Designed to help students better understand the vitally important historical events of 18th century American history, this volume in the acclaimed series presents 10 major events in separate chapters. From the Great Awakening early in the century to Jefferson's Revolution of 1800, each chapter goes beyond the traditional textbook treatment of history by considering the immediate and far-reaching ramifications of each event. Events covered are: The Great Awakening, The Era of Salutary Neglect, The French and Indian War, The Stamp Act, The Boston Tea Party, The Declaration of Independence, The American Revolution, The Constitutional Convention, The XYZ Affair, and The Revolution of 1800.

Each chapter features an introductory essay that presents the facts of the event, followed by an interpretive essay that places the event in a broader context and promotes student analysis. The introductory essay provides factual material in a clear, concise, chronological manner that makes complex history understandable. The interpretive essay, written by a recognized authority in the field and written in a style designed to appeal to a general readership, assesses the event in terms of its political, economic, sociocultural, and international/diplomatic significance. With its emphasis on factual details and interpretive analysis, an illustration, and an annotated bibliography for each event, a glossary of names, events, and terms of the period, a timeline of important events in eighteenth-century history, and a table of the population of the colonies and selected colonial towns, "Events That Changed America in the Eighteenth Century" is an ideal addition to the high school, community college, and undergraduate reference shelf, as well as excellent supplementary reading in social studies and American history courses.

Denys Hay is one of the best known British historians of the Renaissance. His work is marked by a judicious and readable style, an equal interest in the affairs of England and Italy, and an ability to hold in balance the claims of political and cultural history. This collection brings together the important part of Professor Hay's work that has appeared as essays and represents all his major interests.

Tsar Ivan the Terrible (Ivan IV, 1533-1584) is one of the most controversial rulers in Russian history, infamous for his cruelty. He was the first Russian ruler to use mass terror as a political instrument, and the only Russian ruler to do so before Stalin. Comparisons of Ivan to Stalin only exacerbated the politicization of his image. Russians have never agreed on his role in Russian history, but his reign is too important to ignore. Since the abolition of censorship in 1991 professional historians and amateurs have grappled with this problem. Some authors have manipulated that image to serve political and cultural agendas. This book explores Russia's contradictory historical memory of Ivan in scholarly, pedagogical and political publications.

The Mask and the Man

Franklin's influence on the course of the revolutionary movement is seen in a new light by a distinguished historian of early America.

Benjamin Franklin was a man of genius and enormous ego, smart enough not to flaunt his superiority but to let others proclaim it. To understand him and his role in great events, one must realize the omnipresence of this ego, and the extent to which he mirrored the feelings of other colonial Pennsylvanians. With this in mind, Francis Jennings sets forth some new ideas about Franklin as the "first American." In so doing, he provides a new view of the beginnings of the American Revolution in Franklin's struggle against William Penn. By striving against Penn's feudal lordship (and therefore against King George) Franklin became master of the Pennsylvania assembly. It was in this role that he suggested a meeting of the Continental Congress which, as Jennings notes, flies in the face of historical opinion which suggests that Boston patriots had to drag Pennsylvanians into the revolution.

Americans are fond of reflecting upon the Founding Fathers, the noble group of men who came together to force out the tyranny of the British and bring democracy to the land. Unfortunately, as Terry Bouton shows in this highly provocative first book, the Revolutionary elite often seemed as determined to squash democracy after the war as they were to support it before.
Centering on Pennsylvania, the symbolic and logistical center of the Revolution, Bouton shows how this radical shift in ideology spelled tragedy for hundreds of common people. Leading up to the Revolution, Pennsylvanians were united in their opinion that "the people" (i.e. white men) should be given access to the political system, and that some degree of wealth equality (i.e. among white men) was required to ensure that political freedom prevailed. As the war ended, Pennsylvania's elites began brushing aside these ideas, using their political power to pass laws to enrich their own estates and hinder political organization by their opponents. By the 1780s, they had reenacted many of the same laws that they had gone to war to abolish, returning Pennsylvania to a state of economic depression and political hegemony. This unhappy situation led directly to the Whiskey and Fries rebellions, popular uprisings both put down by federal armies.
Bouton's work reveals a unique perspective, showing intimately how the war and the events that followed affected poor farmers and working people. Bouton introduces us to unsung heroes from this time--farmers, weavers, and tailors who put their lives on hold to fight to save democracy from the forces of "united avarice." We also get a starkly new look at some familiar characters from theRevolution, including Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington, who Bouton strives to make readers see as real, flawed people, blinded by their own sense of entitlement.
Taming Democracy represents a turning point in how we view the outcomes of the Revolutionary War and the motivations of the powerful men who led it. Its eye-opening revelations and insights make it an essential read for all readers with a passion for uncovering the true history of America.

British Captives from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1563-1760 provides the first study of British captives in the North African Atlantic and Mediterranean, from the reign of Elizabeth I to George II. Based on extensive archival research in the United Kingdom, Nabil Matar furnishes the names of all captives while examining the problems that historians face in determining the numbers of early modern Britons in captivity. Matar also describes the roles which the monarchy, parliament, trading companies, and churches played (or did not play) in ransoming captives. He questions the emphasis on religious polarization in piracy and shows how much financial constraints, royal indifference, and corruption delayed the return of captives. As rivarly between Britain and France from 1688 on dominated the western Mediterranean and Atlantic, Matar concludes by showing how captives became the casus belli that justified European expansion.

This book examines Christian ethnographic writing about the Jews in early modern Europe, offering a systematic historical analysis of this literary genre and arguing its importance for better understanding both the period in general and Jewish-Christian relations in particular. The book focuses on nearly 80 texts from Western Europe (mostly Germany) that describe the customs and ceremonies of the contemporary Jews, containing both descriptions and illustrations of their subjects. Deutsch is one of the first scholars to study these unique writings in extensive detail. He examines books in which Christian authors describe Jewish life and provides new interpretations of Christian perceptions of Jews, Christian Hebraism, and the attention paid by the Hebraist to contemporary Jews and Judaism. Since many of the authors were converts, studying their books offers new insights into conversion during the period. Their work presents new perspectives the study of religion, developments in the field of anthropology and ethnography, and internal Christian debates that arose from the portrayal of Jewish life. Despite the lack of attention by modern scholars, some of these books were extremely popular in their time and represent one of the important ways by which Jews were perceived during the period. The key claim of the study is that, although almost all of the descriptions of Jewish customs are accurate, the authors chose to concentrate mainly on details that show the Jewish ceremonies as anti-Christian, superstitious, and ridiculous; these details also reveal the deviation of Judaism from the Biblical law. Deutsch suggests that these ethnographic descriptions are better defined as polemical ethnographies and argues that the texts, despite their polemical tendency, represent a shift from writing about Judaism as a religion to writing about Jews, and from a mode of writing based on stereotypes to one based on direct contact and observation.

In Ritterliche Taten der Gewalt befasst sich Florian Doerschel mit der kriegerischen Seite des deutschen Rittertums im UEbergang vom Mittelalter zur Fruhen Neuzeit. Das Rittertum ist nicht nur von Interesse, um das Selbstverstandnis einer mit fortschreitendem Mittelalter zunehmend kleineren Gruppe zum Ritter geschlagener Manner zu untersuchen. UEber diese Manner und den Ritterstand hinaus entwickelte es eine ungeheure Strahlkraft: Ritterliche Normen pragten vom Kaiser bis hin zum einfachen Burger die mittelalterlichen Gesellschaften. Diese ritterliche Kultur druckte sich insbesondere durch das Selbstverstandnis aus, Krieger zu sein. Physische Gewalt diente somit nicht am Rand, sondern im Mittelpunkt sozialen, militarischen und politischen Lebens auch der Reprasentation und der Kommunikation. Die Studie stutzt sich in erster Linie auf Quellen biographischer und autobiographischer Natur, sogenannte 'Selbstzeugnisse'. In Ritterliche Taten der Gewalt (Chivalrous Violence) Florian Doerschel deals with the martial side of German chivalry during the transition from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern period. Chivalry is important not only for the self-image of the social group of knighted men, whose numbers declined over the course of the Middle Ages. An extraordinary power radiated from it: chivalrous norms shaped medieval societies as a whole, from Holy Roman Emperor to burgher. This knightly culture was especially expressed in the knight's self-understanding as warrior. Consequently, physical violence stood at the centre, not periphery, of representation and communication in social, military, and political life. The study is primarily based on biographical and autobiographical sources.

Women's Worlds in England presents a unique collection of source materials on women's lives in sixteenth and seventeenth century England. The book introduces a wonderfully diverse group of women and a series of voices that have rarely been heard in history, from Deborah Brackley, a poor Devon servant, to Katharine Whitstone, Oliver Cromwell's sister, and Queen Anne. Drawing on unpublished, archival materials, Women's Worlds explores the everyday lives of ordinary early modern women, including their: * experiences of work, sex, marriage and motherhood * beliefs and spirituality * political activities * relationships * mental worlds In a time when few women could write, this book reveals the multitude of ways in which their voices and experiences leave traces in the written record, and deepens and challenges our understanding of womens lives in the past.

Gives an account of the birth, life, and occasional death of 10,000 early American library collections and traces relationships between the presence of libraries and other aspects of American life. 1876 is considered to mark the beginning of the modern library movement in the United States, but Americans created and used thousands of libraries before that date. While the history of American libraries has not been neglected by scholars, none has examined in detail where in the different parts of the country various libraries came into existence over any extended period of time. The present work does that, detailing the kinds of libraries that existed before 1876 and including 80 to 85 kinds, depending on the way the collections are classified.

Sephardim are the descendants of the Jews expelled from the lands of the Iberian Peninsula in the years 1492-1498, who settled down in the Mediterranean basin. The identifying sign of the Sephardim has been, until the middle of the twentieth century, the language known as Jewish-Spanish. The history, identity and memory of the Sephardim in their Mediterranean dispersal are analysed by the author with a special reference to the Sephardi community of Jerusalem and to the cultural and social changes that characterized the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. However, because of the crucial changes related to modernization and the political circumstances that came into being at the turn of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, the Sephardim lost their unique identity.

Jeanne III d'Albret (1528-1572), queen of Navarre, is a subject of great controversy and fascination, yet only two modern monographs have been written about her, and both are general biographies. This book fills the gap for scholars by concentrating on Jeanne's leading role during the Wars of Religion in the vast territory of Guyenne in southwestern France.
Part One, 'The Promised Land', portrays the growth of Protestantism in Guyenne, the rise of the Albret dynasty, and Jeanne's evangelisation. In part Two, 'Exodus', Queen Jeanne emerges as a Huguenot war leader in the attempt, shown in Part Three, 'Sanctuary', to create a Protestant Guyenne by force of arms.
The book makes extensive use of contemporary sources, including unpublished diplomatic and military dispatches, and a controversial collection of copies of Jeanne's private correspondence.

It was the age of empire and the dawn of political and scientific revolution. The seventeenth century brought about enormous changes in the global political landscape and in the understanding of the principles of science. From this dynamic century, often fraught with upheaval and bustling with fascinating historical actors, several key events are treated by recognized experts in the field. These important events include, among others:

The age of the great Russian tsars, Indian moguls, and Japanese shoguns

The beginning of a four-century dynasty in China

The reign of Louis XIV

The expansion of the Ottoman Empire

England's Glorious Revolution

The Founding of Jamestown

The Thirty Years' War

The Scientific Revolution

To help students understand the major developments of the seventeenth century and their impact on our own time, this unique resource offers detailed description and expert analysis of the century's most important events.

Each of the events is covered in a separate chapter. An introductory essay provides factual materials about the event in a clear, concise, and chronological manner that makes complex history understandable. An interpretive essay, written by a recognized authority in the field, then explores the short-term and far-reaching ramifications of the event. With an annotated bibliography, full-page illustrations, a timeline of important events, a listing of ruling houses and dynasties of the period, and a glossary of names, events, and terms of the seventeenth century, "Events That Changed the World in the Seventeenth Century" is an ideal addition to the high school, community college, and undergraduate reference shelf, as well as excellent supplementary reading for social studies and world history courses.

The concept, practice, institution and appearance of 'the state' have been hotly debated ever since the emergence of history as a discipline within modern scholarship. The field of medieval Islamic history, however, has remained aloof from most of these debates. Rather it tends to take for granted the particularity of dynastic trajectories within slow-changing bureaucratic contexts. Trajectories of State Formation promotes a more critical and connected understanding of state formation in the late medieval Sultanates of Cairo and of the Timurid, Turkmen and Ottoman dynasties. Projecting seven case studies onto a broad canvas of European and West-Asian research, this volume presents a trans-dynastic reconstruction, interpretation and illustration of statist trajectories across fifteenth-century Islamic West-Asia. The contributors are: Georg Christ, Kristof D'hulster, Jan Dumolyn, Albrecht Fuess, Dimitri J. Kastritsis, Beatrice Forbes Manz, John L. Meloy, Jo Van Steenbergen, and Patrick Wing.

This book offers a panorama of movement, mobility, and exchange in the early modern world. While the pre-modern centuries have long been portrayed as static and self-contained, it is now acknowledged that Europe from the Middle Ages onwards saw increasing flows of people and goods. Movement also connected the continent more closely to other parts of the world. The present work challenges dominant notions of the 'fixed,' immobile nature of pre-modern cultures through study of the inter-connected material, social, and cultural dimensions of mobility. The case studies presented here chart the technologies and practices that both facilitated and impeded movement in diverse spheres of social activity such as communication, transport, politics, religion, medicine, and architecture. The chapters underscore the importance of the movement of people and objects through space and across distance to the dynamic economic, political, and cultural life of the early modern period.

Winner of the 2019 SECAC Award for Excellence in Scholarly Research and Publication In The Riddle of Jael, Peter Scott Brown offers the first history of the Biblical heroine Jael in medieval and Renaissance art. Jael, who betrayed and killed the tyrant Sisera in the Book of Judges by hammering a tent peg through his brain as he slept under her care, was a blessed murderess and an especially fertile moral paradox in the art of the early modern period. Jael's representations offer insights into key religious, intellectual, and social developments in late medieval and early modern society. They reflect the influence on art of exegesis, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, humanism and moral philosophy, misogyny and the battle of the sexes, the emergence of syphilis, and the Renaissance ideal of the artist.

This history of the 'Torrid Zone' offers a comprehensive and powerfully rich exploration of the 17th century Anglophone Atlantic world, overturning British and American historiographies and offering instead a vernacular history that skillfully negotiates diverse locations, periodizations, and the fraught waters of ethnicity and gender.

What induced the British to adopt foreign coffee-drinking customs in the seventeenth century? Why did an entirely new social institution, the coffeehouse, emerge as the primary place for consumption of this new drink? In this lively book, Brian Cowan locates the answers to these questions in the particularly British combination of curiosity, commerce, and civil society. Cowan provides the definitive account of the origins of coffee drinking and coffeehouse society, and in so doing he reshapes our understanding of the commercial and consumer revolutions in Britain during the long Stuart century. Britain's virtuosi, gentlemanly patrons of the arts and sciences, were profoundly interested in things strange and exotic. Cowan explores how such virtuosi spurred initial consumer interest in coffee and invented the social template for the first coffeehouses. As the coffeehouse evolved, rising to take a central role in British commercial and civil society, the virtuosi were also transformed by their own invention.

The 16th-century conquest of Mexico and its effects are best understood as cultural manifestations of animal behavior patterns which humans share with other primates. While Nahuas and Spaniards can be distinguished on the basis of learned cultural differences, such differences only exaggerated particular expressions of the universal behavioral patterns they shared. Brutality and benevolence were used in the same way by both to establish hierarchy and cultural bonding. After the conquest, a new Mexican synthesis could be constructed because of these commonalities. Alves explores the formation of that synthesis by examining such aspects of material culture as food, clothing, and shelter-especially as they manifest such universal primate tendencies as hierarchy, reciprocity, benevolence, brutality, xenophobia, curiosity, and territoriality. Alves proposes that humans are historically best understood by using current advances in the fields of primatology and ethology. This groundbreaking book will be of great interest to Latin Americanists, historians, and anthropologists.

Intimately tied to the tenets of the Enlightenment, Romanticism arose as a sort of reaction to that trend, most noticeably in the arts. The movement, which originated in Europe in the late 18th century and lasted until the mid- 19th century, focused on emotion, imagination, an attachment to nature, nostalgia, and spirituality. The art, music and literature produced by that period have been some of history's most influential, and the tenets of the movement spilled over into politics, especially in nationalistic causes. This accessibly written volume is rounded out by primary source documents, biographies of key figures, and a selected bibliography of print and nonprint sources-an ideal resource for students being introduced to the philosophies, works, and artists of the era. Intimately tied to the tenets of the Enlightenment, Romanticism arose as a sort of reaction to that trend, most noticeably in the arts. The movement, which originated in Europe in the late 18th century and lasted until the mid-19th century, focused on emotion, imagination, an attachment to nature, nostalgia, and spirituality. The art, music and literature produced by the period have been some of history's most influential, and the tenets of the movement spilled over into politics, especially in nationalistic causes. This accessibly written volume explores the most critical aspects of the Romantic movement, including its origins as a reaction to the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, its artistic works-poetry, prose, drama, painting, and music-and its environmentalistic and nationalistic legacies. Primary source documents, biographies of key figures, and a selected bibliography of print and nonprint sources make this work an ideal reference source for students and general readers being introduced to the philosophies, works, and artists of the era.

To know how the West was really won, start with the exploits of these unsung mountain men who, like the legendary Jeremiah Johnson, were real buckskin survivalists. Preceded only by Lewis and Clark, beaver fur trappers roamed the river valleys and mountain ranges of the West, living on fish and game, fighting or trading with the Native Americans, and forever heading toward the untamed wilderness. In this story of rough, heroic men and their worlds, Laycock weaves historical facts and practical instruction with profiles of individual trappers, including harrowing escapes, feats of supreme courage and endurance, and sometimes violent encounters with grizzly bears and Native Americans.