In this article, I discuss a manuscript written by the Dutch natural philosopher and professor Petrus van Musschenbroek (1692-1761), entitled 'Advice on how the study of philosophy should be directed, read in the year 1730' ('Consilia de dirigendo Studio Philosophico. praelecta A degrees 1730'). I show how the text should be situated in the genre of rationes studii. I analyse the organisation of the manuscript, with special attention for the outline and order of the disciplines discussed by van Musschenbroek. I argue that Christian Wolff (1679-1754) is an important influence here. Next, I present van Musschenbroek's views on the propaedeutic role of the liberal arts and mathematics. Finally, I discuss van Musschenbroek's choice of authors (specifically in the sections dealing with physics) in relation to contemporary views on 'sects' in philosophy and eclecticism. This will allow me to provide a more nuanced view on van Musschenbroek's 'Newtonianism'.

In this essay, I will bring several hitherto neglected sources, which pertain to Petrus van Musschenbroek’s (1692-1762) unpublished manuscripts, to the fore. The folios at hand show that Musschenbroek read and actively engaged with Spinoza’s (1632-1677) Ethica. More precisely, it will be shown that Musschenbroek held clear-cut anti-Spinozistic convictions.

Over the last decades, the focus of diplomatic history has shifted from political relations to the cultural and social history of diplomacy. New Diplomatic History looks at topics such as rituals, borders, networks and families of diplomats. For this kind of research, Ottoman-European diplomacy has been at the centre of attention. This essay aims to bring to light a unique source, which has never been studied extensively. Jean-Louis Rigo, secretary of the Dutch embassy, kept for a period of nearly thirty years (1727-1744 and 1747-1756) a diary about life and diplomacy in Istanbul. The value of the diary lies in the description of the author’s dealings with news and information. In this essay, I will argue that instead of relying on standard sources for diplomacy such as foreign correspondence, nouvelles and newspapers, the Dutch embassy depended mainly on the local Levantine community and Rigo’s extended patronage networks for diplomatic news.

In 1683, Johan Heysig, a recent graduate of Uppsala University and tutor to Baron Erik Axelsson Sparre, donated a collection of Swedish scholarly books to the Bodleian Library in Oxford. This article examines the intellectual contexts of this donation in both Sweden and England and provides the text of a previously unknown catalogue of the collection. In doing so, it illustrates the intellectual and cultural interchange between England and the Scandinavian countries, especially Sweden, during the latter part of the seventeenth century.