This book is an innovative comparative study of persons of African origin and descent in two urban environments of the early modern Atlantic world. The author follows these men and women as they struggle with slavery, negotiations of manumission, and efforts to adapt to a life in freedom, ultimately illustrating how their choices and actions placed them at the foreground of the development of Atlantic urban slavery and emancipation.

This work is a path-breaking study of the changing attitudes of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa to Britain and the Commonwealth in the 1940s and the effect of those changes on their individual and collective standing in international affairs. The focus is imperial preference, the largest discriminatory tariff system in the world, and a potent symbol of Commonwealth unity.

Colonial Transformations covers early modern English poetry and plays, Gaelic poetry, and a wide range of English colonial propaganda. In the book, Bach contends that England’s colonial ambitions surface in all of its literary texts. Those texts played multiple roles in England’s colonial expansions and emerging imperialism. Those roles included publicizing colonial efforts, defining some people as white and some as barbarians, constituting enduring stereotypes of native people, and resisting official versions of colonial encounters.

Recent research has begun to highlight the importance of German arguments about legitimate resistance and self-defence for French, English and Scottish Protestants. This book systematically studies the reception of German thought in England, arguing that it played a much greater role than has hitherto been acknowledged. Both the Marian exiles, and others concerned with the fate of continental Protestantism, eagerly read what German reformers had to say about the possibility of resisting the religious policies of a monarch without compromising the institution of monarchy itself. However, the transfer of German arguments to England, with its individual political and constitutional environment, necessarily involved the subtle transformation of these arguments into forms compatible with local traditions. In this way, German arguments contributed significantly to the emergence of new theories, emphasising natural rights.

Settled for many thousands of years by Native Americans, who had developed extensive, varied and long-lasting cultures across the continent, North America's economic development on the eve of the European invasions was not hugely dissimilar to that of the European settlers themselves. 

This book looks at the Christian idea of salvation as seen through the eyes of five English reformers of the 16th century, including the famous Bible translator, William Tyndale. It highlights their debt to continental theologicans, especially Martin Luther, and reveals how they sought to make theology relevant to the everyday lives of those around them.

Andrea Fulvio's Illustrium imagines and the Beginnings of Classical Archaeology is a study of the book recognized by contemporaries as the first attempt (1517) to publish artifacts from Classical Antiquity in the form of a chronology of portraits appearing on coins. By studying correspondences between the illustrated coins and genuine, ancient coins, Madigan parses Fulvio's methodology, showing how he attempted to exploit coins as historical documents. Situated within humanist literary and historical studies of ancient Rome, his numismatic project required visual artists closely to study and assimilate the conventions of ancient portraiture. The Illustrium imagines exemplifies the range and complexity of early modern responses to ancient artifacts.

- New paperback edition
- The story of the expeditions of Spanish explorers told through the history of the first American currency: pleces of eight
- Traces the rise and fall of Spain's world dominance
- Chronicles the developments in transportation, organization, and military technology based on competition for gold and silver

This work considers how Frenchwomen participated in Christian religious practice during the sixteenth century, with their words and their actions. Using extensive original and archival sources, it provides a comprehensive study of how women contributed to institutional, theological, devotional and political religious matters. Challenging the view of religious reforms and ideas imposed by male authorities upon women, this study argues instead that women, Catholic and Calvinist, lay and monastic, were deeply involved in the culture, meanings and development of contemporary religious practices.

This is a new edition of a wide-ranging book that deals with the growth of Literacy and examines impact on early modern Europe.

In 1500 few people in Europe could read or write yet by 1800, the era of mass literacy had already arrived. Rab Houston explores the importance of education, literacy and popular culture in Europe during this period of transition. He draws his examples for all over the continent; and concentrates on the experience of ordinary men and women, rather than just privileged and the exceptional elite.

Exploring the origins of 'middle-class' status in the English provinces during a formative period of social and economic change, this book provides the first comparative study of the nature of social identity in early modern provincial England. It questions definitions of a 'middling' group, united by shared patterns of consumption and display, and examines the bases for such identity in three detailed case studies of the 'middle sort' in East Anglia, Lancashire, and Dorset. Dr. French identifies how the 'middling' described their status, and examines this through their social position in parish life and government, and through their material possessions. Instead of a coherent, unified 'middle sort of people' this book reveals division between self-proclaimed parish rulers (the 'chief inhabitants') and a wider body of modestly prosperous householders, who nevertheless shared social perspectives bounded within their localities. By the eighteenth century, many of these 'chief inhabitants' were trying to break out of their parish pecking orders - not by associating with a wider 'middle class', but by modifying ideas of gentility to suit their circumstances (and pockets). French concludes as a result, that while the presence of a distinct 'middling' stratum is apparent, the social identity of the people remained fragmented - restricted by parochial society on the one hand, and overshadowed by the prospect of gentility on the other. He offers new interpretation and insights into the composition and scale of the society in early modern England.

This description of this very important book to the American Revolution, especially to the troops at Valley Forge, is best said by these famous words of Thomas Paine: "These are the times that try mens's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the services of their country, but he that stands now, desrves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered, yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the truimph. What we attain to cheap, we esteem to lightly; it is this dearness only that gives everything it's value." Many men at Valley Forge read this book and decided to fight rather than leave the service of the Revolution even tho their enlistments were up very soon. It can be said, that if Thomas Paine had not written this book at the time he did - The Revolution would have been lost American's 'today' need to know what our forefathers did while suffering everything - from the weather, the lack of food, bad medical condition, no boots and winter clothes and superiority of the English military in numbers and weapons in order to establish the United States of America. The American patriots had 100 times the motivation of the English as they fought for freedom and liberty. Not many American's today know that 40,000 of our brethern died in the fields of battle to give us what we have today The 4th of July is not only Independence Day but Patriots Day. Thomas Paine is one of the greatest heros of the Revolution and the Revolution did not come easy All Power To The People A Collector's Edition.

A Companion to the Reformation in Central Europe analyses the diverse Christian cultures of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Czech lands, Austria, and lands of the Hungarian kingdom between the 15th and 18th centuries. It establishes the geography of Reformation movements across this region, and then considers different movements of reform and the role played by Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox clergy. This volume examines different contexts and social settings for reform movements, and investigates how cities, princely courts, universities, schools, books, and images helped spread ideas about reform. This volume brings together expertise on diverse lands and churches to provide the first integrated account of religious life in Central Europe during the early modern period. Contributors are: Phillip Haberkern, Maciej Ptaszynski, Astrid von Schlachta, Marta Fata, Natalia Nowakowska, Luka Ilic, Michael Springer, Edit Szegedi, Mihaly Balazs, Rona Johnston Gordon, Howard Louthan, Tadhg O hAnnrachain, Liudmyla Sharipova, Alexander Schunka, Rudolf Schloegl, Vaclav Buzek, Mark Hengerer, Michael Tworek, Pal Acs, Maria Craciun, Grazyna Jurkowlaniec, Laura Lisy-Wagner, and Graeme Murdock.

"High and Mighty Queens" of Early Modern England is a truly interdisciplinary anthology of essays including articles on such actual queen regnants as Mary I and Elizabeth I, and queen consorts such as Anne Boleyn, Anna of Denmark, and Henrietta Maria. The collection also deals with a number of literary representations of earlier historical queens such as Cleopatra, and semi-historical ones such as Gertrude, Tamora, and Lady Macbeth, and such fictional ones as Hermione and the queen of Cymbeline, all of them Shakespeare characters. This fascinating look at Renaissance queens also examines myth and folklore, Romantic or Victorian representations, and the depictions of queens like Catherine de Medici of France in twentieth century film.

A selection of documents left by the Suffolk Catholic family, the Rookwoods, brings them vividly to life. The Rookwoods of Coldham Hall in the parish of Stanningfield, Suffolk, were Roman Catholic recusants whose notoriety rests on Ambrose Rookwood's involvement in the Gunpowder Plot. In 1606 the owner of Coldham was hanged, drawn andquartered for treason for supplying the plotters with horses. A century later another Ambrose Rookwood suffered the same fate for conspiring to assassinate William III. Tainted by treason, the Rookwood family nevertheless managedto hold on to their estates in Suffolk and Essex, in spite of their Royalist sympathies in the Civil War, the recklessness of individual family members, and later adherence to the Jacobite cause - and even to thrive. As a result,the family left behind a lasting legacy in the form of the Catholic mission founded by Elizabeth Rookwood and her son in Bury St Edmunds. The documents in this volume tell a remarkable story of resilience, survival and reinvention. They also testify to the Rookwoods' profound Catholic faith, their patronage of the Jesuits, and their cultural and literary interests. An extensive introduction sets the Rookwoods in their historical and local context. Francis Young is the author of, among other titles, The Gages of Hengrave and Suffolk Catholicism, 1640-1767 (2015). He is Head of Sixth Form at a public school in East Anglia.

Grover Cleveland, who served as both the twenty-second and the twenty-fourth president of the United States, dominated the American political scene from 1884 to 1896. Viewed at one time as a monument of presidential courage, Cleveland has over the past generation been dismissed by historians as a "Bourbon Democrat," the symbol of that wing of the Democratic party devoted to preserving the status quo and protecting the interests of the propertied. In this revisionist study, Richard Welch takes a fresh look at the Cleveland administrations and discovers a man whose assertive temperament was frequently at odds with his inherited political faith.

Although pledging public allegiance to a Whiggish version of the presidency, Cleveland's aggressive insistence on presidential independence led him to exercise increasing control of the executive branch and then to seek influence over Congress and national legislation. Quick to denounce governmental paternalism and the centralization of political power, Cleveland nevertheless expanded the authority of the national government as he revised federal land and Indian policies in the West and ordered the army to Chicago during the 1894 Pullman strike. For all his fears of constitutional innovation, he was neither a champion of big business nor unaware of the problems posed by the post-Civil War economic revolution. He signed the Interstate commerce Act, warned against the growing power of industrial combination, advocated voluntary federal arbitration of labor-management disputes, and fought the monopolization of western lands by railroad an timber corporations.

Welch places Cleveland's battles on behalf of tariff revision, civil service reform, and the gold standard within the context of the conundrum of a strong president who usually failed to gain the cooperation of Congress or the Democratic party. Cleveland reinvigorated the American presidency and reestablished an equilibrium between the executive and legislative branches of the federal government, but by his obdurate enmity to the silverites and the "agrarian radicals," he helped assure the division and defeat of his party in the election of 1896. Welch demonstrates that Cleveland's achievements and failures as a political leader were attributable to an authoritarian temperament that saw compromise as surrender.

Two chapters of the book are devoted to Cleveland's diplomacy, focusing especially on his response to Hawaiian and Cuban revolutions and the boundary dispute between Venezuela and Great Britain. Welch takes issue with the currently popular thesis that U.S. diplomacy in the last decade of the nineteenth century displayed a concerted governmental effort to solve domestic economic problems by expanding foreign markets in East Asia and Latin America.

In addition to providing insights into the character of one of our more interesting presidents, this reassessment of Grover Cleveland's historical legacy shows clearly that the Cleveland years served as the essential preface to the development of a modern presidency and to the identification for executive power.

Oliver Cromwell's readmission of the Jews to England in 1656 has traditionally been regarded as a watershed in the history of the Jews in England; the culmination of a Christian enthusiasm for Jewish ideas which had been gathering strength since the Reformation. As well as providing a critical account of the historiography of readmission as a definitive act of toleration, this book reinterprets Christian philosemitism of the early modern period in the context of historically specific religious and political debates.

This collection of authoritative essays by leading national specialists examine the nobility of a particular country or region, on a systematic basis: they analyze the structure of the particular elite, and survey its political and economic activities, as well as the social and ideological basis of its own position and power.

This is the latest edition of the long time best-seller now with thirty illustrations added and available in a trade hardcover edition.

As Elizabeth I, second edition, demonstrates, in the Tudor age it was hard enough to be a king: it was doubly hard to be a queen. Throughout her long reign, Elizabeth's target was survival, and she survived! The reign of Elizabeth I was one of the most important periods of expansion and growth in British history, the so called 'Golden Age'. This celebrated and influential study of Elizabeth reconsiders how she achieved this and the ways in which she exercised her power. Elizabeth I second edition, looks at her role in government and the nation and examines Elizabeth in terms of her power rather than her policies, explores her relations with the statesmen of her time and shows how she interacted with the key institutions of sixteenth-century political life. Published in the very popular Profiles in Power series, this is not a biography, though inevitably it contains much biographical material, it instead analyzes the major features, achievements and failures of Elizabeth's career.

John Locke (1632-1704) is perhaps the greatest philosopher in the English language. A political activist in a revolutionary age, Locke's prolific correspondence opens up the cultural, social, intellectual, and political worlds of the later Stuart era. Spanning half a century, the letters trace the transition from Puritanism to the Enlightenment. A man of insatiable curiosity, Locke's letters encompass science (his correspondents include Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle), education, travel, religion, and the birth of the British empire.

Offers a birds-eye view of society in France from 1589-1715, covering the reigns of the first three Bourbon kings - Henri IV, Louis XIII, and Louis XIV

Examining the 'long' seventeenth century, one of the most dynamic phases in French history, the author explores the upheavals in French society during this period by looking at the traditional bonds which tied together the various classes and groupings. Using examples from the lives of real people, her unique approach discusses how the turbulence of the age threw these established relationships into disarray, and explains why, by 1715, France had become a more peaceful and civilized place.

Seafarers were the first workers to inhabit a truly international labour market, a sector of industry which, throughout the early modern period, drove European economic and imperial expansion, technological and scientific development, and cultural and material exchanges around the world. This volume adopts a comparative perspective, presenting current research about maritime labourers across three centuries, in the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, to understand how seafarers contributed to legal and economic transformation within Europe and across the world. Focusing on the three related themes of legal systems, labouring conditions, and imperial power, these essays explore the dynamic and reciprocal relationship between seafarers' individual and collective agency, and the social and economic frameworks which structured their lives.

Ships on maps in the sixteenth century were signs of European conquest of the seas. Cartographers commemorated the new found dominion over the oceans by putting the most technically advanced ships of the day all over oceans, estuaries, rivers, and lakes on all kinds of maps. Ships virtually never appeared on maps before 1375. The dramatic change from medieval practice had roots in practical problems but also in exploration and new geographical knowledge. Map makers produced beautiful works of art and decorated them with the accomplishments which set Europeans apart from their classical past and from all the other peoples of the world. "Ships on Maps" investigates how, long admired but little understood, the many ships big and small that came to decorate maps in the age when sailors began to sail around the world were an integral part of the information summarizing a new age.