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Studies the way in which status symbols operated as a key tool for defining and redefining identities, relations, and power in the hierarchical world of Louis XIV's court.
The princes étrangers, or the foreign princes, were an influential group of courtiers in early modern France, who maintained their unofficial status as 'foreigners' due to membership in sovereign ruling families. Arguably the most influential of these were the princes of Lorraine, a sovereign state on France's eastern border. During the sixteenth century the Lorraine-Guise dominated the culture and politics of France, gaining a reputation as a powerful, manipulative family at the head of the Catholic League in the Wars of Religion and with close relationships with successive Valois monarchs and Catherine de Medici. After the traumas of 1588, however, although they faded from the narrative h...
English summary: Close relationships that go beyond family ties and kinships have become an interdisciplinary research subject that has received a lot of attention. Variations of social ties such as friendship, patronage and social networks ensue from different historical and cultural contexts and, hence, constitute a significant yet under-represented subject of interdisciplinary research. Questions such as the changing semantics of friendship, historical, intercultural and political practices of friendship, patronage and loyalty were the focus of an international conference for a critical discussion and re-assessment of values and norms that constitute such relationships in different cultur...
Indirect rule is widely considered as a defining feature of the nineteenth and twentieth century British Empire but its divisive earlier history remains largely unexplored. Empire of Influence traces the contentious process whereby the East India Company established a system of indirect rule in India in the first decades of the nineteenth century. In a series of thematic chapters covering intelligence gathering, violence, gift giving and the co-optation of the scribal and courtly elite, Callie Wilkinson foregrounds the disagreement surrounding the tactics of the political representatives of the Company and recaptures the experimental nature of early attempts to secure Company control. She demonstrates how these endeavours were reshaped, exploited and resisted by Indians as well as disputed within the Company itself. This important new account exposes the contested origins of these ambiguous relationships of 'protection' and coercion, while identifying the factors that enabled them to take hold and endure.
”O God we thank thee” was sung in the churches of France and Sweden after military victories in the seventeenth century. To celebrate Thanksgiving was a way of thanking God, but also a way for the rulers to legitimize the ever ongoing wars. For the inhabitants it was both an occasion for festivity and a way of getting information about what happened in the battlefield. Yet the image given was selective. Bloody defeats and uneventful everyday life was replaced by spectacular victories and royal glory. Even though the rituals in the two countries were similar in some ways, there were also substantial differences. The propaganda formulated a narrative about what war actually was, and what role the rulers and their subjects should play. In the crisis of 1709 this narrative was profoundly challenged. The book investigates how war events were communicated to the inhabitants of France and Sweden in the seventeenth century by the Church, and especially through days of thanksgiving (called Te Deum in France).
In The Perraults, Oded Rabinovitch takes the fascinating eponymous literary and scientific family as an entry point into the complex and rapidly changing world of early modern France. Today, the Perraults are best remembered for their canonical fairy tales, such as "Cinderella" and "Puss in Boots," most often attributed to Charles Perrault, one of the brothers. While the writing of fairy tales may seem a frivolous enterprise, it was, in fact, linked to the cultural revolution of the seventeenth century, which paved the way for the scientific revolution, the rise of "national literatures," and the early Enlightenment. Rabinovitch argues that kinship networks played a crucial, yet unexamined, ...
A history of the Ottoman incorporation of Arab lands that shows how gentlemanly salons shaped culture, society, and governance Historians have typically linked Ottoman imperial cohesion in the sixteenth century to the bureaucracy or the sultan’s court. In Empire of Salons, Helen Pfeifer points instead to a critical but overlooked factor: gentlemanly salons. Pfeifer demonstrates that salons—exclusive assemblies in which elite men displayed their knowledge and status—contributed as much as any formal institution to the empire’s political stability. These key laboratories of Ottoman culture, society, and politics helped men to build relationships and exchange ideas across the far-flung ...
Dynastic Colonialism analyses how women and men employed objects in particular places across the world during the early modern period in order to achieve the remarkable expansion of the House of Orange-Nassau. Susan Broomhall and Jacqueline Van Gent explore how the House emerged as a leading force during a period in which the Dutch accrued one of the greatest seaborne empires. Using the concept of dynastic colonialism, they explore strategic behaviours undertaken on behalf of the House of Orange-Nassau, through material culture in a variety of sites of interpretation from palaces and gardens to prints and teapots, in Europe and beyond. Using over 140 carefully selected images, the authors co...
A Widow's Vengeance after the Wars of Religion is a dramatic account of the impact of the Wars of Religion on daily life. Based on neglected archival sources and an exceptional criminal trial, it recovers the experiences of women, peasants, and foot soldiers, who are marginalized in most historical accounts.
Medieval society created many kinds of records and written material which differ considerably, giving us such sources as last wills, sermons, manorial accounts, or royal biographies. Primary sources are an exciting way for students to engage with the past and draw their own ideas about life in the medieval period. Understanding Medieval Primary Sources is a collection of essays that will introduce students to the key primary sources that are essential to studying medieval Europe. The sources are divided into two categories: the first part treats some of the many generic sources that have been preserved, such as wills, letters, royal and secular narratives and sermons. Chapter by chapter each expert author illustrates how they can be used to reveal details about medieval history. The second part focuses on areas of historical research that can only be fully discovered by using a combination of primary sources, covering fields such as maritime history, urban history, women’s history and medical history. Understanding Medieval Primary Sources will be an invaluable resource for any student embarking on medieval historical research.