This volume historicizes the use of the notion of self-interest that at least since Bernard de Mandeville and Adam Smith's theories is considered a central component of economic theory. Having in the twentieth century become one of the key-features of rational choice models, and thus is seen as an idealized trait of human behavior, self-interest has, despite Albert O. Hirschman's pivotal analysis of self-interest, only marginally been historicized. A historicization(s) of self-interest, however, offers new insights into the concept by asking why, when, for what reason and in which contexts the notion was discussed or referred to, how it was employed by contemporaries, and how the different usages developed and changed over time. This helps us to appreciate the various transformations in the perception of the notion, and also to explore how and in what ways different people at different times and in different regions reflected on or realized the act of considering what was in their best interest. The volume focuses on those different usages, knowledges, and practices concerned with self-interest in the modern Atlantic World from the seventeenth to twentieth centuries, by using different approaches, including political and economic theory, actuarial science, anthropology, or the history of emotions. Offering a new perspective on a key component of Western capitalism, this is the ideal resource for researches and scholars of intellectual, political and economic history in the modern Atlantic World.

Superstition and Magic in Early Modern Europe brings together a rich selection of essays which represent the most important historical research on religion, magic and superstition in early modern Europe. Each essay makes a significant contribution to the history of magic and religion in its own right, while together they demonstrate how debates over the topic have evolved over time, providing invaluable intellectual, historical, and socio-political context for readers approaching the subject for the first time. The essays are organised around five key themes and areas of controversy. Part One tackles superstition; Part Two, the tension between miracles and magic; Part Three, ghosts and apparitions; Part Four, witchcraft and witch trials; and Part Five, the gradual disintegration of the 'magical universe' in the face of scientific, religious and practical opposition. Each part is prefaced by an introduction that provides an outline of the historiography and engages with recent scholarship and debate, setting the context for the essays that follow and providing a foundation for further study. This collection is an invaluable toolkit for students of early modern Europe, providing both a focused overview and a springboard for broader thinking about the underlying continuities and discontinuities that make the study of magic and superstition a perennially fascinating topic.

Did the 'seventeenth-century crisis' visit the Ottoman Empire? How can we situate the explosion of rural violence and the rebellions of the turn of the seventeenth century in the Anatolian countryside? The Collapse of Rural Order in Ottoman Anatolia provides the reader with a fresh and innovative perspective on the long scholarly debate over the question of 'decline' in early modern Ottoman history. It offers a new agenda, new type of source material, and a new methodology for the study of demographic crisis. Through a systematic examination of little-known detailed avariz registers, Oktay OEzel demonstrates in detail the mass desertion of rural settlements, the destruction of agricultural economy, and the resulting collapse of rural order in Ottoman Anatolia at the turn of the seventeenth century.

In Copernicus in the Cultural Debates of the Renaissance, Pietro Daniel Omodeo presents a general overview of the reception of Copernicus's astronomical proposal from the years immediately preceding the publication of De revolutionibus (1543) to the Roman prohibition of heliocentric hypotheses in 1616. Relying on a detailed investigation of early modern sources, the author systematically examines a series of issues ranging from computation to epistemology, natural philosophy, theology and ethics. In addition to offering a pluralistic and interdisciplinary perspective on post-Copernican astronomy, the study goes beyond purely cosmological and geometrical issues and engages in a wide-ranging discussion of how Copernicus's legacy interacted with European culture and how his image and theories evolved as a result.

Emotions and Health, 1200-1700 examines the Aristotelian and Galenic understandings of the 'passions' or 'accidents of the soul' as alterations of both mind and body across a wide range of medieval and early modern cultural discourses: Aquinas's Summa, canonization inquests, medical and natural philosophical texts, drama, and the London Bills of Mortality. The essays in this collection focus on notions such as death from sorrow, physiological explanations of fear, physicians' advice on the harmful and beneficial effects of anger and of sex, medical and philosophical constructions of the melancholic subject, and theological and medical discussions on the impact of music in moderating the passions and maintaining health. Contributors include: Nicole Archambeau, Elena Carrera, Penelope Gouk, Angus Gowland, Nicholas E. Lombardo, William F. MacLehose, Michael R. Solomon and Erin Sullivan.

Empire of the Senses brings together pathbreaking scholarship on the role the five senses played in early America. With perspectives from across the hemisphere, exploring individual senses and multi-sensory frameworks, the volume explores how sensory perception helped frame cultural encounters, colonial knowledge, and political relationships. From early French interpretations of intercultural touch, to English plans to restructure the scent of Jamaica, these essays elucidate different ways the expansion of rival European empires across the Americas involved a vast interconnected range of sensory experiences and practices. Empire of the Senses offers a new comparative perspective on the way European imperialism was constructed, operated, implemented and, sometimes, counteracted by rich and complex new sensory frameworks in the diverse contexts of early America. This book has been listed on the Books of Note section on the website of Sensory Studies, which is dedicated to highlighting the top books in sensory studies: www.sensorystudies.org/books-of-note

Catholic Social Networks in Early Modern England: Kinship, Gender, and Coexistence explores the lived experience of Catholic women and men in the post-Reformation century. Set against the background of the gendered dynamics of English society, this book demonstrates that English Catholics were potent forces in the shaping of English culture, religious policy, and the emerging nation-state. Drawing on kinship and social relationships rooted in the medieval period, post Reformation English Catholic women and men used kinship, social networks, gendered strategies, political actions, and cultural activities like architecture and gardening to remain connected to patrons and to ensure the survival of their families through a period of deep social and religious change. This book contributes to recent scholarship on religious persecution and coexistence in post-Reformation Europe by demonstrating how English Catholics shaped state policy and enforcement of religious minorities and helped to define the character of early models of citizenship formation.

This Companion to the Spanish Scholastics offers a much-needed survey of the entire field of early modern Spanish scholastic thought. The volume introduces main themes and contexts of scholastics inquiry (theology, philosophy, ethics, politics, economics, law, science and the senses) through close examination of a wide range of texts, debates, methods, and authors, as well as in-depth discussion of the relevant literature. Each chapter includes a useful bibliography and serves as point of departure for future research. The volume not only draws the sum of existing research, but also challenges established notions and breaks new ground. Contributors: Fernanda Alfieri, Harald Braun, Paolo Broggio, Alejandro Chafuen, Wim Decock, Fernando Dominguez Reboiras, Thomas Duve, Petr Dvorak, Giovanni Gellera, Juan Manuel Gomez Paris, Christophe Grellard, Miroslav Hanke, Ruth Hill, Harro Hoepfl, Nils Jansen, Vincenzo Lavenia, Thomas Marschler, Fabio Monsalve, Thomas Pink, Rudolf Schussler, Daniel Schwartz, Leen Spruit, Toon Van Houdt, Maria Jose Vega, and Andreas Wagner. See inside the book.

Based on extensive archival research in Peru, Spain, and Italy, Making Medicines in Early Colonial Lima, Peru examines how apothecaries in Lima were trained, ran their businesses, traded medicinal products, prepared medicines, and found their place in society. In the book, Newson argues that apothecaries had the potential to be innovators in science, especially in the New World where they encountered new environments and diverse healing traditions. However, it shows that despite experimental tendencies among some apothecaries, they generally adhered to traditional humoral practices and imported materia medica from Spain rather than adopt native plants or exploit the region's rich mineral resources. This adherence was not due to state regulation, but reflected the entrenchment of humoral beliefs in popular thought and their promotion by the Church and Inquisition.

Reading Newton in Early Modern Europe investigates how Sir Isaac Newton's Principia was read, interpreted and remodelled for a variety of readerships in eighteenth-century Europe. The editors, Mordechai Feingold and Elizabethanne Boran, have brought together papers which explore how, when, where and why the Principia was appropriated by readers in Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, England and Ireland. Particular focus is laid on the methods of transmission of Newtonian ideas via university textbooks and popular works written for educated laymen and women. At the same time, challenges to the Newtonian consensus are explored by writers such as Marius Stan and Catherine Abou-Nemeh who examine Cartesian and Leibnizian responses to the Principia. Eighteenth-century attempts to remodel Newton as a heretic are explored by Feingold, while William R. Newman draws attention to vital new sources highlighting the importance of alchemy to Newton. Contributors are: Catherine Abou-Nemeh, Claudia Addabbo, Elizabethanne Boran, Steffen Ducheyne, Moredechai Feingold, Sarah Hutton, Juan Navarro-Loidi, William R. Newman, Luc Peterschmitt, Anna Marie Roos, Marius Stan, and Gerhard Wiesenfeldt.

Colonial Latin America was famed for the precious metals plundered by the conquistadores and the gold and silver extracted from its mines. Historians and economists have attempted to determine the amount of bullion produced and its impact on the colonies themselves and the emerging early-modern world economy. Using official tax and mintage records, this book provides decade-by-decade and often annual data on the amount of gold and silver officially refined and coined in the treasury and mint districts of Spanish and Portuguese America. It also places American bullion output within the context of global production and addresses the issue of contraband production and bullion smuggling. The book is thus an invaluable source for evaluating the rise of the early-modern economy.

In 1583, five Jesuit brothers set out with the intention of founding a new church and mission in India. Their dream was almost immediately, and brutally, terminated by local opposition. When their massacre was announced in Rome, it was treated as martyrdom. Francesco Benci, professor of rhetoric at the Collegium Romanum, immediately set about celebrating their deaths in a new type of epic, distinct from, yet dependent upon, the classical tradition: Quinque martyres e Societate Iesu in India. This is the first critical edition and translation of this important text. The commentary highlights both the classical sources and the historical and religious context of the mission. The introduction outlines Benci's career and stresses his role as the founder of this vibrant new genre. This volume is the first one for a new subseries in the 'Jesuit Studies' series: 'Jesuit Neo-Latin Library'.

Composed between 1500 and 1502, "The Life of Henry VII" is the first "official" Tudor account of the triumph of Henry VII over Richard III. Its author, the French humanist Bernard Andre, was a poet and historian at the court of Henry VII and tutor to the young Prince Arthur. Steeped in classical literature and familiar with all the tropes of the ancient biographical tradition, Andre filled his account with classical allusions, invented speeches, and historical set pieces. Although cast as a biography, the work dramatizes the dynastic shift that resulted from Henry Tudor's seizure of the English throne at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 and the death of Richard III. Its author had little interest in historical "facts," and when he was uncertain about details, he simply left open space in the manuscript for later completion. He focused instead on the nobility of Henry VII's lineage, the moral character of key figures, and the hidden workings of history. Andre's account thus reflects the impact of new humanist models on English historiography. It is the first extended argument for Henry's legitimate claims to the English crown. "The Life of Henry VII" survives in a single manuscript, edited by James Gairdner in the nineteenth-century Rolls Series. It occupies an important place in the literary tradition of treatments of Richard III, begun by Andre, continued by Thomas More and Polydore Vergil, and reaching its classic expression in Shakespeare. First English translation. Introduction, bibliography, index.

The Unsettlement of America explores the career and legacy of Don Luis de Velasco, an early modern indigenous translator of the sixteenth-century Atlantic world who traveled far and wide and experienced nearly a decade of Western civilization before acting decisively against European settlement. The book attends specifically to the interpretive and knowledge-producing roles played by Don Luis as a translator acting not only in Native-European contact zones but in a complex arena of inter-indigenous transmission of information about the hemisphere. The book argues for the conceptual and literary significance of unsettlement, a term enlisted here both in its literal sense as the thwarting or destroying of settlement and as a heuristic for understanding a wide range of texts related to settler colonialism, including those that recount the story of Don Luis as it is told and retold in a wide array of diplomatic, religious, historical, epistolary, and literary writings from the middle of the sixteenth century to the middle of the twentieth. Tracing accounts of this elusive and complex unfounding father from the colonial era as they unfolds across the centuries, The Unsettlement of America addresses the problems of translation at the heart of his story and speculates on the implications of the broader, transhistorical afterlife of Don Luis for the present and future of hemispheric American studies.

Early Modern English Catholicism: Identity, Memory and Counter-Reformation brings together leading scholars in the field to explore the interlocking relationship between the key themes of identity, memory and Counter-Reformation and to assess the way the three themes shaped English Catholicism in the early modern period. The collection takes a long-term view of the historical development of English Catholicism and encompasses the English Catholic diaspora to demonstrate the important advances that have been made in the study of English Catholicism c.1570-1800. The interdisciplinary collection brings together scholars from history, literary, and art history backgrounds. Consisting of eleven essays and an afterword by the late John Bossy, the book underlines the significance of early modern English Catholicism as a contributor to national and European Counter-Reformation culture.

The military nobility - "signori di castelli", lords of castles - formed an important component of the society of Renaissance Italy, although they have often been disregarded by historians, or treated as an anomaly. In Barons and Castellans: The Military Nobility of Renaissance Italy, Christine Shaw provides the first comparative study of "lords of castles", great and small, throughout Italy, examining their military and political significance, and how their roles changed during the Italian Wars. Her main focus is on their military resources and how they deployed them in public and private wars, in pursuit of their own interests and in the service of others, and on how their military weight affected their political standing and influence.

In Europe within Reach Gerrit Verhoeven traces some sweeping evolutions in the early modern travel behaviour of Dutch and Flemish elites (1585-1750), as the classical Grand Tour was slowly but surely overshadowed by other types of travelling. Leisure trips to Paris, London or Berlin, a cours pittoresque along the Rhine, domestic trips in the Low Countries and a series of other destinations gained ground, while new sorts of travellers cropped up: female and middle-class travellers, domestic servants, children, youngsters and the elderly. Verhoeven does not only trace these evolutions, but also explains why Netherlandish travellers gradually turned into art connoisseurs; why they were spellbound by sites of memory and by rugged landscapes; or why all sorts of fashionable gadgets and thingies were bought on the way.

"J""ohn Winthrop "(1588-1649) was the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and is generally considered the principal architect of early New England society. He led the colonists through the initial struggles to survive in a new world, shaped the political organizations that gave the colonists the right to govern themselves through elected governors and representatives, worked to mediate between those who advanced radical religious and political ideas on the one hand and those who sought a very narrowly defined orthodoxy, and contributed to the development of a system of education which insured the preservation of the founders' heritage.

The details of this brief biography is drawn from the author's larger, prize-winning study, "John Winthrop: America's Forgotten Founding Father "(Oxford University Press, 2003), though modified in minor ways by his ongoing research. To render it more accessible to an undergraduate audience, Bremer avoids in-depth discussion of theology and other specialized topics and focus instead on trying to provide students with an appreciation of how Winthrop's world differed from theirs, but how at the same time he dealt with issues that continue to resonate in our own society. In placing his life in the context of the times, Bremer discusses Winthrop's family life and the challenges of life faced by men, women, and children in the seventeenth century. The key themes that are integrated into the biographical narrative are how Winthrop's religion was shaped by the times and in turn how it influenced his family life and the moral outlook that he brought to his political career; his understanding of society as a community in which individuals had to subordinate their individual goals to the advancement of the common good; and his struggle to define where the line needed to be drawn between new or different ideas that enriched religious and political growth, and those that threatened the stability of a society.