Volume VIII of Acta Historiae Neerlandicae again presents studies on the history of the Low Countries which it is hoped will be of interest to foreign scholars. The intention has been to deal with a fairly long period, and many differing aspects, of the subject. So institutional, political, economic, social and cultural history all receive a fair share of attention, and together the studies cover a considerable number of centuries. It is, however, striking to note how even this restricted number of studies reflects prevailing viewpoints among today's Low Countries' historians. Clearly there is considerable stress on economic and social questions. Traditional studies such as those of former Belgian historians on medieval history, or those of the Dutch on the seventeenth century, are now giving way to works that are problem directed. Power structures, the position of the bourgeoisie, reactions of the intelli gentsia and theologians to societal problems, have now more attraction for scholars than the glories of late medieval wealth in Flanders or Holland's Golden Age. Terms such as Guerilla warfare, Struggle, Depression, typify today's critical approach to society in general.

This is an account of the ordinary working people of Holland in the seventeenth-century, the so-called ‘golden age’. Professor van Deursen is the most outstanding and gifted scholar at present working on this period of Dutch history. His history ‘from below’ is based on a mass of contemporary documentary evidence and the text is enlivened by contemporary illustrations. Ranging over a broad spectrum of everyday conditions, sex, marriage, leisure, religion and popular culture, this is the most comprehensive study yet published of the plain lives of a ‘golden age’.