Description
Book SynopsisInterpreting Early Modern Europe is a comprehensive collection of essays on the historiography of the early modern period (circa 1450-1800).
Concerned with the principles, priorities, theories, and narratives behind the writing of early modern history, the book places particular emphasis on developments in recent scholarship. Each chapter, written by a prominent historian caught up in the debates, is devoted to the varieties of interpretation relating to a specific theme or field considered integral to understanding the age, providing readers with a behind-the-scenes' look at how historians have worked, and still work, within these fields. At one level the emphasis is historiographical, with the essays engaged in a direct dialogue with the influential theories, methods, assumptions, and conclusions in each of the fields. At another level the contributions emphasise the historical dimensions of interpretation, providing readers with surveys of the component part
Trade Review
‘Interpreting Early Modern Europe will provide generations of students with a secure guide to how their subject has evolved and is evolving. Its value is enhanced by the inclusion of extracts from important sources and from the writings of key historians.’
Hamish Scott, Canadian Journal of History, 2022
‘[M]any [of the authors] are themselves responsible for the current shape of important fields in the discipline of history. […] No contribution merely dishes up a standard story; many offer strikingly imaginative rethinkings of the subject at hand. […] In the end, readers will find themselves struck by the ways in which a larger, more original picture of early modern Europe, as a whole, has emerged.’
Mary Lindemann, Renaissance Quarterly, 2022
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Interpreting Early Modern Europe; Chapter 1: Medieval and Modern; Chapter 2: Identities and Encounters; Chapter 3: Gender and Social Structures; Chapter 4: Renaissance; Chapter 5: Reformations; Chapter 6: Media and Communication; Chapter 7: Material Cultures; Chapter 8: The State; Chapter 9: War and the Military Revolution; Chapter 10: Expansion, Space and People; Chapter 11: Commerce and Industry; Chapter 12: Science and Reason; Chapter 13: Popular Cultures and Witchcraft; Chapter 14: Political Thought; Chapter 15: Enlightenment Struggles; Chaper 16: French Revolution; Chapter 17: Turns and Perspectives
