“To Give Myself to be Carried Immediatly into Hell”: Weather, Witchcraft, and Two Late Seventeenth-Century Contracts Between a Magician and a Student

Reviewed by: Making Magic in Elizabethan England: Two Early Modern Vernacular Books of Magic ed. by Frank Klaassen László Sándor Chardonnens Elizabethan England, Early Modern England, books of magic, sixteenth century, seventeenth century, primary sources, Antiphoner Notebook, Boxgrove Manual, Cornelius Agrippa, Protestantism, Reginald Scot frank klaassen, ed. Making Magic in Elizabethan England: Two Early Modern Vernacular Books of Magic. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019. Pp. xi + 147. Modern practitioners of magic who are interested in older sources can turn to a range of editions by occult presses that cater to their needs. Scholars and students of magic studies, on the other hand, are less well served by these same publications; with some positive exceptions, that is, such as the work of Joseph Peterson. Yet since Peterson cannot be expected to edit all surviving medieval and early modern source texts, it is fortunate that one of the leading scholars in the field of early modern ritual magic, Frank Klaassen, has now turned his attention from merely studying to also editing books of magic from early modern England, starting with the publication of two concise manuals in an effort to expand "our understanding of sixteenth-century magic" (2). Having studied Making Magic in Elizabethan England in detail alongside facsimiles of the two books of magic in question, it is my firm conviction that Klaassen has succeeded in this aim. Making Magic has a general introduction followed by separate introductions to, and editions of, both books of magic; it also includes a set of appendices, a bibliography, and an index. The general introduction outlines the conditions under which magic transitioned from the Middle Ages into Early Modernity, with a focus on ritual magic and charms—two quite distinct forms of magic that were increasingly found side by side in early modern books of magic. The central argument of the general introduction is that early modern magical practices are rooted in medieval customs, but that they evolved under the influence of cultural, religious, and legislative changes in sixteenth-century England. The social backgrounds of the practitioners were, furthermore, more varied than the medieval clerical underworld as a result of social and religious turmoil in the early modern period. Part III of Klaassen's 2013 study The Transformations of Magic devotes attention to the same period, but I find that Making Magic presents the social and cultural dynamics of early modern ritual magic more effectively. [End Page 277] The first book of magic introduced and edited in Making Magic is Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Add. B. 1. Introduced as the Antiphoner Notebook, this text was copied in the late sixteenth century onto cuttings from the wide margins of a large fourteenth-century liturgical manuscript. The Antiphoner Notebook innovatively combines charms with conjurations and experiments. Perhaps the work of a cunning man, the Antiphoner Notebook focuses "on the three common areas of activity in this group: healing, thief identification, and treasure hunting" (19). A notable feature of the Antiphoner Notebook is its frequent use of materials from Reginald Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584), a study of "the irrationality of belief in magic and witchcraft" and Catholicism (24). Scot presented many examples of magical and Catholic practices, which were subsequently reused without the anti-magical and anti-Catholic rhetoric by practicing magicians, such as the scribe of the Antiphoner Notebook, in "a self-conscious process of re-enchantment" (25, emphasis Klaassen's). Another noteworthy component of the Antiphoner Notebook is an experiment with a wax puppet to punish a thief (item 1 in the edition). Klaassen opines that "the use of wax images for harm in necromantic (i.e., demon conjuring) collections is curiously uncommon" (23), in contrast to its frequent appearance in legal contexts and astral magic. Yet the use of wax puppets is anything but uncommon in early modern necromancy. Cursory reading of the surviving sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English necromantic manuscripts yields about twenty texts on the construction of wax puppets for compelling thieves, harming people, and even constraining rebellious spirits. Half of these are analogues to the experiment in the Antiphoner Notebook (London, British Library, Add. MS 36674, fols. 88r, 88v, and 164r–165r (three separate texts), Sloane...

<i>Magic and Masculinity: Ritual Magic and Gender in the Early Modern Era</i> (Frances Timbers)

Teaching &amp; Learning Guide for: Politics, Print Culture and the Habermas Thesis Cluster

Reviewed by: Magic and Masculinity: Ritual Magic and Gender in the Early Modern Era by Frances Timbers Samaya Borom Timbers, Frances, Magic and Masculinity: Ritual Magic and Gender in the Early Modern Era, London, I. B. Tauris, 2014; hardback; pp. 304; 10 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. £56.00;; ISBN 9781780765594. Early modern England witnessed the intersection of religion, philosophy, and science, at the same time that conceptions of gender ideologies and worldviews were also shifting, all of which contributed to new interpretations of magic. Frances Timbers here expertly documents the interaction of conceptions of manhood and masculinity with the practice of ritual magic and in so doing presents a new perspective on a frequently overlooked aspect of contemporary magic and magical practice. [End Page 249] Chapter 1 addresses the distinction between ceremonial magic and witchcraft: magic was the artful manipulation by learned men of the natural world though alchemic means, the study of classical manuscripts and texts, and complex rituals; witchcraft was seen to be confined largely to illiterate women caught up in a social/psychological phenomenon. Timbers’s exploration covers the elaborate ritual preparations found in the Clavicula Salomonis (Key of Solomon), through to drawing the reader’s attention to the difference between superstitious behaviour then, and now in the modern world. Chapter 2 further explains the role of masculinity and magic. The practice of magic was often viewed as an alternative path to manhood. It could also serve as a clever way of making a living, as in the example of William Hills (c. 1651) who would be visited by the local constabulary for insights into cases (p. 42). In Chapter 3, ‘Fraternity and Freemasons’, Timbers describes how processes of ritual and magic came to be incorporated into certain social practices further cementing the connection between magic and masculinity. Chapters 4 and 5 provide insights into John Dee, Edward Kelley, and John Pordage. Religious philosophy is seen to have influenced magical ritual and thought through the invocation of angels and spirits, which, Timbers argues, allowed masculine identities to be reworked into acceptable masculine traits (p. 104). The theme of masculine representation and sexuality in ritual objects and philosophy continues into Chapter 6, ‘Swords, Satan and Sex’, while Chapter 7, ‘Fairies and Female Magicians’, illustrates the relationship between women and the spirit world. Timbers observes that ‘Magic, as practiced by women, became a foil for the intellectual, scientific and religious associations that male magicians tended to foster’ (p. 120). Self identity and belief in demons, angels, and spirits are further explored in Chapter 8, aptly titled ‘Magical Metaphors’. According to Timbers, it was often the perception of the fantastical within the realm of reality that drove personal narratives surrounding magic and involvement in it. With Magic and Masculinity, Timbers has expertly mapped out the evolution of the construction of masculinity as it was embodied in ritual items, spaces, and philosophy. She has also provided an interesting comparison to gendered social attitudes to magic and ritual, one that was also involved in shaping contemporary understandings of magic and witchcraft. [End Page 250] Samaya Borom Charles Sturt University Copyright © 2016 Samaya Borom

This article examines recent historiographical literature concerning catholicism in early modern Britain and Ireland suggesting, perhaps most surprisingly with regard to Ireland, that in general this remains a somewhat under‐researched field. There has also been an unfortunate lack of cross‐fertilization between the research of historians of the counter‐reformation in both islands. This is particularly regrettable with regard to English historiography because the confessional strength which catholicism acquired in Ireland during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was of genuine significance to developments in Britain. The counter‐reformation took very different forms in Ireland and Britain. In many ways, the historiographical debate about the success or otherwise of the reformation in England and Scotland offers the most valuable comparison with early modern Irish catholicism: catholicism emerged as the most successful confession in Ireland as protestantism did in Britain, but the degree to which the process of evangelization went deeper than the mere inculcation of denominational affiliation is open to question. The second part of this article offers a brief analysis of some of the most significant developments in the recent historiography of catholicism in both islands, highlighting in particular issues of church organization, popular mentalité and print culture.

In this paper we consider practices of shopping in early modern (17th- and 18th-century) England, and various features of the spaces in which it occurred. We emphasise the density of retail shops in England; the reflexive relationships among ‘consumers’, shopkeepers, and consumption sites; and the inability of current theorisations based on the semiotics of advertising to address questions about consumers' understandings and identities in an age prior to widespread product advertising, department stores, and mass retail outlets. We contend that, then as now, peoples' interpretation of objects and identities involved practical, embodied knowledges rather than the sorts of explicit, intellectualised understandings central to most contemporary accounts of consumption. Such practical knowledges have been underresearched, and we point to some concepts in recent work which can assist in their theorising.

Tara E. Pedersen. Mermaids and Production of Knowledge in Early Modern England. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015. Pp. xi + 155. $104.95. Hybridity, monstrosity, and difference: these unstable early modern ontological categories are difficult to locate precisely or theorize vigorously. Tara E. Pedersen's Mermaids and Production of Knowledge in Early Modern England, however, deftly mobilizes conceptions of sexuality and identity to argue for cultural relevance of mermaids as objects of mystery and knowledge in early modern English imagination. Pedersen begins with Sir Thomas Browne's discussion of mermaid as a in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica and charts circulation of its representation and conceit. Pedersen notes how it becomes a way to 'think' or picture (3). The introduction highlights several theoretical trends to which work speaks, including feminism, queer studies, and animal studies. Pedersen's research deliberately intersects with these approaches but then moves beyond them to demonstrate how mermaid asks us to reconsider mechanics of seeing and acquiring knowledge on early modern stage. In this inquiry, Pedersen also sketches some of more resonant associations of mermaid in early modern culture. Adorning religious and domestic environments, mermaid traversed many iconographic landscapes and genres, including science, theology, and literary representations. In occupying a position of mystery, contradiction, and monstrosity, Pedersen shows, mermaid is a touchstone for exploring a diversity of early modern connections and forms of understanding. Chapter 1, Identifying Mermaids: Economies of Representation in Dekker and Middleton's The Roaring Girl focuses on urban topographies and figure of Moll, frequently identified as a mermaid, within economies of exchange and sexual energies. Such representations, however, are structured by viewers' perspectives, shifting and altering image of woman--virgin or whore--that one encounters. Moll elicits such contradictory responses and serves as a source for play's engagement with considerations of London as a sprawling urban locale and body of a woman as both monstrous and dissembling. Drawing on strands of criticism that identify Moll as a subversive figure, Pedersen argues that many representations of Moll--particularly as a mermaid--elucidate many signifiers of identity and economics in Dekker and Middleton's drama. The mermaid was identified with siren and often disparaged as a figure who seduces sailors to their doom through beauty and deception. Pedersen cites Queen Elizabeth's Armada portrait and Shakespeare's 3 Henry VI in her analysis of how mermaid disrupts economies of exchange and production. Interestingly, Moll is not only figure to be likened to a mermaid in The Roaring Girl. Sir Alexander, worrying father, is also positioned as inimical to trade and changeable in categories of identity: in cheating or refusing to obey tradition of open methods to exchange and instead acting secretively, Sir Alexander undermines play's London market of marriageable bodies and goods. Like Sir Alex, Moll resists expected roles and rules of commodity exchange. The following chapter, 'We shall discover our Selves': Practicing Mermaid's Law in Margaret Cavendish's The Convent of Pleasure pairs Duchess's closet drama with representations of mermaid in religious buildings in early modern Britain. Regarding singular scene with figure of Lady Happy as a sea nymph, Pedersen argues the mermaid's role is pivotal because she functions as a critical metaphor for pragmatic process of becoming (or self-construction) that we see Lady Happy undertaking throughout play (55). Pedersen begins with a discussion of early modern shifting understandings of empiricism and Cavendish's response to role of women as producers of scientific knowledge in early modern England. …

Reviewed by: Female Patients in Early Modern Britain: Gender Diagnosis and Treatment by Wendy D. Churchill Robert Weston Churchill, Wendy D. , Female Patients in Early Modern Britain: Gender Diagnosis and Treatment (History of Medicine in Context), Farnham, Ashgate, 2012; hardback; pp. xiv, 281; R.R.P. £65.00; ISBN 9781409438779. With Female Patients in Early Modern Britain: Gender Diagnosis and Treatment, Wendy Churchill adds a new dimension to the study of early modern medical history. Her objective is to throw light on the relationship between female patients and male practitioners in order to understand the extent to which sex and gender were factors in diagnosis and therapy. Were women treated [End Page 175] differently from men as a result of contemporary theoretical concepts of the body and the existence of disorders peculiar to women? Churchill employs a wide spectrum of records to explore 'the extent to which women's health was, or was not, subsumed within a restricted range of female-specific complaints that were predominantly of a gynaecological or psychological character' (p. 1). Her sources range from physicians' casebooks and medical consultations to personal correspondence and diaries. Perhaps inevitably, physicians' records dominate over those of other practitioners and correspondence of patients themselves. Her sources are predominantly English and they have to some extent defined her choice of period. Nonetheless, the time frame, 1590-1740, covers a period when medical theory was undergoing change and the 'professional' practice of medicine was under challenge. While her study is in part based on a quantitative analysis of the records, Churchill gives no indication of the total number of cases she has examined. If the number is indeed as substantial as it appears to be, enumeration would have added further authority to her arguments. Investigations of early modern medical history often run into problems that arise from the inconsistent nosology and diagnosis of disease of the period. To the extent that she has exemplified specific illnesses, notably venereal disease, smallpox, and tertian fevers, she has arguably minimised these problems. In the field of 'psychological' disorders, however, these problems are exacerbated, as Churchill herself recognises. In Chapter 1, Churchill discusses the relationship between female patients and their male health providers. She considers not only the sort of conditions that were of concern, but also the dynamics of the relationship between the two parties including such issues as privacy and trust. Chapter 2 focuses on female-specific physiology, lifecycle stages, and health issues, particularly those related to menstruation and breast disorders. Her treatment of female lifecycles, essentially an age-based model, is well constructed. While Churchill has provided a new way of looking at women's health, the chapter is stronger on the signs, symptoms, and diagnosis of women's specific complaints, than it is on treatment. In Chapter 3, Churchill turns to the issue of prescribing for the sexed body. (She takes into account the shift in the early modern period from a one-sex to a two-sex model of the body, a core consideration, which appears throughout the book as she develops her arguments that women's physiological differences, in relation to men, had pathological consequences, which in turn led to sex-specific diagnoses and treatments.) Treatment proposed by contemporary medical practitioners could be considered as falling into two categories: paying attention to the Hippocratic non-naturals, and the use of therapeutic substances. The latter is admittedly a complex and difficult area, [End Page 176] but one that might have been given more analysis considering the extensive sources she has employed. Churchill suggests that in the cases of her selected contagious diseases, treatment proffered to men and women appear similar if not identical (pp. 144-45). She then sets out to demolish this by arguing, quite convincingly, that treatment for men and women was different. Her strongest argument is that treatment varied according to where a woman was in her individual life stage. Her section on race and through this on climate - in effect tropical medicine - adds an interesting and new aspect to the topic. The final chapter focuses on what Churchill terms psychological disorders - 'diseases of the head nerves or spirits' (p. 195) - principally hysteria, hypochondria, and melancholia. She points out...

Teaching &amp; Learning Guide for: Between Revolutions: Re‐Appraising the Restoration in Britain

Belief in fairies was a key aspect of the spiritual cosmology of early modern Britain. Although fairies have been studied, one area has received little attention: manuscripts and printed works dealing with ritual magic. Based upon a survey of such sources, a picture emerges of early modern ideas about such beings, including their relationship to gender, domesticity, and sexuality. Such information is not only revealing about fairy beliefs, setting them outside the angelic and demonic realms, but also suggests patterns of spirit discernment outside dominant discourses.

Next article No AccessPuritans, Papists, and the “Public Sphere” in Early Modern England: The Edmund Campion Affair in ContextPeter Lake and Michael QuestierPeter LakePrinceton University Search for more articles by this author and Michael QuestierSt. Mary's College, Twickenham Search for more articles by this author Princeton UniversitySt. Mary's College, TwickenhamPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 72, Number 3September 2000 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/316043 Views: 406Total views on this site Citations: 29Citations are reported from Crossref ©2000 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Clarinda E. Calma Campion, Edmund, (Oct 2022): 586–589.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14169-5_468Joan Redmond Religion, ethnicity and “conversion” in the 1641 Irish Rebellion, The Seventeenth Century 35, no.66 (Sep 2019): 715–739.https://doi.org/10.1080/0268117X.2019.1658618Victor Houliston, Aislinn Muller The Elizabethan Martyrs, (Feb 2020): 322–337.https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119100072.ch19James E. Kelly English Convents in Catholic Europe, c.1600–1800, 90 (Dec 2019).https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108846851Alexander A. Ayris Polemics and Proverbs: Religious Controversy in England, ‘German Lips,’ and the Character of a Genre, Reformation & Renaissance Review 21, no.22 (May 2019): 91–108.https://doi.org/10.1080/14622459.2019.1611710Hilary L. Turner , British Catholic History 34, no.0404 ( 2019): 562.https://doi.org/10.1017/bch.2019.25James E. Kelly The Contested Appropriation of George Gervase's Martyrdom: European Religious Patronage and the Controversy over the Oath of Allegiance, Journal of British Studies 57, no.0202 (Mar 2018): 253–274.https://doi.org/10.1017/jbr.2017.235Laura A. M. Stewart Introduction: Publics and Participation in Early Modern Britain, Journal of British Studies 56, no.44 (Sep 2017): 709–730.https://doi.org/10.1017/jbr.2017.124Cathryn Enis Edward Arden and the Dudley earls of Warwick and Leicester, c. 1572–1583, British Catholic History 33, no.22 (Sep 2016): 170–210.https://doi.org/10.1017/bch.2016.24David Coast Rumor and “Common Fame”: The Impeachment of the Duke of Buckingham and Public Opinion in Early Stuart England, Journal of British Studies 55, no.22 (Mar 2016): 241–267.https://doi.org/10.1017/jbr.2016.2Clarinda E. Calma Campion, Edmund, (Sep 2016): 1–4.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_468-1Eoin Price The Politics of Privacy and the Renaissance Public Stage, Literature Compass 12, no.77 (Jul 2015): 311–321.https://doi.org/10.1111/lic3.12243James E. Kelly Conformity, Loyalty and the Jesuit Mission to England of 1580, (Jan 2014): 149–170.https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137028044_7Joshua Rodda ‘The Condition and State of a Scholar’: Disputation in William Alabaster's Conversion Narrative, Recusant History 31, no.33 (Feb 2015): 391–410.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034193200013820Michael Questier Sermons, Separatists, and Succession Politics in Late Elizabethan England, Journal of British Studies 52, no.22 (May 2013): 290–316.https://doi.org/10.1017/jbr.2013.1William J. Bulman Publicity and Popery on the Restoration Stage: Elkanah Settle’s The Empress of Morocco in Context, Journal of British Studies 51, no.22 (Dec 2012): 308–339.https://doi.org/10.1086/663839Natalie Mears Public Worship and Political Participation in Elizabethan England, Journal of British Studies 51, no.11 (Dec 2012): 4–25.https://doi.org/10.1086/662297Nandra Perry The Imitation of Christ in English Reformation Writing, Literature Compass 8, no.44 (Apr 2011): 195–205.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-4113.2011.00794.xPETER MARSHALL JOHN CALVIN AND THE ENGLISH CATHOLICS, c . 1565–1640, The Historical Journal 53, no.44 (Nov 2010): 849–870.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X10000488ROBERT VON FRIEDEBURG THE JURIDIFICATION OF NATURAL LAW: CHRISTOPH BESOLD'S CLAIM FOR A NATURAL RIGHT TO BELIEVE WHAT ONE WANTS, The Historical Journal 53, no.11 (Jan 2010): 1–19.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X09990586W. Kirby Signs and Things Signified: Sacramental Hermeneutics in John Jewel's ‘Challenge Sermon’ and the ‘Culture of Persuasion’ at Paul's Cross, Reformation & Renaissance Review 11, no.11 (Apr 2015): 57–89.https://doi.org/10.1558/rrr.v11i1.57Alexandra Walsham ‘This Newe Army of Satan’: The Jesuit Mission and the Formation of Public Opinion in Elizabethan England, (Jan 2009): 41–62.https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230274679_3Joseph L. Black The Martin Marprelate Tracts (1588-89) and the Popular Voice 1, History Compass 6, no.44 (Jul 2008): 1091–1106.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1478-0542.2008.00533.xDonna B. Hamilton Religion, (Apr 2008): 32–53.https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470696149.ch2Nancy Bradley Warren Tudor Religious Cultures in Practice: The Piety and Politics of Grace Mildmay and Her Circle, Literature Compass 3, no.55 (Sep 2006): 1011–1043.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-4113.2006.00362.xPeter Lake, Steve Pincus Rethinking the Public Sphere in Early Modern England, Journal of British Studies 45, no.22 (Dec 2012): 270–292.https://doi.org/10.1086/499788David Randall Joseph Mead, Novellante: News, Sociability, and Credibility in Early Stuart England, Journal of British Studies 45, no.22 (Dec 2012): 293–312.https://doi.org/10.1086/499789Stefania Tutino ‘Makynge Recusancy Deathe Outrighte’? Thomas Pounde, Andrew Willet and The Catholic Question in Early Jacobean England, Recusant History 27, no.0101 (Sep 2015): 31–50.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034193200031162Michael Questier Loyal to a fault: Viscount Montague explains himself, Historical Research 77, no.196196 (May 2004): 225–253.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0950-3471.2004.00208.x

Reading Authority and Representing Rule in Early Modern England explores the publication and reception of authority in early modern England. Examples are drawn from a broad range of source, including royal portraits, architecture, coins and medals and written texts.This is a volume that presents the history of society and state as a cultural as well as an institutional or political history. The author, Kevin Sharpe, was a leading scholar in interdisciplinary approaches to the study of early modern Britain. He pioneered the application of methods and approaches from other disciplines, such as literary criticism, reception studies and visual culture, to the study of the English Renaissance state. This will be an important text for anyone studying early modern England, as well as for those interested in the methods of cultural history and the explication of written and visual texts.

Private and Domestic Devotion in Early Modern Britain. Edited by Jessica Martin and Alec Ryrie. St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History. Surrey, U.K.: Ashgate, 2012. xi + 285 pp. $134.95 cloth. - Volume 83 Issue 1

Reviewed by: Mercantilism Reimagined: Political Economy in Early Modern Britain and Its Empire ed. by Philip J. Stern and Carl Wennerlind Andrew Gaiero Stern, Philip J. and Carl Wennerlind (eds.), Mercantilism Reimagined: Political Economy in Early Modern Britain and Its Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. 416. Mercantilism Reimagined is a masterfully written book that features a number of prominent scholars of early modern history. Editors Philip Stern and Carl Wennerlind, who also contribute specific chapters, have done a fantastic job in challenging our understanding of the concept of mercantilism, or the “mercantile system”. Through this broad framework each chapter serves to explore the most recent scholarship about the composite parts of the early modern political economy and its subsequent construction and reconstruction by economic theorists and historians since the time of Adam Smith. Stern and Wennerlind have achieved multiple objectives in their study and aspects of their approach appeal to both inductive and deductive reasoning, though favouring the former overall. Building on trends over the past couple decades, within intellectual and new imperial history, and considering the financial precariousness of the world at present, this book provides readers with an appreciation for treatises on commerce and society whose relevance endures beyond their own time. However, considering the level of engagement with the source material, Mercantilism Reimagined will likely be best valued by scholars or students who are familiar with commercial and political theorists from the late Renaissance through to the works of Adam Smith and with the emergence of classical economics. A careful and thoughtful reading of each chapter is absolutely essential in order to truly appreciate all the nuances and great level of detail each author offers of his or her specific analysis of mercantilist thought. The five thematic sections: circulation; knowledge; institutions; regulation; and conflict address crucial aspects of the many commercial and intellectual debates of the early modern period, providing useful insights even beyond their immediate contexts. Circulation deals with traditional features of mercantilism, namely the debates over population and the centrality of money, whether precious metals or emerging consumer credit. Notably, the chapter on labour by Abigail Swingen helps link scholarship on slavery with broader discussions of managing population growth, migrations, and employment in the Atlantic world. Knowledge addresses the historiographical construction of mercantilism and its descriptive inadequacy, as is illustrated with Stuart attempts to regulate the fledgling tobacco industry or when imprecisely associated with German cameralism. Institutions involves the major official and unofficial components of [End Page 833] mercantile and imperial networks. On one hand monopoly trading corporations and the Anglican Church, among other religious associations, were reflective of one set of values and identities while the supposedly unsavory pirates and smugglers served to subvert sanctioned networks and projections of power. Regulation considers the practical limitations of political involvement in the economy and in the ability of rulers to effectively control their territories. Regina Grafe’s chapter on the Spanish Empire specifically addressed important revisions in our understanding of early modern absolute rule; while more broadly, issues of political corruption and the changing demands of consumer societies revealed the interplay between the governed and governing classes. Conflict focuses on the struggles for commercial supremacy between competing individual, corporate, and national entities. In a world of finite resources and scarcity the enduring “jealousy of trade” would precipitate real battles of life and death, serving as reflections of the sunrises and sunsets of early modern empires on the high seas. However, competing cornucopian visions of shared power and plenty were evident as well, though perhaps much less appreciated in a pre-Smithian world. Victor Enthoven’s chapter on Anglo-Dutch rivalries best exemplifies the envy and admiration accompanying these two different perspectives. Though the obvious counterpoint to the win-lose paradigm is visible, in the neutrality debate, and peace was recognized as a harbinger of prosperity, there were seldom guarantees of safety and stability given such a complex geopolitical situation where shifting alliances, depravity, and desires could coalesce into an overwhelming force with the potential to wash away any pretense to morality. The suggestion that we still live in an era of mercantilism is an interesting assertion, as questions of trade balances, protectionism, monopolies...

Review Article: Visual Print Culture in Early Modern Britain Malcolm Jones, The Print in Early Modern England: An Historical Oversight, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2010, pp. 352, hb. $95.00, ISBN: 978-0-3001-3697-5 Michael Hunter (ed.), Printed Images in Early Modern Britain: Essays in Interpretation, Farnham, Ashgate, 2010, pp. xxiv + 372, hb. £65.00, ISBN: 978-0-7546-6654-7Cheap woodcuts, fine engravings, single-sheet prints, book illustrations, playing cards, advertisements, wallpaper, satirical prints, portraits, maps, scientific illustrations: these are some of the types and genres of the early modern British printed image. Such is the variety and extent of surviving images (and many more, particularly cheap, images have not survived) that this visual print culture can easily appear bewildering. To say that is to say something that would have been met with a large degree of scepticism until relatively recently. For it had been widely felt among historians that sixteenthand seventeenth-century Britain was a culture of the word rather than the image-a culture preferring textual representation over visual representation, and dramatically proving that in its more enthusiastic moments with outbursts of iconoclasm. We now know this characterization to be wide of the mark, even if it remains to be determined how precisely wide of the mark.That scholars are in a position to make such a reassessment is testimony to some impressive work in the field of print studies over the past two decades. Much of the earlier verdict on visual print culture was due simply to lack of knowledge of what existed-scholars, and even curators, were often unaware of what was to be found in the major print collections. Fortunately such ignorance can no longer serve as a defence. Several important electronic cataloguing projects have immeasurably improved our recognition of the tens of thousands of prints produced before the eighteenth century: notable examples are the Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads; the Wenceslaus Hollar Digital Collection at the University of Toronto library; Collage, the database of the City of London Libraries and Guildhall Art Gallery; and the online collections of the National Portrait Gallery and the British Museum.1 In addition to these collection-based initiatives, the AHRC-funded British Printed Images to 1700 (bpil700) project has sought to develop a database of images with a classificatory system particularly suitable to scholars of early modern Britain; if fully realized, bpil700 would transform work on early modern visual culture much in the way that Early English Books Online has changed the way textual culture is studied.2By making available online a large corpus of images most of which were hitherto effectively unknown and remain difficult to access in their material form, such digital resources exhibit how widespread printed images were in early modern culture. The next step, of course, involves the interpretation of this evidence. Several books over the past two decades have made significant advances in the interpretative scholarship, among them two recent publications discussed further below: a volume of essays edited by Michael Hunter and based on a conference organized by the bpil700 project, Printed images in early modem Britain: essays in interpretation (2010); and Malcolm Jones, The print in early modem England: an historical oversight (2010). These and other works3 constitute an increasingly interdisciplinary and sophisticated endeavour to make sense of the large corpus of printed images and to place them within their social, cultural, intellectual, political and religious contexts. With their publication, it may now be a good point to attempt an initial assessment of the current state of scholarship.In the introduction to Printed images in early modem Britain Hunter looks forward to the day when such studies, which take the printed image as their primary focus, will become 'superfluous as it becomes as natural to historians to invoke visual sources as is currently the case with textual ones'. …