, but he never had much chance of survival. In 1492 Ferdinand and Isabella, magnificently attired in Moorish costume, entered Granada and took possession of the city. Boabdil went into exile. The Christian reconquest of Spain, that has reverberated so powerfully down the centuries, was complete.

Exploring reason of state in a global monarchy, The Power of Necessity examines how thinkers and agents in the Spanish monarchy navigated the tension between political pragmatism and moral-religious principle. This tension lies at the very heart of Counter-Reformation reason of state. Nowhere was the need for pragmatic state management greater than in the overstretched Spanish Empire of the seventeenth century. However, pragmatic politics were problematic for a Catholic monarchy steeped in ideals of justice and divine justifications of power and kingship. Presenting a broad cast of characters from across Europe, and uniting published sources with a wide range of archival material, Lisa Kattenberg shows how non-canonical thinkers and agents confronted the political-moral dilemmas of their age by creatively employing the legitimizing power of necessity. Pioneering new ways of bridging the persistent gap between theory and practice in the history of political thought, The Power of Necessity casts fresh light on the struggle to preserve the monarchy in a modernizing world.

This book presents extensive new research findings on and new thinking about Southeast Asia in this interesting, richly diverse, but much understudied period. It examines the wide and well-developed trading networks, explores the different kinds of regimes and the nature of power and security, considers urban growth, international relations and the beginnings of European involvement with the region, and discusses religious factors, in particular the spread and impact of Christianity. One key theme of the book is the consideration of how well-developed Southeast Asia was before the onset of European involvement, and, how, during the peak of the commercial boom in the 1500s and 1600s, many polities in Southeast Asia were not far behind Europe in terms of socio-economic progress and attainments.

This book investigates a puzzling and neglected phenomenon - the rise of English Arminianism during the decade of puritan rule. Throughout the 1650s, numerous publications, from scholarly folios to popular pamphlets, attacked the doctrinal commitments of Reformed Orthodoxy. This anti-Calvinist onslaught came from different directions: episcopalian royalists (Henry Hammond, Herbert Thorndike, Peter Heylyn), radical puritan defenders of the regicide (John Goodwin and John Milton), and sectarian Quakers and General Baptists. Unprecedented rejection of Calvinist soteriology was often coupled with increased engagement with Catholic, Lutheran and Remonstrant alternatives. As a result, sophisticated Arminian publications emerged on a scale that far exceeded the Laudian era. Cromwellian England therefore witnessed an episode of religious debate that significantly altered the doctrinal consensus of the Church of England for the remainder of the seventeenth century. The book will appeal to historians interested in the contested nature of 'Anglicanism' and theologians interested in Protestant debates regarding sovereignty and free will. Part One is a work of religious history, which charts the rise of English Arminianism across different ecclesial camps - episcopal, puritan and sectarian. These chapters not only introduce the main protagonists but also highlight a surprising range of distinctly English Arminian formulations. Part Two is a work of historical theology, which traces the detailed doctrinal formulations of two prominent divines - the puritan John Goodwin and the episcopalian Henry Hammond. Their Arminian theologies are set in the context of the Western theological tradition and the soteriological debates, that followed the Synod of Dort. The book therefore integrates historical and theological enquiry to offer a new perspective on the crisis of 'Calvinism' in post-Reformation England.

"A Mattress Maker's Daughter "richly illuminates the narrative of two people whose mutual affection shaped their own lives and in some ways their times. According to the Renaissance legend told and retold across the centuries, a woman of questionable reputation bamboozles a middle-aged warrior-prince into marrying her, and the family takes revenge. He is Don Giovanni de' Medici, son of the Florentine grand duke; she is Livia Vernazza, daughter of a Genoese artisan. They live in luxury for a while, far from Florence, and have a child. Then, Giovanni dies, the family pounces upon the inheritance, and Livia is forced to return from riches to rags. Documents, including long-lost love letters, reveal another story behind the legend, suppressed by the family and forgotten. Brendan Dooley investigates this largely untold story among the various settings where episodes occurred, including Florence, Genoa, and Venice.

In the course of explaining their improbable liaison and its consequences, "A Mattress Maker's Daughter "explores early modern emotions, material culture, heredity, absolutism, and religious tensions at the crux of one of the great transformations in European culture, society, and statecraft. Giovanni and Livia exemplify changing concepts of love and romance, new standards of public and private conduct, and emerging attitudes toward property and legitimacy just as the age of Renaissance humanism gave way to the culture of Counter-Reformation and early modern Europe.

This book explores the cultural exchange between Italy and Spain in the seventeenth century, examining Spanish collectors' predilection for Italian painting and its influence on Spanish painters. Focused on collecting and using a novel methodology, this volume studies how the painters of the Sevillian school, including Francisco Pacheco, Diego Velazquez, Alonso Cano and Bartolome Esteban Murillo, perceived and were influenced by Italian painting. Through many examples, it is shown how the presence in Andalusia of various works and copies of works by artists such as Michelangelo, Caravaggio and Guido Reni inspired famous compositions by these Spanish artists. In addition, the book delves into the historical, political and social context of this period. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, Renaissance studies, and Italian and Spanish history.

Sir Walter Ralegh's account of his 1595 expedition to the Orinoco in search of the fabled empire of El Dorado was an immediate publishing success and is one of the most important pieces of Elizabethan travel literature. This edition presents, on facing pages, the annotated texts of a previously unpublished copy of Ralegh's fair manuscript draft of The Discoverie of the Large, Rich, and Bewtifvl Empyre of Gviana and the subsequent printed versions, and demonstrates very clearly how Sir Robert Cecil and Ralegh's few other serious backers induced the reluctant author to alter his manuscript for publication. Lively tales of Amazon women, drinking bouts and swash-buckling adventures, which would have fascinated armchair travellers, were firmly deleted. The focus of his appeal to investors was shifted from an ephemeral golden empire to actual gold mines to which, as his manuscript shows, he had originally paid little attention and for which he had very little evidence. In effect Ralegh was forced to develop a strategy to mediate between what he believed to exist and what he actually found, between his dreams of what he might accomplish and the real obstacles which faced him in the field, between his creative, imaginative response to his recent journey and the need to present it in such a way as to encourage others to undertake another such journey with him. The materials collected in the appendices indicate that while men like John Ley were immediately inspired to explore Guiana, bringing back fabulous tales of monstrous peoples, Ralegh lost interest until he saw a chance to free himself from imprisonment in the Tower by inventing stories of Orinoco gold mines which he had never mentioned in either the draft or the published version of The Discoverie.

The Purchas Handbook follows the model of the Society's earlier Hakluyt Handbook in providing a reference guide to the works of the Reverend Samuel Purchas (1577-1626) and a critical evaluation of his achievements as collector, editor, and author of travel literature. The Handbook attempts to evaluate his significance for present-day students of history, geography, anthropology, theology, literature, linguistics, bibliography and natural history. While the emphasis is on Purchas's major work, Purchas His Pilgrimes (1625), his earlier works are also considered. Volume I, part one is a narrative essay on the use of Purchas's works by authors from the 17th century to the present day. Part two includes perspectives on his editing methods, the maps in Pilgrimes and Purchas's attitudes toward the indigenous peoples of Africa, Asia and America. Part three begins with an essay on Purchas as theological geographer, and continues with ten chapters which narrate and critique his use of contemporary accounts and materials concerning Africa, Asia, the Arctic and the Americas. The first volume concludes with part four, a chronology of Purchas's life and of his academic, religious and publishing careers. Volume II includes a close examination of the contents and sources of Pilgrimes; a primary bibliography of his works, including an essay on the printing history of Pilgrimes and censuses of the holdings of his works in libraries throughout the world; and an annotated secondary bibliography of the use of his works by later authors. The volume concludes with an index of books and articles cited throughout the two volumes and a general index of persons, places, and major subjects. The Purchas Handbook has been some years in the making, and has involved nineteen contributors from three continents - eight from Britain, nine from the United States, and two from Australia. It is hoped that these volumes , like those of The Hakluyt Handbook, will be of value both to members of the So

Since the days of Adam Smith, Mercantilism has been a hotly debated issue. Condemned at the end of the 18th century as a "false" system of economic thinking and political practice, it has returned paradoxically to the forefront in regard to issues such as the creation of economic growth in developing countries. This concept is often used in order to depict economic thinking and economic policy in early modern Europe; its meaning and content has been highly debated for over two hundred years. Following on from his 1994 volume Mercantilism - The Shaping of an Economic Language, this new book from Lars Magnusson presents a more synthetic interpretation of Mercantilism not only as a theoretical system, but also as a system of political economy. This book incorporates samples of material from the 1994 publication alongside new material, ordered in a new set of chapters and up-date discussions on mercantilism up to the present day. Tracing the development of a particular political economy of Mercantilism in a period of nascent state making in Western and Continental Europe from the 16th to the 18th century, the book describes how European rulers regarded foreign trade and industrialisation as a means to achieve power and influence amidst international competition over trades and markets. Returning to debates concerning whether Mercantilism was a system of power or of wealth, Magnusson argues that it is in fact was both, and that contemporaries almost without exception saw these goals as interconnected. He also emphasises that Mercantilism was an all-European issue in a time of trade wars and the struggle for international power and recognition. In examining these issues, this book offers an unrivalled modern synthesis of Mercantilist ideas and practices.

A study of the performance of queenship by two Tudor monarchs, showing the strategies they used to assert their power. Catherine of Aragon (r.1509-33) and her sister-in-law Margaret Tudor (r.1503-13) presided as queens over the glittering sixteenth-century courts of England and Scotland, alongside their husbands Henry VIII of England and James IVof Scotland. Although we know a great deal about these two formidable sixteenth-century kings, we understand very little about how their two queens contributed to their reigns. How did these young, foreign women become effective and trusted consorts, and powerful political figures in their own right? This book argues that Catherine and Margaret's performance of queenship combined medieval queenly virtues with the new opportunities for influence and power offered by Renaissance court culture. Royal rituals such as childbirth and the Royal Maundy, courtly spectacles such as tournaments, banquets and diplomatic summits, or practices such as arranged marriages and gift-giving, were all moments when Catherine and Margaret could assert their honour, status and identity as queens. Their husbands' support for their activities at court helped bring them the influence and patronage necessary to pursue their ownpolitical goals and obtain favour and rewards for their servants and followers. Situating Catherine and Margaret's careers within the history of the royal courts of England and Scotland and amongst their queenly peers, this book reveals these two queens as intimately connected agents of political influence and dynastic power.

In early modern times, warfare in Europe took on many diverse and overlapping forms. Our modern notions of 'regular' and 'irregular' warfare, of 'major war' and 'small war', have their roots in much greater diversity than such binary notions allow for. While insurgencies go back to time immemorial, they have become conceptually fused with 'small wars'. This is a term first used to denote special operations, often carried out by military companies formed from special ethnic groups and then recruited into larger armies. In its Spanish form, guerrilla, the term 'small war' came to stand for an ideologically-motivated insurgency against the state authorities or occupying forces of another power. There is much overlap between the phenomena of irregular warfare in the sense of special operations alongside regular operations, and irregular warfare of insurgents against the regular forces of a state. This book demonstrates how long the two phenomena were in flux and fed on each other, from the raiding operations of the 16th century to the 'small wars' or special operations conducted by special units in the 19th century, which existed alongside and could merge with a popular insurgency. This book is based on a special issue of the journal Small Wars & Insurgencies.

Originally published in 1991, Gulliver and the Gentle Reader critically examines the writing of Jonathan Swift. The book is predominately concerned with what Rawson coins 'the "unofficial" energies' which work below the surface of Swift's conscious themes. Alongside this discussion, Rawson provides detailed studies on historical, cultural and psychological relationships, and the connections that exist between these areas and more extreme writers of the later period such as Breton, Mailer, and Yeats, as well as the connections with the writers such as his contemporary Pope, and those that followed such as Johnson, and Sterne. This book will be of interest to students of literature, as well as those researching in the area of literature.