This collection pits the 'walk' (what happened in practice) against the 'talk' (the theories, preferences, and biases of thinkers and commentators) which gives students and researchers the full picture of where these case studies sit within the broader framework of 'others'. Deviance and difference are a growing field and this collection draws the latest work being done from across the premodern world. Providing students and researchers with the state of the field and new examples to inform their own work. The case studies in this collection are archivally-based, not issues-driven. They have been consciously collected as 'aspect' case studies to increase the readers understanding of difference in the premodern world.

Like every era, the Renaissance brims with stories. In this book, Robert Davis and Beth Lindsmith highlight dozens of notable lives from between 1400 and 1600. They bring to life wily politicians, eccentric scientists, fiery rebels and stolid reactionaries, as well as a pornographer, an acrobat, an actress, a poetic prostitute, a star comedian and a least one very fretful mother. Some names - Leonardo, Luther, Medici and Machiavelli - are famous, but many others will be new to general readers. Their stories, ninety-four in all, remind us that history is more than dates and abstract concepts: it also arises from the lives of countless individual men and women.

1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear traces Shakespeare's life and times from the autumn of 1605, when he took an old and anonymous Elizabethan play, The Chronicle History of King Leir, and transformed it into his most searing tragedy, King Lear. 1606 proved to be an especially grim year for England, which witnessed the bloody aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot, divisions over the Union of England and Scotland, and an outbreak of plague. But it turned out to be an exceptional one for Shakespeare, unrivalled at identifying the fault-lines of his cultural moment, who before the year was out went on to complete two other great Jacobean tragedies that spoke directly to these fraught times: Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra. Following the biographical style of 1599, a way of thinking and writing that Shapiro has made his own, 1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear promises to be one of the most significant and accessible works on Shakespeare in the decade to come

Well-written and engaging, this book deals with complex and wide-ranging material in a clear and accessible way and is up-to-date with current historiographical trends, such as digital history which students need to know about. It also includes a companion website which augments the features, such as marginal glosses, in the text, ensuring it is user-friendly for students Offers a clear and up-to-date text on historiography, something students on all history degrees are required to engage with. Updated with current historiographical trends, such as digital history, and scholarship which ensures it remains useful for students and retains its market leader position.

Our interdisciplinary collection of essays provides an engaging study of how Caterina Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus (1454-1510); Queen Elizabeth I of England (1533-1603); Mary Stuart Queen of Scots (1542-1587); Anne of Denmark (1574-1619); and Spain's Maria Luisa de Orleans (1662-1689) either succeeded in promoting authority and inspiring loyalty, or, conversely, had identities shaped for them for various political, religious, or cultural reasons. Knowledge of material culture, and how such objects created specific gender identities, reveals new insights into these queens' lives, as they flourished in court, as members of their communities received them, and as individuals appropriated and shaped their reputations during their lives and after their deaths.

A study of how representations and images of Charles II and his kingship were formed and presented by those in and around the court. The reconstitution of the royal court in 1660 brought with it the restoration of fears that had been associated with earlier Stuart courts: disorder, sexual liberty, popery and arbitrary government. This book - the first full examination of its subject - illustrates the ways in which court culture was informed by the heady politics of Britain between 1660 and 1685. In political theory and practice the decades that preceded and included Charles II's reign witnessed profound interrogation of British kingship. Individuals at the heart of royal government - court preachers, poets, playwrights, courtesans, diplomats, and politicians - were assertive participants in this scrutiny. This book looks beyond the prurient interest in the sexual antics of Restoration courtiers that has characterised previous works. It engages in a genuine and sophisticated attempt to show how the complex dynamics of Charles II's court culture ran beneath the surface of show and ceremony. Ultimately it shows that the attempts to stabilise and strengthen the Stuart monarchy after the Restoration of Charles II were undercut by the cultural materials emanating fromthe royal court itself. MATTHEW JENKINSON completed his PhD at Merton College, Oxford.

This book is a microhistory study of village settlements in early modern Northwest Italy that aims to expand the notion of place to include the process of producing a locality; that is, the production of native local subjects through practices, rituals and other forms of collective action. Undertaking a micro-analytical approach, the book examines the customs and practices associated with typically fragmented and polycentric Italian village settlements to analyze the territorial tensions between various segments of a village and its neighbors. The microspatial analysis reveals how these tensions are the expressions of conflictual relationships between lay, ecclesiastical and charitable bodies culminating in a "culture of fragmentation" that impacts local economic and political practices. The book also traces how the production of locality survived throughout the nineenth and twentieth century and is still observed today. In this light, the study of practices and policies of locality over time that this book undertakes is an essential tool to better understand the nature and role of these social bonds in today's society. Archival records and the methods for approaching this source material are included within the text, making it an accessible and invaluable book for students and teachers of social and cultural history.

Communities great and small across Europe for eight centuries have contracted with doctors. Physicians provided citizen care, helped govern, and often led in public life. Civic Medicine stakes out this timely subject by focusing on its golden age, when cities rivaled territorial states in local and global Europe and when civic doctors were central to the rise of shared, organized written information about the human and natural world. This opens the prospect of a long history of knowledge and action shaped more by community and responsibility than market or state, exchange or power.

This collection of thirteen essays by an international group of scholars focuses on the impact of the Protestant Reformation on Donne's life, theology, poetry, and prose. The early transition from Catholicism to Protestantism was a complicated journey for England, as individuals sorted out their spiritual beliefs, chose their political allegiances, and confronted an array of religious differences that had sprung forth in their society since the reign of Henry VIII. Inner anxieties often translated into outward violence. Amidst this turmoil the poet and Protestant preacher John Donne (1572-1631) emerged as a central figure, one who encouraged peace among Christians. Raised a Catholic but ordained in 1615 as an Anglican clergyman, Donne publicly identified himself with Protestantism, and yet scholars have long questioned his theological orientation. Drawing upon recent scholarship in church history, the authors of this collection reconsider Donne's relationship to Protestantism and clearly demonstrate the political and theological impact of the Reformation on his life and writings. The collection includes thirteen essays that together place Donne broadly in the context of English and European traditions and explore his divine poetry, his prose work, the Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, and his sermons. It becomes clear that in adopting the values of the Reformation, Donne does not completely reject everything from his Catholic background. Rather, the clash of religion erupts in his work in both moving and disconcerting ways. This collection offers a fresh understanding of Donne's hardwon irenicism, which he achieved at great personal and professional risk.

This edition of Anne Clifford's (1590-1676) diaries and memoirs is the first to include all of her autobiographical writing. Clifford was a prominent noble woman who writes about her experiences in the courts of Elizabeth, James and Charles I. She tells the story of her decades long battle to secure her inheritance of the Clifford lands of the north, which included taking on powerful men like James I. She describes the challenges she faced when she finally inherited the Clifford lands, torn by civil war, poverty and neglect. Her writings about her life reveal her joys and griefs, including the loss of children. Anne Clifford was vulnerable and determined, charitable and canny. Her diaries and memoirs provide a window into the life and thoughts of this indomitable woman. -- .

There is a perception that the region of north-east India maintained its ‘splendid isolation’ and remained outside the reach of the Mughals and did not have a pre-colonial past. The present book is an attempt to decenter and demolish the said perceptions and asserts that north-east India had a ‘medieval’ past through linkage with the dominant central power in India – the Mughals. The eastern frontier of this Mughal Empire was constituted by a number of states like Bengal, Koch Bihar, Assam, Manipur, Dimasa, Jaintia, Cachar, Tripura, Khasi confederation, Chittagong, Lushai and the Nagas. Of these, some areas like Bengal were an integral part of the Mughal Empire, while others like Koch Bihar and Assam were in and out of the empire. Tripura, Manipur, Jaintia and Cachar were frequently overrun by the Mughals whenever the State was short of revenue and withdrew soon without incorporating them in the state. Despite not being a formal part of the Mughal Empire, the society, economy, polity and culture of the north-east India, however, had been majorly impacted by the Mughal presence. The brief, but effective advent of the Mughals had supplanted certain political and revenue institutions in various states. It generated trade and commerce, which linked it to the rest of India. A number of wondering Sufi saints, Islamic missionaries, imprisoned Mughal soldiers and officers were settled in various states, which resulted in a substantial Muslim population growth in the region. Besides the population, there are numerous Islamic and syncretic institutions, cultures, and shrines which dot the entire region.

Originally published in 1987, this book compares and contrasts the characters and careers of two great protagonists in the English Civil War and its aftermath. The book shows how Charles I and Oliver Cromwell were confronted with the same problems and therefore, to a surprisingly large extent, were obliged to deal with them in much the same kind of way. The book re-examines their military methods, their approaches to religion, their diplomatic manoeuvres, their domestic policies and the manner in which they handled their parliaments. Above all, it considers how their vastly different personalities determined their actions. Finally it debates how far a revolution, of which Cromwell was the instrument and Charles the victim, can be said to have taken place in the mid-seventeenth century or whether what occurred was simply a political rebellion sparked off by religious passion.

This two-volume set highlights the importance of Iberian shipbuilding in the centuries of the so-called first globalization (15th to 18th), in confluence with an unprecedented extension of ocean navigation and seafaring and a greater demand for natural resources (especially timber), mostly oak (Quercus spp.) and Pine (Pinus spp.). The chapters are framed in a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary line of research that integrates history, Geographic Information Sciences, underwater archaeology, dendrochronology and wood provenance techniques. This line of research was developed during the ForSEAdiscovery project, which had a great impact in the academic and scientific world and brought together experts from Europe and America. The volumes deliver a state-of-the-art review of the latest lines of research related to Iberian maritime history and archaeology and their developing interdisciplinary interaction with dendroarchaeology. This synthesis combines an analysis of historical sources, the systematic study of wreck-remains and material culture related to Iberian seafaring from the 15th to the 18th centuries, and the application of earth sciences, including dendrochronology. The set can be used as a manual or work guide for experts and students, and will also be an interesting read for non-experts interested in the subject. Volume 1 focuses on the history and archaeology of seafaring and shipbuilding in the Iberian early modern world, complemented by case studies on timber trade and supply for shipbuilding, analysis of shipbuilding treatises, and the application of Geographic Information Systems and Databases (GIS) to the study of shipwrecks.

The great issues and conflicts of the early seventeenth century were played out not only on the stages of the Court and Parliament, and, latterly, on the battlefield, but within the confines of the family. Originally published in 1984, in this pioneering study of the Verney family, based on more than 10,000 family letters and papers, Professor Miriam Slater shows how a family of country gentry lived and behaved in a time of political and social crisis. Most of their energies were directed within the family, their concerns with marriage and children, with relationships between members of the Verney clan, with managing their estates and property. They emerge as real people with passions and hatreds, made to live their lives by correspondence when the head of the family was forced to live abroad as an exile and casualty of the political tumults. But their misfortunes have created a unique archive which allows the author to delve deep into the very heart of their personal lives, and to create an extraordinary collective portrait of a family in times of troubles. Professor Slater describes and analyses the way in which Verney family members actually treated each other, and gives an account of their ideas - on marriage, from both the male and female points of view; on the roles of children and parents; on the relationships among adult siblings; on the place of servants within the family. She offers a detailed and systematic examination of family psychological dynamics, and the values, attitudes and goals which affected individual behaviour. She also moves beyond individual idiosyncrasies by linking the nature of personal interaction within the family to the wider social structures of the society, including laws of inheritance, patriarchal control, the different treatment of men and women, and financial arrangements and family strategies.

Originally published in 1958, this new impression of The Queen's Wards from 1973 made available once more a work that remains a significant contribution to the history of society and government in Elizabethan England. The Court of Wards was a bizarre institution with roots going back to feudal mediaeval times. Revived by Henry VII, formally instituted by Henry VIII, the concept of wardship reached its zenith in Elizabethan times, when it was used as a powerful weapon in the raising of revenues and in controlling the aristocracy. The Court administered on behalf of the Crown the properties of fatherless minors (of whom there were many), bought and sold the rights to exploit these properties during the minority of the heirs, and even sold the heirs themselves into marriage (or withheld permission to marry). This control of marriage rights was clearly open to abuse, corruption and political exploitation, and as a symptom of Elizabethan times the Court provides an interesting and illuminating subject for study. The system had a special significance in government policy and played a considerable role in the politics of the age: this is attested to by the fact that for nearly half a century the history of the Court of Wards is dominated by William Cecil (Lord Burghley) and his son Robert. Many other prominent courtiers and politicians were involved, and figure in this book.

New biography of one of the key figures in British history focusing on both his writing and legacy. Sir Walter Raleigh is a figure writ large in popular imagination. Yet how can we understand this man who was soldier, voyager, visionary, courtier, politician, poet, historian, patriot and 'traitor'? We know some facts, and much can be learned from Raleigh's prose and poetry about his ideas, personality, feelings and values. Important new texts of his works have recently been published: we now possess reliable versions of his poems, his letters and his travel narratives. No biography of Raleigh, however, can be complete without an assessment of his posthumous reputation. Myths that accumulated around him tell us something about the man himself, but far more about the perceptions of his own and subsequent generations. Raleigh's talents as a writer ensured his positive legacy, but the appropriation of his legend for so many differing political uses has left us with a complex picture. In this original and important new biography Williams and Nicholls set this right.

Sassetti’s Indian Letters are among the most interesting penned during these years, offering a trove of cultural speculation and economic analysis. Sassetti was neither a principled critic of imperialism nor a principled advocate of liberalism, but a pragmatic theorist of free trade Sassetti was very much the archetypal Renaissance man

Francis Parkman's history Montcalm and Wolfe, originally published in two volumes is, possibly, the finest history book to come out of America and is the definitive account of the Seven Years War in the New World. It sets the conflict in an historical context and includes both biographies of its principal characters and much about its political consequences. This book, Musket and Tomahawk, has been adapted from Parkman's more expansive work by the Leonaur Editors, especially for those students of military history-both serious and casual-who are primarily concerned with the war itself. This was a war fought under blazing suns and driving snows. It was fought in the deep forests, on lakes and rivers and on the slopes of mountains. It was a war of ambuscade, sieges, massacres and the storming of palisades and burning blockhouses. It brought collisions in full battle between the regular troops of Britain and France, but it also embraced militias drawn from the settlers of both sides including famous backwoodsmen and scouts who became the Rangers. Not least of those embroiled were the deadly indigenous people of the land-the Indian tribes of the Eastern Woodlands-who fought according to their individual loyalties to each side and who brought a colour and savagery which was unique to this frontier conflict. Musket and Tomahawk is a riveting story of a war that has always fascinated students of military history because of its very diversity.

Early modern Protestant scholars closely engaged with Islamic thought in more ways than is usually recognized. Among Protestants, Lutheran scholars distinguished themselves as the most invested in the study of Islam and Muslim culture. Mehmet Karabela brings the neglected voices of post-Reformation theologians, primarily German Lutherans, into focus and reveals their rigorous engagement with Islamic thought. Inspired by a global history approach to religious thought, Islamic Thought Through Protestant Eyes offers new sources to broaden the conventional interpretation of the Reformation beyond a solely European Christian phenomenon. Based on previously unstudied dissertations, disputations, and academic works written in Latin in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Karabela analyzes three themes: Islam as theology and religion; Islamic philosophy and liberal arts; and Muslim sects (Sunni and Shi'a). This book provides analyses and translations of the Latin texts as well as brief biographies of the authors. These texts offer insight into the Protestant perception of Islamic thought for scholars of religious studies and Islamic studies as well as for general readers. Examining the influence of Islamic thought on the construction of the Protestant identity after the Reformation helps us to understand the role of Islam in the evolution of Christianity.

What was a "garden" in medieval and early modern British culture and how was it imagined? How did it change as Europe opened up to the wider world from the 16th century onwards? In a series of fresh approaches to these questions, the contributors offer chapters that identify and discuss newly-discovered pre-modern garden spaces in archaeology and archival sources, recognize a gendered language of the garden in fictional descriptions ("fictional" here being taken to mean any written text, regardless of its purpose), and offer new analysis of the uses to which gardens - real and imagined - might be put. Chapters investigate the definitions, forms and functions of physical gardens; explore how the material space of the garden was gendered as a secluded space for women, and as a place of recreation; examine the centrality of garden imagery in medieval Christian culture; and trace the development of garden motifs in the literary and artistic imagination to convey the sense of enclosure, transformation and release. The book uniquely underlines the current environmental "turn" in the humanities, and increasingly recognizes the value of exploring human interaction with the landscapes of the past as a route to health and well-being in the present.

Columbus, Shakespeare, and the Interpretation of the New World explores a range of images and texts that shed light on the complexity of the European reception and interpretation of the New World. Jonathan Hart examines Columbus's first representation of the natives and the New World, the representation of him in subsequent ages, the portrayal of America in sexual terms, the cultural intricacies brought into play by a variety of translators and mediators, the tensions between the aesthetic and colonial in Shakespeare's The Tempest, and a discussion of cultural and voice appropriation that examines the colonial in the postcolonial. This book brings the comparative study of the cultural past of the Americas and the Atlantic world into focus as it relates to the present.

This collection of essays, written by leading experts, showcases historiographical problems, fresh interpretations, and new debates in medieval and Renaissance history and political thought. Recent scholarship on medieval and Renaissance political thought is witness to tectonic movements. These involve quiet, yet considerable, re-evaluations of key thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas and Machiavelli, as well as the string of lesser known "political thinkers" who wrote in western Europe between Late Antiquity and the Reformation. Taking stock of thirty years of developments, this volume demonstrates the contemporary vibrancy of the history of medieval and Renaissance political thought. By both celebrating and challenging the perspectives of a generation of scholars, notably Cary J. Nederman, it offers refreshing new assessments. The book re-introduces the history of western political thought in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance to the wider disciplines of History and Political Science. Recent historiographical debates have revolutionized discussion of whether or not there was an "Aristotelian revolution" in the thirteenth century. Thinkers such as Machiavelli and Marsilius of Padua are read in new ways; less well-known texts, such as the Irish On the Twelve Abuses of the Age, offer new perspectives. Further, the collection argues that medieval political ideas contain important lessons for the study of concepts of contemporary interest such as toleration. The volume is an ideal resource for both students and scholars interested in medieval and Renaissance history as well as the history of political thought.