As the first book-length study of waterborne festivities in Renaissance and early modern Europe, this collection of essays draws on a rich array of sources, many previously un-researched, to explore aspects of scenography, choreography, music, fashion, painting, sculpture, architecture, stage-and personnel-management and urban planning as evinced in spectacles staged on water. Bodies of water in all their variety are explored here: seas, rivers, fountains, lakes and canals and flooded improvised locations within or adjacent to great buildings all provided stages for elaborate and costly performances, utilising the particular qualities of water to reflect light and distort sound. The volume encompasses festivals marking a wide range of occasions from the election of civic officials, the welcome of a monarch, an investiture or coronation, to ambassadorial visits or the arrival of a royal or ducal bride or bridegroom. Often taking the form of re-enactments of naval battles or legendary seaborne quests, these festivals seek to buttress civic and national pride, make claims to mastery over the sea and landscape, and explore the imaginative as well as practical life of performance space which has been a hallmark of the research and publication of this volume's honorand, J.R. (Ronnie) Mulryne.

Charles V was elected Holy Roman Emperor and, until his death in 1558, he was to play a central role on the European political stage. The book is a clear introduction to the often confusing train of events in the first half of the sixteenth century. It looks at Charles's response to the Protestant Reformation in Germany; his efforts to retain the Netherlands under Habsburg control; his struggle with France for domination over Italy; and his attempts to check the expansion of Ottoman power in the Mediterranean.

A comparative survey of the emergence and development of Parliaments in Catholic Christendom from the thirteenth century, the chief focus of this work is the period between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries,when Europe was dramatically changed by the Renaissance, the Reformation and the growth of composite monarchies which brought together diverse territories under their rule. European Parliaments experienced a variety of challenges, fortunes and fates: some survived, even flourished, but others succumbed to powerful monarchies. By investigating the powers and privileges and responsibilities of these institutions, Graves illuminates the whole business of government - the nature of executive power, the relations of ruler and ruled, the restraints of consent, and the realities of the tension between central authority and local custom.

A history of the Papacy covering the vital period from the Renaissance through the Counter Reformation to the period of the French Revolution. Its a broad survey analysing the influence of Papal power not only across Europe but the wider world also.

Political decisions are never taken in a vacuum but are shaped both by current events and historical context. In other words, long-term developments and patterns in which the accumulated memory of what came earlier, can greatly (and sometimes subconsciously) influence subsequent policy choices. Working forward from the later seventeenth century, this book explores the 'deep history' of the changing and competing understandings within the Tory party of the role Britain has aspired to play on a world stage. Conservatism has long been one of the major British political tendencies, committed to the defence of established institutions, with a strong sense of the 'national interest', and embracing both 'liberal' and 'authoritarian' views of empire. The Tory party has, moreover, at several times been deeply divided, if not convulsed, by different perspectives on Britain's international orientation and different positions on foreign and imperial policy. Underlying Tory beliefs upon which views of Britain's global role were built were often not stated but assumed. As a result they tend to be obscured from historical view. This book seeks to recover and reconsider those beliefs, and to understand how the Tory party has sought to navigate its way through the difficult pathways of foreign and imperial politics, and why this determination outlasted Britain's rapid decolonisation and was apparently remarkably little affected by it. With a supporting cast from Pitt to Disraeli, Churchill to Thatcher, the book provides a fascinating insight into the influence of history over politics. Moreover it argues that there has been an inherent politicisation of the concept of national interests, such that strategic culture and foreign policy cannot be understood other than in terms of a historically distorted political debate.

This new collection of essays brings together brand new research on widowhood in medieval and early modern Europe. The volume opens with an introductory chapter by the Editors which looks generally at the conditions and constructions of widowhood in this period. This is followed by a range of essays which illuminate different dimensions of widowhood across Europe - in England, Italy, France, Germany and Spain. A particular attraction of the volume is the attention given to widowers, and the comparisons made between the male and female experience of widowhood. It is an exciting reinterpretation of the subject which will do much to undo the traditional stereotype of the widow. Contributing to the volume are: Jodi Bilinkoff, Giulia Calvi, Sandra Cavallo, Isabelle Chabot, Julia Crick, Amy Erikson, Dagmar Freist, Elizabeth Foyster, Margaret Pelling, Pamela Sharpe,Tim Stretton, Barbara Todd, and Lyndan Warner.

An original contribution to international ethics and humanitarian intervention, Westphalia From Below draws on history and IR theory to offer a fresh analysis of an insufficiently understood subject. This new history of the lead-up to 1648 exposes the mythical and problematic nature of the Peace of Westphalia and its implications for international politics, questioning the impoverished visions of this landmark treaty that influence IR theory and humanitarian protection to this day. IR is infused with perspectives from the humanities based on reconstructions of the mentalities of the Thirty Years' War. Scholars tell us that the Westphalia settlement instituted an absolutist understanding of sovereignty as a right and a strict principle of non-intervention, which was only later displaced by the 'radical innovation' of humanitarian intervention-but Thomas Peak exposes this myth as a fabrication that cannot sustainably be upheld as a normative precept. He shows from the ground up that, in fact, Westphalia established an order grounded in human dignity, in which sovereignty and intervention were not opposed. This true legacy of Westphalia has important and valuable connections with recent conceptions of international politics, particularly the legitimacy of intervention on humanitarian grounds. Peak's study is as relevant as it is refreshing.

Dealing with questions of the meaning of eroticism in Renaissance England and its separation from other affective relations, Queer Renaissance Historiography examines the distinctive arrangement of sexuality during this period, and the role that queer theory has played in our understanding of this arrangement. As such this book not only reflects on the practice of writing a queer history of Renaissance England, but also suggests new directions for this practice. Queer Renaissance Historiography collects original contributions from leading experts, participating in a range of critical conversations whilst prompting scholars and students alike to reconsider what we think we know about sex and sexuality in Renaissance England. Presenting ethical, political and critical analyses of Early Modern texts, this book sets the tone for future scholarship on Renaissance sexualities, making a timely intervention in theoretical and methodological debates.

With a few exceptions, historiography has paid little attention to the impact of French economic thought during the American Revolution, focusing instead on the Revolution's links with Britain. This book outlines how, from the mid-eighteenth to the early-nineteenth century, the political and social dimension of French economic thought, and particularly of Physiocracy, spurred American Republicans to a radical shaping of American agrarian ideology. Such a perspective allows for a reconsideration of several questions that lie at the heart of contemporary historiographic debate: the connection between politics and economics; the meaning of republicanism; the foundations of representation; the role of Europe in the Atlantic world; and the interaction between national histories and global context. In particular, the research methodology adopted here makes it possible to reconstruct how American national identity, conceived as an expression of society in economic terms, emerged through a cosmopolitan way of thinking focused on the uniqueness of the new state.

This text caused a major stir when it was first published in 1976. Redirecting scholarly attention to the county communties, it reassessed their role in the events of the 1630s and 1640s, claiming they were far more independent of London and the national leadership than usually supposed, and that provincial opinion was itself a powerful actor in the countdown to civil war. Much work has since appeared to confirm or modify these findings. In this reset second edition the original survives largely untouched; but now includes entirely new histiorographic commentary on the text and supporting documents.

From Byzantium to the Mongols to the Sultans of Rum, this acclaimed book offers an important insight into the evocative history of Turkey before the coming of Ottoman power. Turkey forms a historical bridge between Europe and Asia and as such has played a pivotal role throughout history. The rise of Constantinople and the later Ottoman Empire are well known: less well understood are developments in the three centuries in-between. What led to the decline of the Byzantine Empire and what happened in the intervening years before the rise of the Ottomans? Translated from the original French, this classic work examines the history of the Turkey that eventually gave rise to an imperial power whose influence spanned East and West.

This is an introduction to Scottish history in the 18th which is completely up-to-date and gives equal emphasis to politics and religion. Once a small and isolated country with an unenviable reputation for poverty and instability, by 1800 Scotland it was emerging as an economic powerhouse, a major colonial power and an internationally acclaimed center of European philosophy, science and literature. This thematic investigation explores the experiences and responses of a people whose world was being fundamentally reconfigured and offers some topical and thought-provoking lessons from a dramatic period when, willingly or with great reluctance, the Scots adapted themselves to rapidly changing circumstances. Starting with the threshold of the Act of Union (1707) and running through to 1800 and the outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars, This book covers the impact of the Enlightenment on Scotland and Scotland's own very significant contribution to this via Adam Smith, David Hume and their circle. Setting social, cultural and economic analyses within a firm political framework, Scotland's internal story is placed in the wider context of Britain, Europe and Empire, and her role and identity within the newly united Britain assessed.

Early Modern Emotions is a student-friendly introduction to the concepts, approaches and sources used to study emotions in early modern Europe, and to the perspectives that analysis of the history of emotions can offer early modern studies more broadly. The volume is divided into four sections that guide students through the key processes and practices employed in current research on the history of emotions. The first explains how key terms and concepts in the study of emotions relate to early modern Europe, while the second focuses on the unique ways in which emotions were conceptualized at the time. The third section introduces a range of sources and methodologies that are used to analyse early modern emotions. The final section includes a wide-ranging selection of thematic topics covering war, religion, family, politics, art, music, literature and the non-human world to show how analysis of emotions may offer new perspectives on the early modern period more broadly. Each section offers bite-sized, accessible commentaries providing students new to the history of emotions with the tools to begin their own investigations. Each entry is supported by annotated further reading recommendations pointing students to the latest research in that area and at the end of the book is a general bibliography, which provides a comprehensive list of current scholarship. This book is the perfect starting point for any student wishing to study emotions in early modern Europe.

Women have always made up the majority of older people: this examination of the lives of elderly women in Britain in the period 1500 to the present reveals attitudes towards the ageing process. It sheds light on household structures as well as wider issues - including the history of the family, the process of industrialisation, the poor law, and welfare provision - and questions many common beliefs about elderly women, particularly that female old age was a time of poverty and want. An important book for students of history and sociology alike.

Shakespeare and Immigration critically examines the vital role of immigrants and aliens in Shakespeare's drama and culture. On the one hand, the essays in this collection interrogate how the massive influx of immigrants during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I influenced perceptions of English identity and gave rise to anxieties about homeland security in early modern England. On the other, they shed light on how our current concerns surrounding immigration shape our perception of the role of the alien in Shakespeare's work and expand the texts in new and relevant directions for a contemporary audience. The essays consider the immigrant experience; strangers and strangeness; values of hospitality in relationship to the foreigner; the idea of a host society; religious refuge and refugees; legal views of inclusion and exclusion; structures of xenophobia; and early modern homeland security. In doing so, this volume offers a variety of perspectives on the immigrant experience in Shakespearean drama and how the influential nature of the foreigner affects perceptions of community and identity; and, collection questions what is at stake in staging the anxieties and opportunities associated with foreigners. Ultimately, Shakespeare and Immigration offers the first sustained study of the significance of the immigrant and alien experience to our understanding of Shakespeare's work. By presenting a compilation of views that address Shakespeare's attention to the role of the foreigner, the volume constitutes a timely and relevant addition to studies of race, ethics, and identity in Shakespeare.

Through a visually oriented investigation of historical (in)visibility in early modern Italy, the essays in this volume recover those women - wives, widows, mistresses, the illegitimate - who have been erased from history in modern literature, rendered invisible or obscured by history or scholarship, as well as those who were overshadowed by male relatives, political accident, or spatial location. A multi-faceted invisibility of the individual and of the object is the thread that unites the chapters in this volume. Though some women chose to be invisible, for example the cloistered nun, these essays show that in fact, their voices are heard or seen through their commissions and their patronage of the arts, which afforded them some visibility. Invisibility is also examined in terms of commissions which are no longer extant or are inaccessible. What is revealed throughout the essays is a new way of looking at works of art, a new way to visualize the past by addressing representational invisibility, the marginalized or absent subject or object and historical (in)visibility to discover who does the 'looking,' and how this shapes how something or someone is visible or invisible. The result is a more nuanced understanding of the place of women and gender in early modern Italy.

The focus of this volume is the intersection and the cross-fertilization between the travel narrative, literary discourse, and the New Philosophy in the early modern to early eighteenth-century historical periods. Contributors examine how, in an historical era which realized an emphasis on nation and during a time when exploration was laying the foundation for empire, science and the literary discourse of the travel narrative become intrinsically linked. Together, the essays in this collection point out the way in which travel narratives reflect the anxiety from changes brought about through the discoveries of the 'new knowledge' and the way this knowledge in turn provided a new and more complex understanding of the expanding world in which the writers lived. The worlds in this text are many (for no 'world' is monomial), from the antipodes to the New World, from the heavens to the seas, and from fictional worlds to the world which contains and/or constructs one's nation and empire. All of these essays demonstrate the manner in which the New Philosophy dramatically changed literary discourse.

Focusing on both literary and material networks in early modern England, this book examines the nature of women's wealth, its peculiar laws of transmission and accumulation, and how a world of goods and favors, mothers and daughters was transformed by market culture. Drawing on the long and troubled relationship between Elizabeth Tudor, Mary Stuart, Bess of Hardwick, and Arbella Stuart, Elizabeth Mazzola more broadly explores what early modern women might exchange with or leave to each other, including jewels and cloth, needlework, combs, and candlesticks. Women's writings take their place in this circulation of material things, and Mazzola argues that their poems and prayers, letters and wills are particularly designed with the aim of substantiating female ties. This book is an interdisciplinary one, making use of archival research, literary criticism, social history, feminist theory, and anthropological studies of gift exchange to propose that early modern women - whatever their class, educational background or marital status - were key economic players, actively pursuing favors, trading services, and exchanging goods.

Emphasizing on the one hand the reconstruction of the material culture of specific residences, and on the other, the way in which particular domestic objects reflect, shape, and mediate family values and relationships within the home, this volume offers a distinct contribution to research on the early modern Italian domestic interior. Though the essays mainly take an art historical approach, the book is interdisciplinary in that it considers the social implications of domestic objects for family members of different genders, age, and rank, as well as for visitors to the home. By adopting a broad chronological framework that encompasses both Renaissance and Baroque Italy, and by expanding the regional scope beyond Florence and Venice to include domestic interiors from less studied centers such as Urbino, Ferrara, and Bologna, this collection offers genuinely new perspectives on the home in early modern Italy.

This new survey looks at the impact in Britain of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic aftermath, across all levels of British society. Jennifer Mori provides a clear and accessible guide to the ideas and intellectual debates the revolution stimulated, as well as popular political movements including radicalism.

Originally published in 1968, this authoritative study analyses the Parlement as a law court and examines its political role and significance. From its beginning in the mid-13th Century until its fall during the 1789 Revolution, the Paris Parlement stood at the heart of government in France. Its primary function as the crown's judicial authority grew out of the need for a royal court to dispense justice when the king could no longer do so personally. The book describes how the Parlement evolved sophisticated procedures and a complex organization of chambers, officers and personnel and examines the Parlement's judicial and political growth, against the social backdrop of the Court and the Palais de Justice.

'Packed with absorbing detail and brilliant insights ... I was gripped from the first paragraph.' - Alison Weir No English king is as well-known to us as Henry VIII - famous for his six marriages, for dissolving the monasteries and for the ruthless destruction of his foes. But Henry was also an ardent patron of the arts, whose magnificent tapestries and paintings adorned his lavish court and began the Royal Collection. In contrast to later royal collectors, Henry was more interested in storytelling than art for its own sake, and all his commissions relate to one central tale: the glorification of the king and his realm. Henry's life can be seen through his collection and the works reveal much about both his kingship and his insecurities. King and Collector tells this unique story of art and power, peeling back the layers of propaganda to show the true face of the Tudor monarch.

Travel, Communication and Geography in Late Antiquity brings together a set of papers that consider anew issues of travel, communication and landscape in Late Antiquity. This period witnessed an increase in long-distance travel and the construction of large new inter-provincial communications networks. The Christian Church's expansion is but one example of both phenomena. The contributions here present readers with new research on the explosion in travel and large-scale communication, and the effect on this of different geographical possibilities and limitations. The papers deal with a variety of travel experiences (religious pilgrimages; travel for work and educational purposes; journeys of the soul) and writings about travel; they look at various kinds of communication (ecclesiastical communication; communication for commerce; and the communication of religious identity); and they examine both physical and psychological aspects of geography, travel and communication.

In 1746, Dr John Buchanan, recently retired as a medical officer in the British Army, produced a manuscript entitled, 'Regimental Practice, or a Short History of Diseases common to His Majesties own Royal Regiment of Horse Guards when abroad (Commonly called the Blews).' Revised in several stages almost until the time of Buchanan's death in 1767, this work was for the most part based on the author's observations while surgeon to a cavalry regiment serving in Flanders 1742-45, during the War of the Austrian Succession. It is a work of immense value to the understanding of eighteenth-century interpretation and treatment of diseases, but as yet has never been published. Presented here is an annotated modern edition of the text, with an introductory section setting the work in the context of Buchanan's life and career, and within the broader framework of eighteenth-century medical practice. Buchanan's practice of medicine generally represented the mainstream of professional practice as regarded both his understanding of disease and his treatment of it. Across the decades of the eighteenth century there were discoveries and fashions that impacted both the theory and the practice of medicine. Various writers of that age, as well as a number of historians since, have conveyed the sense that practice was chaotic. On the contrary, what this book argues is that methods used to treat diseases were fairly standard. Therefore, by reading Buchanan's manuscript one sees not only how he treated more than three dozen diseases, as well as various wounds and injuries, but also how these conditions were often treated in this period.

Analyzing the artistic patronage of famous and lesser known women of Renaissance Mantua, and introducing new patronage paradigms that existed among those women, this study sheds new light the social, cultural and religious impact of the cult of female mystics of that city in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. Author Sally Hickson combines primary archival research, contextual analysis of the climate of female mysticism, and a re-examination of a number of visual objects (particularly altarpieces devoted to local beatae, saints and female founders of religious orders) to delineate ties between women both outside and inside the convent walls. The study contests the accepted perception of Isabella d'Este as a purely secular patron, exposing her role as a religious patron as well. Hickson introduces the figure of Margherita Cantelma and documents concerning the building and decoration of her monastery on the part of Isabella d'Este; and draws attention to the cultural and political activities of nuns of the Gonzaga family, particularly Isabella's daughter Livia Gonzaga who became a powerful agent in Mantuan civic life. Women, Art and Architectural Patronage in Renaissance Mantua provides insight into a complex and fluid world of sacred patronage, devotional practices and religious roles of secular women as well as nuns in Renaissance Mantua.