A landmark study of the history of male-male sex in early modern Europe, including the European colonies and the Ottoman world. Until quite recently, the history of male-male sexual relations was a taboo topic. But when historians eventually explored the archives of Florence, Venice and elsewhere, they brought to light an extraordinary world of early modern sexual activity, extending from city streets and gardens to taverns, monasteries and Mediterranean galleys. Typically, the sodomites (as they were called) were adult men seeking sex with teenage boys. This was something intriguingly different from modern homosexuality: the boys ceased to be desired when they became fully masculine. And the desire for them was seen as natural; no special sexual orientation was assumed. The rich evidence from Southern Europe in the Renaissance period was not matched in the Northern lands; historians struggled to apply this new knowledge to countries such as England or its North American colonies. And when good Northern evidence did appear, from after 1700, it presented a very different picture. So the theory was formed - and it has dominated most standard accounts until now - that the 'emergence of modern homosexuality' happened suddenly, but inexplicably, at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Noel Malcolm's masterly study solves this and many other problems, by doing something which no previous scholar has attempted: giving a truly pan-European account of the whole phenomenon of male-male sexual relations in the early modern period. It includes the Ottoman Empire, as well as the European colonies in the Americas and Asia; it describes the religious and legal norms, both Christian and Muslim; it discusses the literary representations in both Western Europe and the Ottoman world; and it presents a mass of individual human stories, from New England to North Africa, from Scandinavia to Peru. Original, critical, lucidly written and deeply researched, this work will change the way we think about the history of homosexuality in early modern Europe.

Impeccably aristocratic and eccentric in a uniquely English tradition, Aubrey Herbert was at first sight an incongruous champion of Albanian nationalism, to say the least. Tall, slender and slightly stooped, with a moustache and heavily lidded eyes, Herbert wore a monocle and had white patches in his hair caused by an attack of alopoecia in 1911. Within England -- let alone abroad -- he cut a colorful figure

But Herbert was also an acclaimed linguist, intrepid traveller and an outspoken and independent thinker, who became enthralled by the Balkans on his first visit to the region in 1904 as honorary attache at the British Embassy in Constantinople. From that time until his death in 1923, he was indefatigable in campaigning for the Albanian cause. He returned frequently to the country and gained respect as an expert on the region, even being honored with repeated requests that he assume the Albanian throne.

"Albania's Greatest Friend" charts Herbert's involvement with Albania over the course of his life, in his own words, through his own extensive diaries and letters. It paints an authoritative portrait not just of a remarkable Englishman but also sheds fresh light on the wider Albanian national movement and a fascinating period in European history.

By the early-1980s Kosovo had reached a state of permanent crisis and military occupation, and it became the main focus for the revival of Serbian nationalism. This book traces the history of Kosovo, examining the Yugoslavian conflict, and the part played by Western Europe in its destruction. 'This is a profound and important book, essential reading for those who wish to understand either the complex history or the present politics of Yugoslavia.' Hugh Trevor-Roper, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'A dreadnought of a book, all big guns, covering the whole history of Kosovo, with an authority that is often breathtaking and never oppressive.' Norman Stone, SUNDAY TIMES

In the second half of the sixteenth century, most of the Christian states of Western Europe were on the defensive against a Muslim superpower - the Empire of the Ottoman sultans. There was violent conflict, from raiding and corsairing to large-scale warfare, but there were also many forms of peaceful interaction across the surprisingly porous frontiers of these opposing power-blocs. Agents of Empire describes the paths taken through the eastern Mediterranean and its European hinterland by members of a Venetian-Albanian family, almost all of them previously invisible to history. They include an archbishop in the Balkans, the captain of the papal flagship at the Battle of Lepanto, the power behind the throne in the Ottoman province of Moldavia, and a dragoman (interpreter) at the Venetian embassy in Istanbul. Through the life-stories of these adventurous individuals over three generations, Noel Malcolm casts the world between Venice, Rome and the Ottoman Empire in a fresh light, illuminating subjects as diverse as espionage, diplomacy, the grain trade, slave-ransoming and anti-Ottoman rebellion. He describes the conflicting strategies of the Christian powers, and the extraordinarily ambitious plans of the sultans and their viziers. Few works since Fernand Braudel's classic account of the sixteenth-century Mediterranean, published more than sixty years ago, have ranged so widely through this vital period of Mediterranean and European history. A masterpiece of scholarship as well as story-telling, Agents of Empire builds up a panoramic picture, both of Western power-politics and of the interrelations between the Christian and Ottoman worlds.

Thanks to its half-century under Communism, as well as its little-known language, Albania has suffered from neglect and a sense of isolation. Yet, as this study helps to show, the Albanian lands have a long history of interaction with others. They have been a meeting-ground of Christianity and Islam; a channel through which Venice connected with the Ottoman Balkans; a place of interest to the Habsburgs; and a focus for the ambitions of neighbouring powers in the late Ottoman period. Albanians themselves could have many different identities. The studies in this volume, by one of the world's leading experts on Albanian history, range from the fifteenth century to the twentieth, taking in politics, social history, religion and diplomacy. Each is based on original research; the longest, on Ali Pasha, uses a wealth of manuscript material to tell, for the first time, the full story of the vital role he played in the international politics of the Napoleonic Wars. Other studies bring to life ordinary individuals hitherto unknown to history: women hauled before the Inquisition, for example, or the author of the first Albanian autobiography. Some of these studies have been printed before (several in hard-to-find publications, and one only in Albanian), but the greater part of this book appears here for the first time. This is not only a landmark publication for readers interested in south-east European history. It also engages with many broader issues, including religious conversion, 'crypto-Christianity' among Muslims, methods of enslavement within the Ottoman Empire, and the nature of modern myth-making about national identity.

First full-length study of the composer George Enescu [1881-1955]. The Romanian composer George Enescu (1881-1955] is one of the neglected giants of the twentieth century. Prodigiously gifted, he became best known in America as a conductor (where he was considered as a successor to Toscanini in New York) and in Europe as one of the greatest violinists of the century. But he was first and foremost a composer; and, tragically, his mature works - works of extraordinary emotional depth and intricate beauty - remain almost unknown outside Romania. This, the first full-length study of Enescu and his music to be written in the West, tells the story of his life and development as a composer. All of Enescu's published compositions, and many unpublished works, are discussed, and there is a detailed list of Enescu's compositions and a list of all his known recordings as conductor, violinist and pianist. The book is intended for the non-specialist reader as well as the musicologist. NOEL MALCOLM, the historian, philosopher and journalist, is the leading authority on Enescu.

From the fall of Constantinople in 1453 until the eighteenth century, many Western European writers viewed the Ottoman Empire with almost obsessive interest. Typically they reacted to it with fear and distrust; and such feelings were reinforced by the deep hostility of Western Christendom towards Islam. Yet there was also much curiosity about the social and political system on which the huge power of the sultans was based. In the sixteenth century, especially, when Ottoman territorial expansion was rapid and Ottoman institutions seemed particularly robust, there was even open admiration. In this path-breaking book Noel Malcolm ranges through these vital centuries of East-West interaction, studying all the ways in which thinkers in the West interpreted the Ottoman Empire as a political phenomenon - and Islam as a political religion. Useful Enemies shows how the concept of 'oriental despotism' began as an attempt to turn the tables on a very positive analysis of Ottoman state power, and how, as it developed, it interacted with Western debates about monarchy and government. Noel Malcolm also shows how a negative portrayal of Islam as a religion devised for political purposes was assimilated by radical writers, who extended the criticism to all religions, including Christianity itself. Examining the works of many famous thinkers (including Machiavelli, Bodin, and Montesquieu) and many less well-known ones, Useful Enemies illuminates the long-term development of Western ideas about the Ottomans, and about Islam. Noel Malcolm shows how these ideas became intertwined with internal Western debates about power, religion, society, and war. Discussions of Islam and the Ottoman Empire were thus bound up with mainstream thinking in the West on a wide range of important topics. These Eastern enemies were not just there to be denounced. They were there to be made use of, in arguments which contributed significantly to the development of Western political thought.

Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan is one of the most important philosophical texts in the English language, and one of the most influential works of political philosophy ever written. This Introduction accompanies the first critical edition based on a full study of the manuscript and printing history, and the first edition to place the English text side by side with Hobbes's later Latin version of it. The volume provides a path-breaking account of the work's context, sources, and textual history. Noel Malcolm's definitive work will set the study of Hobbes's masterwork on a new basis. The English and Latin Texts (Volumes 2 and 3) are available together in paperback as a two-volume pack: ISBN 978-0-19-872396-7. This Editorial Introduction (Volume 1) is also available in a three-volume paperback pack, alongside the English and Latin Texts (Volumes 2 and 3), ISBN: 978-0-19-870908-4. The hardback three-volume set can also be purchased: ISBN 978-0-19-960262-9

Acclaimed writer and historian Noel Malcolm presents his sensational discovery of a new work by Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679): a propaganda pamphlet on behalf of the Habsburg side in the Thirty Years' War, translated by Hobbes from a Latin original. Malcolm's book explores a fascinating episode in seventeenth-century history, illuminating both the practice of early modern propaganda and the theory of "reason of state."

Acclaimed writer and historian Noel Malcolm presents his sensational discovery of a new work by Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679): a propaganda pamphlet on behalf of the Habsburg side in the Thirty Years' War, translated by Hobbes from a Latin original. Malcolm's book explores a fascinating episode in seventeenth-century history, illuminating both the practice of early modern propaganda and the theory of "reason of state."

The mathematician John Pell was a member of that golden generation of scientists Boyle, Wren, Hooke, and others which came together in the early Royal Society. Although he left a huge body of manuscript materials, he has remained an extraordinarily neglected figure, whose papers have never been properly explored. This book, the first ever full-length study of Pell, presents an in-depth account of his life and mathematical thinking, based on a detailed study of his manuscripts. It not only restores to his proper place in history a figure who was one of the leading mathematicians of his day; it also brings to life a strange, appealing, but awkward character, whose failure to publish his discoveries was caused by powerful scruples. In addition, this book shows that the range of Pell's interests extended far beyond mathematics. He was a key member of the circle of the 'intelligencer' Samuel Hartlib; he prepared translations of works by Descartes and Comenius; in the 1650s he served as Cromwell's envoy to Switzerland; and in the last part of his life he was an active member of the Royal Society, interested in the whole range of its activities. The study of Pell's life and thought thus illuminates many different aspects of 17th-century intellectual life. The book is in three parts. The first is a detailed biography of Pell; the second is an extended essay on his mathematical work; the third is a richly annotated edition of his correspondence with Sir Charles Cavendish. This correspondence, which has often been cited by scholars but has never been published in full, is concerned not only with mathematics but also with optics, philosophy, and many other subjects; conducted mainly while Pell was in the Netherlands and Cavendish was also on the Continent, it is an unusually fascinating example of the correspondence that flourished in the 17th-century 'Republic of letters'. This book will be an essential resource not only for historians of mathematics, science, and philosophy, but also for intellectual and cultural historians of early modern Europe.

[NB in publicity materials use short description + first few review quotes if short of space] Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) is one of the most important figures in the history of European thought. Although best known for his political theory, he also wrote about theology, metaphysics, physics, optics, mathematics, psychology, and literary criticism. All of these interests are reflected in his correspondence. Some small groups of his letters have been printed in the past (often in inaccurate transcriptions), but this edition is the first complete collection of his correspondence, nearly half of which has never been printed before. All the letters have been transcribed from the original sources, and all materials in Latin, French, and Italian are printed together with translations in clear modern English. The letters are fully annotated, and there are long biographical entries on all of his correspondents, based on extensive original research. These two volumes form one of the most significant and valuable publications of Hobbes scholarship this century, casting a new light on the whole pattern of his intellectual life and personal friendships.

[NB in publicity materials use short description + first few review quotes if short of space] Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) is one of the most important figures in the history of European thought. Although best known for his political theory, he also wrote about theology, metaphysics, physics, optics, mathematics, psychology, and literary criticism. All of these interests are reflected in his correspondence. Some small groups of his letters have been printed in the past (often in inaccurate transcriptions), but this edition is the first complete collection of his correspondence, nearly half of which has never been printed before. All the letters have been transcribed from the original sources, and all materials in Latin, French, and Italian are printed together with translations in clear modern English. The letters are fully annotated, and there are long biographical entries on all of his correspondents, based on extensive original research. These two volumes form one of the most significant and valuable publications of Hobbes scholarship this century, casting a new light on the whole pattern of his intellectual life and personal friendships.

This updated edition of Noel Malcolm's highly-acclaimed "Bosnia: A Short History" provides the reader with the most comprehensive narrative history of Bosnia in the English language. Malcolm examines the different religious and ethnic inhabitants of Bosnia, a land of vast cultural upheaval where the empires of Rome, Charlemagne, the Ottomans, and the Austro-Hungarians overlapped. Clarifying the various myths that have clouded the modern understanding of Bosnia's past, Malcolm brings to light the true causes of the country's destruction. This expanded edition of Bosnia includes a new epilogue by the author examining the failed Vance-Owen peace plan, the tenuous resolution of the Dayton Accords, and the efforts of the United Nations to keep the uneasy peace.

What went wrong in the country where Christians and Muslims mingled and tolerated each other for over five centuries? It was a land with a vibrant political and cultural history, unlike any other in Europe, where great powers and religions-the empires of Rome, Charlemagne, the Ottomans; the faiths of Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Judaism, and Islam overlapped and combined. In this first English-language history of Bosnia, Noel Malcolm provides a narrative chronicle of the country from its beginnings to its tragic end. Clarifying the various myths that have clouded the modern understanding of Bosnia's past, Malcolm brings to light the true causes of the country's destruction: the political strategy of the Serbian leadership, the conflict between the city and the countryside, the fatal inaction and miscalculations of Western politicians. Putting the Bosnia war into perspective, this volume celebrates the complex history of a country whose past, as well as its future, has been all but erased. At last, here is the guide for the general reader seeking a comprehensive and accessible account of the war in the former Yugoslavia.

Table of Contents

A Note on Names and Pronunciations
Maps
Introduction
1. Races, myths and origins: Bosnia to 1180
2. The medieval Bosnian state, 1180-1463
3. The Bosnian Church
4. War and the Ottoman system, 1463-1606
5. The Islamicization of Bosnia
6. Serbs and Vlachs
7. War and politics in Ottoman Bosnia, 1606-1815
8. Economic life, culture and society in Ottoman Bosnia, 1606-1815
9. The Jews and the Gypsies of Bosnia
10. Resistance and reform, 1815-1878
11. Bosnia under Austro-Hungarian rule, 1878-1914
12. War and the kingdom: Bosnia 1914-1941
13. Bosnia and the second world war, 1941-1945
14. Bosnia in Titoist Yugoslavia, 1945-1989
15. Bosnia and the death of Yugoslavia: 1989-1992
16. The destruction of Bosnia: 1992-1993
Notes
Glossary
Bibliography
Index

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) is one of the most important figures in the history of European philosophy. Although best known for his political theory, he also wrote about theology, metaphysics, physics, optics, mathematics, psychology, and literary criticism. All of these interests are reflected in his correspondence. Some small groups of his letters have been printed in the past (often in inaccurate transcriptions), but this edition is the first complete collection of his correspondence, nearly half of which has never been printed before. All the letters have been transcribed from the original sources, and all materials in Latin, French, and Italian are printed together with translations in clear modern English. The letters are fully annotated, and there are long biographical entries on all of his correspondents, based on extensive original research. The whole pattern of Hobbes's intellectual life and personal friendships is set in a new light. This is one of the most significant and valuable scholarly publications of this century.

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) is one of the most important figures in the history of European thought. Although interest in his life and work has grown enomrously in recent years, this is the first complete edition of his correspondence. The texts of the letters are richly supplemented with explanatory notes and full biographical and bibliographical information. This landmark publication sheds new light in abundance on the intellectual life of a major thinker.

Noel Malcolm, one of the world's leading experts on Thomas Hobbes, presents a set of extended essays on a wide variety of aspects of the life and work of this giant of early modern thought. Malcolm offers a succinct introduction to Hobbes's life and thought, as a foundation for his discussion of such topics as his political philosophy, his theory of international relations, the development of his mechanistic world-view, and his subversive Biblical criticism. Several of the essays pay special attention to the European dimensions of Hobbes's life, his sources and his influence; the longest surveys the entire European reception of his work from the 1640s to the 1750s. All the essays are based on a deep knowledge of primary sources, and many present striking new discoveries about Hobbes's life, his manuscripts, and the printing history of his works. Aspects of Hobbes will be essential reading not only for Hobbes specialists, but also for all those interested in seventeenth-century intellectual history more generally, both British and European.