Greece Reinvented discusses the transformation of Byzantine Hellenism as the cultural elite of Byzantium, displaced to Italy, constructed it. It explores why and how Byzantine migrants such as Cardinal Bessarion, Ianus Lascaris, and Giovanni Gemisto adopted Greek personas to replace traditional Byzantine claims to the heirship of ancient Rome. In Greece Reinvented, Han Lamers shows that being Greek in the diaspora was both blessing and burden, and explores how these migrants' newfound 'Greekness' enabled them to create distinctive positions for themselves while promoting group cohesion. These Greek personas reflected Latin understandings of who the Greeks 'really' were but sometimes also undermined Western paradigms. Greece Reinvented reveals some of the cultural tensions that bubble under the surface of the much-studied transmission of Greek learning from Byzantium to Italy.

Music and the Commedia dell'Arte narrates the story of the most famous commedia dell'arte troupe of the late Renaissance, focusing in particular on the representation of women on stage and on the role of music-making in their craft. It provides a rich context for the study of musical-theatrical performance before the advent of opera and re-defines our perceptions of women, music and theatre in the Renaissance.

This volume explores the transition from the old regime to modern forms of sovereignty in the Middle East. By rereading Tocqueville's classic, "The Old Regime and the French Revolution," through an Ottoman prism this study probes the unresolved paradoxes in his analysis of institutional change while documenting an old regime that has remained in the shadows of modern history. Each section of the book explores a specific dimension of Ottoman sovereignty - space, hierarchy, and vernacular governance - through a detailed examination of a particular 18th century document. An Ottoman perspective on the eighteenth century not only furnishes critical pieces of the old-regime puzzle. It also illustrates how an uncritical reception of Tocqueville's model of modernization has obscured the ongoing interaction between the "Eurasian" and Westphalian state systems and parallel processes of sociopolitical change.

Concepts of historical progress or decline and the idea of a cycle of historical movement have existed in many civilizations. In spite of claims that they be transnational or even universal, periodization schemes invariably reveal specific social and cultural predispositions. Our dialogue, which brings together a Sinologist and a scholar of early modern History in Europe, considers periodization as a historical phenomenon, studying the case of the "Renaissance." Understood in the tradition of J. Burckhardt, who referred back to ideas voiced by the humanists of the 14th and 15th centuries, and focusing on the particularities of humanist dialogue which informed the making of the "Renaissance" in Italy, our discussion highlights elements that distinguish it from other movements that have proclaimed themselves as "r/Renaissances," studying, in particular, the Chinese Renaissance in the early 20th century. While disagreeing on several fundamental issues, we suggest that interdisciplinary and interregional dialogue is a format useful to addressing some of the more far-reaching questions in global history, e.g. whether and when a periodization scheme such as "Renaissance" can fruitfully be applied to describe non-European experiences.

From 1649-1660 England was ruled by a standing army for the only time in its history. In The Army in Cromwellian England Henry Reece describes, for the first time, the nature of that experience, both for members of the army and for civilian society.
Split into three parts, the first section looks at the size of the army, its material needs, promotion structure, and political engagement to provide a sense of the day-to-day reality of being part of a standing army. The second part considers the impact of the military presence on society by establishing where soldiers were quartered, how they were paid, the material burden that they represented, the divisive effects of the army's patronage of religious radicals, and the extensive involvement of army officers in the government of the localities. The final section re-evaluates the army's role in the political events from Cromwell's death to the restoration of the Stuart monarchy, and explains why the army crumbled so pitifully in the last months of the Commonwealth.

William Stephens was Secretary of the Province of Georgia from 1737 to 1750 and was President from 1741 for ten years. He was sent to America by the Trustees of Georgia, who resided in London, to keep them informed on conditions in the colony. Besides writing numerous letters to the Trustees, Stephens kept a journal which he sent to them periodically. The journal down to 1741 was printed by the Trustees. Here in this volume (and the volume for 1743-1745) the continuation of the journal is published for the first time. Through his journal Stephens undertook to inform the Trustees of everything which happened in Georgia, from the most trivial to the most important. This close-up view of Georgia, the details of the everyday life of the people, and the record of significant development in the colony all make his journal a valuable document in American colonial history.

In medieval and early modern Britain, people would refer to their local district as their 'country', a term now largely forgotten but still used up until the First World War. Core groups of families that remained rooted in these 'countries', often bearing distinctive surnames still in use today, shaped local culture and passed on their traditions. In The Grass Roots of English History, David Hey examines the differing nature of the various local societies that were found throughout England in these periods. The book provides an update on the progress that has been made in recent years in our understanding of the history of ordinary people living in different types of local societies throughout England, and demonstrates the value of studying the varied landscapes of England, from towns to villages, farmsteads, fields and woods to highways and lanes, and historic buildings from cathedrals to cottages. With its broad coverage from the medieval period up to the Industrial Revolution, the book shows how England's socio-economic landscape had changed over time, employing evidence provided by archaeology, architecture, botany, cultural studies, linguistics and historical demography. The Grass Roots of English History provides an up-to-date account of the present state of knowledge about ordinary people in local societies throughout England written by an authority in the field, and as such will be of great value to all scholars of local and family history.

This book explores the strengths and weaknesses of the English state in the sixteenth century. It examines the relationship between monarchy and people in Cornwall and Devon, and the complex interaction between local and national political culture. Popular resistance to the Reformation, and the rebellions of 1497 and 1548-9, are set against the strategies employed by the crown to cultivate the allegiance of its subjects. Royal propaganda, both literary and visual, is identified as a key factor in the development of patriotism and the nation state. This book offers a fresh understanding of government at the allegedly dangerous edges of Tudor England.

Benjamin Franklin Morris' monumental work on the Christian roots of America.

This volume presents one of the most important historical sources for medieval Islamic scholarship - Khwandamir's "The Reign of the Mongol and the Turk". It covers the major empires and dynasties of the Persianate world from the 13th to the 16th century, including the conquests of the Mongols, Tamerlane, and the rise of the Safavids. Distinguished linguist and orientalist, Wheeler M. Thackston, provides a lucid, annotated translation that makes this key material accessible to a wide range of scholars.

This pioneering study is the first to examine all the English settlements attempted in Ireland during the years 1580-1650. The author looks at the arguments in favour of a "plantation" policy and Irish responses to it in practice. He places what happened in Ireland in the context of events in England, Scotland, Continental Europe, and England's Atlantic colonies.

Francis I's ties with the Ottoman Empire marked the birth of court-sponsored Orientalism in France. Under Louis XIV, French society was transformed by cross-cultural contacts with the Ottomans, India, Persia, China, Siam and the Americas. The consumption of silk, cotton cloth, spices, coffee, tea, china, gems, flowers and other luxury goods transformed daily life and gave rise to a new discourse about the 'Orient' which in turn shaped ideas about economy and politics, specifically absolutism and the monarchy.  An original account of the ancient regime, this book highlights France's use of the exotic and analyzes French discourse about Islam and the 'Orient'.

Behemoth is Thomas Hobbes's narrative of the English Civil Wars from the beginning of the Scottish revolution in 1637 to the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, and is his only composition to address directly the history of the events which formed the context of his writings in Leviathan and elsewhere on sovereignty and the government of the Church. Although presented as an account of past events, it conceals a vigorous attack on the values of the religious and political establishment of Restoration England. This is the first fully scholarly edition of the work, and the first new edition of the text since 1889. Based on Hobbes's own presentation manuscript, it includes for the first time an accurate transcription of the passages which Hobbes had deleted in the text, and notes made by early readers.

A large number of enciphered documents survived from early modern Hungary. This area was a particularly fertile territory where cryptographic methods proliferated, because a large portion of the population was living in the frontier zone, and participated (or was forced to participate) in the network of the information flow. A quantitative analysis of sixteenth-century to seventeenth-century Hungarian ciphers (300 cipher keys and 1,600 partly or entirely enciphered letters) reveals that besides the dominance of diplomatic use of cryptography, there were many examples of YprivateOE applications too. This book reconstructs the main reasons and goals why historical actors chose to use ciphers in a diplomatic letter, a military order, a diary or a private letter, what they decided to encrypt, and how they perceived the dangers threatening their messages.

This book contains twenty essays on Italian Renaissance humanism, universities, and Jesuit education by one of its most distinguished living historians, Paul. F. Grendler. The first section of the book opens with defining Renaissance humanism, followed by explorations of biblical humanism and humanistic education in Venice. It concludes with essays on two pioneering historians of humanism, Georg Voigt and Paul Oskar Kristeller. The middle section discusses Italian universities, the sports played by university students, a famous law professor, and the controversy over the immortality of the soul. The last section analyzes Jesuit education: the culture of the Jesuit teacher, the philosophy curriculum, attitudes toward Erasmus and Juan Luis Vives, and the education of a cardinal. This volume collects Paul Grendler's most recent research (published and unpublished), offering to the reader a broad fresco on a complex and crucial age in the history of education.

This title presents the European Reformation as seen through the life of an important but little-known participant-Philipp of Hesse, a nobleman who became a Reformation leader in Germany. The Reformation was the most cataclysmic event in Western Christianity. An ideal resource for undergraduate history students and general readers, this title provides an accessible human narrative through the complex events of the period that many find bewildering. History comes alive and events unfold through the eyes of Philipp of Hesse, a German nobleman who ascended to becoming a key Reformation leader. The book begins with a detailed survey of the Holy Roman Empire at the turn of the 16th century and provides chronological coverage of Philipp's life and role in the Reformation through to after his death in 1567, after which Calvinism rose within the empire. The chapters document how Philipp of Hesse knew every major figure of the German Reformation; participated in every major Reformation-era imperial diet; was present at every important event in the Lutheran-dominated, foundational period of 1521 to 1555; and became a leading Lutheran prince in the Holy Roman Empire. Additionally, the work thoroughly documents the connections between religion, politics, and society and explains the important role of the German nobility in the development of the Reformation. Provides a fresh approach to a curricular staple topic that is critical to the understanding of early modern history, the history of religion, and the current state of Christianity Enables readers to understand how the events of the Reformation unfolded by viewing the events through the perspective of one man central to the cause and demonstrating how certain individuals' convictions led to the theology that followed

Drugs and Theater in Early Modern England asks why Shakespeare and his contemporary playwrights were so preoccupied with drugs and poisons and, at a deeper level, why both critics and supporters of the theater, as well as playwrights themselves, so frequently adopted a chemical vocabulary to describe the effects of the theater on audiences. Drawing upon original medical and literary research, Pollard shows that the potency of the link between drugs and plays in the period demonstrates a model of drama radically different than our own, a model in which plays exert a powerful impact on spectators' bodies as well as minds. Early modern physiology held that the imagination and emotions were part of the body, and exerted a material impact on it, yet scholars of medicine and drama alike have not recognised the consequences of this idea. Plays, which alter our emotions and thought, simultaneously change us physically. This book argues that the power of the theater in early modern England, as well as the striking hostility to it, stems from the widely held contemporary idea that drama acted upon the body as well as the mind. In yoking together pharmacy and theater, this book offers a new model for understanding the relationship between texts and bodies. Just as bodies are constituted in part by the imaginative fantasies they consume, the theater's success (and notoriety) depends on its power over spectators' bodies. Drugs, which conflate concerns about unreliable appearances and material danger, evoked fascination and fear in this period by identifying a convergence point between the imagination and the body, the literary and the scientific, the magical and the rational. This book explores that same convergence point, and uses it to show the surprising physiological powers attributed to language, and especially to the embodied language of the theater.

Universities were driving forces of change in late Renaissance Italy. The Gonzaga, the ruling family of Mantua, had long supported scholarship and dreamed of founding an institution of higher learning within the city. In the early seventeenth century they joined forces with the Jesuits, a powerful intellectual and religious force, to found one of the most innovative universities of the time.

Paul F. Grendler provides the first book in any language about the Peaceful University of Mantua, its official name. He traces the efforts of Duke Ferdinando Gonzaga, a prince savant who debated Galileo, as he made his family's dream a reality. Ferdinando negotiated with the Jesuits, recruited professors, and financed the school. Grendler examines the motivations of the Gonzaga and the Jesuits in the establishment of a joint civic and Jesuit university.

The University of Mantua lasted only six years, lost during the brutal sack of the city by German troops in 1630. Despite its short life, the university offered original scholarship and teaching. It had the first professorship of chemistry more than 100 years before any other Italian university. The leading professor of medicine identified the symptoms of angina pectoris 140 years before an English scholar named the disease. The star law professor advanced new legal theories while secretly spying for James I of England. The Jesuits taught humanities, philosophy, and theology in ways both similar to and different from lay professors.

A superlative study of education, politics, and culture in seventeenth-century Italy, this book reconsiders a period in Italy's history often characterized as one of feckless rulers and stagnant learning. Thanks to extensive archival research and a thorough examination of the published works of the university's professors, Grendler's history tells a new story.

In The 1624 Tumult of Mexico in Perspective Angela Ballone offers, for the first time, a comprehensive study of an understudied period of Mexican early modern history. By looking at the mandates of three viceroys who, to varying degrees, participated in the events surrounding the Tumult, the book discusses royal authority from a transatlantic perspective that encompasses both sides of the Iberian Atlantic. Considering the similarities and tensions that coexisted in the Iberian Atlantic, Ballone offers a thorough reassessment of current historiography on the Tumult proving that, despite the conflicts and arguments underlying the disturbances, there was never any intention to do away with the king's authority in New Spain.

How did individuals advance to the highest ranks in the Dutch colonial administrations? And how, once appointed, was this rank retained? To answer these questions, this book explores the careers of Dutch colonial governors in the 17th century with a focus on two case-studies: Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen, governor of Dutch Brazil (1636-1644) and Rijckloff Volckertsz van Goens, Governor-General in Batavia in the 1670s. By comparing a Western (Atlantic, WIC) and an Eastern (Asian, VOC) example, this book shows how networks sustaining career-making differed in the various parts of the empire: the West India Company was much more involved in domestic political debates, and this led to a closer integration of political patronage networks, while the East India Company was better able to follow an independent course. The book shows that to understand the inner workings of the Dutch India companies, we need to understand the lives of those who turned the empire into their career.

Published in celebration of the Purchase's bicentennial, this resource offers a multifaceted view of a watershed American event. In one easy-access resource, The Louisiana Purchase brings together the work of over 100 experts covering historical figures, relevant legal and historical concepts, states that formed in the new territory, frontier outposts, and the Native Americans uprooted by expansion westward. The book examines every aspect and consequence of Thomas Jefferson's momentous transaction: the largest real estate deal in American history. Readers will learn how the purchase made Manifest Destiny really seem like destiny; how it sparked the rise of America's urban industrial society and inflamed passions over the expansion of slavery; and how it triggered tragic conflicts between the government and Native Americans as well as immeasurable environmental damage. Ideal for students, historians, and public and private libraries, the Encyclopedia is the most comprehensive reference ever compiled on an event so central to the American experience that it seems to lie at the heart of everything triumphant and tragic in our history. 300 signed, A-Z essays, accompanied by an introduction placing the Louisiana Purchase in the context of American history Lavishly illustrated including line drawings, photographs such as the opening ceremonies of the 1904 Louisiana Purchase International Exposition, and key figures such as Thomas Paine and James Madison 100+ contributors, including well-known experts in the field Six maps, 49 pertinent historical documents, a chronology, and an extensive bibliography