Jonathan Israel Research Articles

The Crystallization of Counter-Enlightenment and Philosophe Identities: Theological Controversy and Catholic Enlightenment in Pre-Revolutionary France

Recent works of modern French history have found it fashionable, when focusing on the eighteenth century from across the jagged shoals of nineteenth- and twentieth-century France, to reductively treat Francophone national identity as the dialogical interaction of two related “imagined communities.” On the one hand, as scholars such as Joseph Byrnes have unconvincingly argued, French national identity after the Enlightenment and Revolutionary eras has been shaped by the more secular “Cult of the Nation,” nourished by the Revolutionary ethos ofliberté,égalité, andfraternité; on the other hand, there is the identity of France as Europe's first, most Catholic people. Such stark contrasts between opposing identities, which were in fact self-consciously nourished and cultivated by nineteenth-century writers, are overdrawn, and yet the increasingly dialogical character of French national identity in the centuries after the Revolution remains relevant to the subject of eighteenth-century historiography, for the definition of French national identity or identities is intricately intertwined with the unfolding of Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment identities that arose in various nuanced forms from the intellectual and religious history of France. Recently, provocative and timely work by Jonathan Israel, Dale Van Kley, and Darrin McMahon has taken up different aspects of these broader questions concerning why and when these competing visions may have sprung from the soil of eighteenth-century France. A remaining historiographical curiosity lingers as many historians of the French Revolution are quick to ascribe this dichotomy chiefly to the years after 1791 when the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and the Oath of Allegiance made allegiance to the Revolutionary government more complicated for less Gallican, more ultramontane priests. On the other hand, historians of the French Enlightenment continue to focus on the inherently secular, scientific, and anticlerical nature of thesiècle de lumièresas though the Church were inevitably opposed to Enlightenment innovations after mid-century, preferring and harshly defending (as Jonathan Israel has recently and voluminously argued) a comfortable and cautious acceptance of Lockeanism and Newtonianism as the only forms of Enlightenment discourse considered acceptable and capable of synthesis with Catholic orthodoxy. Differing historical perspectives on the relationship between the Enlightenment and religion remain central to the identity of participants in the French Enlightenment at various points throughout the eighteenth century and after, and such questions continue to inform the definition of what it means to be “French” today. As such, the historical processes of Enlightenment identity formation continue to require examination; such processes—one of manylietmotifswithin the complex and invaluable conversations opened by the works of Israel, McMahon, and Van Kley—will be the subject of this article. For scholars remain far from a consensus on just what it meant to be Catholic and Enlightened together in the century preceding the French Revolution.

:Public Opinion and Changing Identities in the Early Modern Netherlands: Essays in Honour of Alastair Duke

List of Illustrations Abbreviations Notes on Contributors Introduction, Judith Pollmann & Andrew Spicer 1. Dramatizing the Dutch Revolt. Romantic History and its Sixteenth-Century Antecedents, Hugh Dunthorne 2. A Provincial News Community in Sixteenth-Century Europe, Andrew Pettegree 3. Cartography, Chorography and Patriotic Sentiment in the Sixteenth-Century Low Countries, Paul Regan 4. 'And Ye Shall Hear of Wars and Rumours of Wars'. Rumour and the Revolt of the Netherlands, Henk van Nierop 5. Public Opinion and the Persecution of Heretics in the Netherlands, 1550-59, Juliaan Woltjer 6. 'Superexcellat autem misericordia iudicium'. The Homily of Francois Richardot on the Occasion of the Solemn Announcement of the General Pardon in the Netherlands (Antwerp, 16 July 1570), Gustaaf Janssens 7. Resistance and the Celebration of Privileges in Sixteenth-Century Brabant, Guido Marnef 8. Justus Lipsius between War and Peace. His Public Letter on Spanish Foreign Policy and the Respective Merits of War, Peace or Truce (1595), Nicolette Mout 9. Medium and Message. Political Prints in the Dutch Republic, 1568-1632, Andrew Sawyer 10. Public Opinion or Ritual Celebration of Concord? Politics, Religion and Society in the Competition between the Chambers of Rhetoric at Vlaardingen, 1616, Joke Spaans 11. 'Brabanters Do Fairly Resemble Spaniards After All'. Memory, Propaganda and Identity in the Twelve Years' Truce, Judith Pollmann 12. 'Concordia res parvae crescunt'. Regional Histories and the Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century, Raingard Esser 13. 'So Many Painted Jezebels'. Stained Glass Windows and the Formation of an Urban Identity in the Dutch Republic, Andrew Spicer 14. Group Identity and Opinion among the Huguenot Diaspora and the Challenge of Pierre Bayle's Toleration Theory (1685-1706), Jonathan Israel Index

Interpreting the Enlightenment

This article addresses a number of issues relevant to the interpretation of the Enlightenment raised by Jonathan Israel in his recent book, Enlightenment Contested. After a brief summary of the main points of the book it considers whether, as Israel claims, the core of the Enlightenment is a materialist monist metaphysic first fully articulated by Spinoza, and whether it is convincing to make materialism and atheism the main criteria of Enlightenment thought. The argument that Spinoza and Pierre Bayle should be seen as co-founders of the Enlightenment is also examined. The article further questions the cogency of the sharp distinction drawn between the moderate and radical wings of the movement, and seeks to determine whether the model of radicalism used by Israel has the consistency ascribed to it, whether it was as widely disseminated as claimed, and whether thinkers described as radical argued and wrote as Israel's model of radicalism would lead us to expect.

Israel's Verlichting herbelicht

Israel, J. I., Radical enlightenment. Philosophy and the making of modernity 1650-1750; Israel, J. I., Radicale Verlichting. Hoe radicale Nederlandse denkers het gezicht van onze cultuur voorgoed veranderdenIsrael’s Enlightenment RevisitedIn his seminal study Radical Enlightenment (2001), Jonathan Israel has proposed a new interpretation of the early Enlightenment, emphasizing its radical aspect within the circles of Dutch philosophers, and the diffusion of the debate among a large audience. The side-effect of this thesis, as propagated by the author himself, is the reappraisal of the relationship between Enlightenment, religion and modernity in both the past and the present. The importance of this study and its attractive central hypothesis, however, justify a critical approach of its premises, concepts and methods. What exactly is ‘radical’? Isn’t this study more concerned with the history of the Dutch Republic than with Enlightenment? Is it correct to relegate religion to the sidelines? Would it not be preferable to propose a structurally different interpretation, less unilinear and teleological and more concerned about the relationship between thoughts and actions and the complexity of the personalities and situations involved? In short, is it legitimate to insert this interpretation into the canon of history?

The Invasion of England in 1688: Dutch Attitudes

The invasion of England in 1688 is conventionally interpreted in Dutch historiography following the Orangist and Republican faction views, the latter being the mainstream account in traditional Dutch historiography. Jonathan Israel admirably supplemented these with his thesis, which is now the dominant interpretation in the English-speaking world. Israel focused on French political and commercial aggression which united the regents and brought about the rare and unique consensus in Dutch politics to support William III of Orange's invasion of England. Traditional Dutch historiography alleges that William took irresponsible risks and made secret preparations. He confronted the States General with an accomplished fact. Taken by surprise, the States General consented to an incalculable venture. This article develops a distinctive interpretation within the Israel thesis by expanding research to all the provincial States instead of an interpretation based on ‘Holland-centric’ evidence. French political aggression was the sole unifying factor above anything else. The guerre de commerce affected Holland only, Amsterdam at the last minute. A distinctly different view emerges with the analysis of evidence of ‘secret preparations’ and ‘astonishing fait accompli’. Findings vindicate the proposition that the élite were well aware of the advent of the invasion, certainly no less than the French ambassador, Count d'Avaux.

WHAT ARE ENLIGHTENMENTS?

Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)Jonathan Israel, Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man 1670–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006)“A public can only attain enlightenment slowly,” Kant famously observed. His use of the term “public” (Publikum), of course, is notoriously slippery, and even now, after decades of academic discussion of Öffenlichkeit and l'opinion publique, it regularly trips up the unsuspecting undergraduate intent on answering Kant's central question: What is enlightenment? And yet it is clear that whatever else he meant, Kant envisioned a central role for the scholar (Gelehrter) in constituting the public, and furthering enlightenment. And so we might say, in a Kantian gloss, that scholars attain enlightenment, and knowledge of the Enlightenment, only slowly.

Sephardic Amsterdam and the Myths of Jewish Modernity

Steven Nadler. Rembrandt's Jews. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Pp. xii + 250.David Liss. The Coffee Trader. New York: Random House, 2003. Pp. 389.Willi Goetschel. Spinoza's Modernity: Mendelssohn, Lessing, and Heine. Studies in German Jewish Cultural History and Literature. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004. Pp. x + 351.Rebecca Goldstein. Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity. New York: Schocken, 2006. Pp. 287.Steven Nadler, Manfred Walther, and Elhanan Yakira, eds. Spinoza and Jewish Identity. Studia Spinozana 13 (1997) (thematic issue, published 2003).Heidi M. Ravven and Lenn E. Goodman, eds. Jewish Themes in Spinoza's Philosophy. SUNY Series in Jewish Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002. Pp. x + 290.Chaya Brasz and Yoseph Kaplan, eds. Dutch Jews as Perceived by Themselves and by Others: Proceedings of the Eighth International Symposium on the History of the Jews in the Netherlands. Brill's Series in Jewish Studies 24. Boston, Leiden, and Cologne: Brill Academic Publishers, 2001. Pp. xiv + 457.Jonathan Israel and Reinier Salverda, eds. Dutch Jewry: Its History and Secular Culture (1500-2000). Brill's Series in Jewish Studies 29. Boston, Leiden, and Cologne: Brill Academic Publishers, 2002. Pp. vi + 335.Jonathan Israel. Diasporas within a Diaspora: Jews, Crypto-Jews and the World Maritime Empires (1540-1740). Brill's Series in Jewish Studies 30. Boston, Leiden, and Cologne: Brill Academic Publishers, 2002. Pp. vi + 613.AMSTERDAM'S SEPHARDIC COMMUNITY during the Dutch Golden Age has long attracted particularly avid attention. Per capita, indeed, the seventeenth-century Amsterdam Sephardim may well rank among the most intensively studied Jews in history. Generally thought to have numbered only about three thousand souls by the end of the seventeenth century (although Hubert Nusteling, in one of the volumes here under review, suggests this estimate should be revised significantly upward to approximately 4,500(1)), it almost seems as if they will eventually be outnumbered by the accumulated conference papers and essays devoted to them.In the nineteenth century this community figured prominently in the identificatory genealogy of many newly bourgeois Ashkenazim, for whom the imagined connection between their own era and the of medieval Andalusia passed via Amsterdam in the age of Spinoza.2 In our own era, lamentably perhaps, this lineage has lost much of its appeal. Few cultural spheres are today imagined as so starkly separate as the Arab and the Western, and it is therefore not surprising that Sephardic Amsterdam is now seldom evoked as a bridge between the Moorish and the modern. Nonetheless, a of sorts continues to shroud this community. The fascination that draws contemporary scholars and general readers to this chapter in Jewish history looks forward rather than backward: it is not so much a Sephardic that fascinates today but rather a mystique of modernity . The tolerance, ethnic diversity, and economic dynamism of seventeenth-century Amsterdam readily appear to herald the emergence of the modern urban experience, while the dilemmas faced by the city's Sephardim, seduced but also challenged by the possibilities and temptations of this almost unprecedentedly free environment, seem to resonate particularly strongly with the preoccupations of contemporary North American Jewry. Predominantly Portuguese by origin, the Sephardim arrived in Holland as direct or indirect refugees from the Iberian Inquisitions. Their reconstruction of the structures of normative Judaism, after generations of sustaining a covert, hybrid, or minimal Jewish identity, readily finds sentimental echo when refracted through the ordeals and dislocations of twentieth-century Jewish history. The early modern Sephardim of Amsterdam have been well served by specialist historians. …

Spinoza on Natural Rights

Underlying Jonathan Israel’s book Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650–1750 are three broad claims, which in an admittedly crude and superficial way could be summarize...

Pierre Bayle dans la Republique des Lettres: Philosophie, Religion, Critique (review)

Reviewed by: Pierre Bayle dans la République des Lettres: Philosophie, Religion, Critique José R. Maia Neto Antony McKenna and Gianni Paganini , editors. Pierre Bayle dans la République des Lettres: Philosophie, Religion, Critique. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2004. Pp. 589. Cloth, €90.00. Pierre Bayle is an early modern philosopher who has received relatively little attention given the philosophical relevance and historical influence of his work. Fortunately this situation has been rapidly changing in recent years. This volume, edited by Antony McKenna and Gianni Paganini, is a good sample of the volume, quality, scope, and polemical nature of current Bayle scholarship. The book contains twenty-five articles by the main Bayle scholars from France, Italy, England, the Netherlands, Canada, and the United States. It also contains an introduction by the editors, who give an overview of current scholarship, summarizing its main trends and achievements, and a useful name index. The articles are organized in five sections, each dealing with some aspect of Bayle's life and thought. The first set of articles, gathered under the heading, "Interlocutors, Friends and Enemies," deals with Bayle's personal relations as a Huguenot exiled in the Netherlands. Luisa Simonutti deals with Bayle's relations to one of the radical Reformed groups in Holland, the Quakers. Although Bayle disagreed with their religious views, he respected and maintained [End Page 476] healthy intellectual exchanges with them. Hans Bots examines Bayle's view of the "republic of letters," of which he was a major architect—a republic whose right to citizenship required the suspension of religious, political, and national partisanship and engagement in free intellectual debate. H. H. M. van Lieshout contests the entrenched view that Bayle lived as a recluse scholar in Rotterdam. Both she and Bots show how Bayle's main work, the Dictionary, exhibits his life committed to the "republic of letters." Finally, Hubert Bost focuses on Bayle's activity as a journalist, crucial in this republic but also revealing the difficulty of the pursued ideal of neutrality. The next three sections of the book deal with Bayle's thoughts on religion and philosophy. Anna Belgrado denies the late Bayle scholar Elizabeth Labrousse's thesis that Bayle's thought is wrought with Protestantism. Bayle's views on the Jews, the Middle Ages, and women are examined, respectively, by Myrian Yardeni, Gregorio Piaia, and Maria-Cristina Pitassi, who concur in concluding that, although not free from the prejudices of his time, Bayle's views are more complex and balanced than those of his contemporaries. Bayle's political views and in particular his view on tolerance receive a good deal of attention in the volume. Stefano Brogi explains Bayle's attack on the "rational theologians" (Le Clerc), at first sight puzzling given their defense of religious tolerance, pointing out Bayle's radical opposition between faith and reason. According to Jean-Michel Gros, it is this radical separation of philosophy from theology that renders Bayle's view of tolerance so modern, unlike Locke's, for instance, which still has a theological ground. Jonathan Israel explains another apparent puzzle: Bayle's defense of absolute monarchism despite his philosophical and religious ideas, which were no less radical than Spinoza's. Bayle, unlike Spinoza, does not support republicanism because of his pessimistic view of human nature. John Christian Laursen shows that the political menace posed by the Millenarians explains Bayle's unusual lack of tolerance towards them. One of the most influential contemporary Bayle scholars, Gianluca Mori, summarizes his view of Bayle as a philosophical atheist, and he is contested in this by Jean-Luc Solère, who argues that for Bayle, materialism does not provide a coherent metaphysical system alternative to the Christian one, so that Bayle's position amounts to a radical skepticism with regard to reason. In his contribution to the volume, Mori argues that Bayle's skepticism is restricted, and is not relevant to the issue of theism versus atheism. He replies to Solère's objections to his interpretation in an appendix to his article. Mori's interpretation relies on the method of reading Bayle's text as containing irreligious views hidden beneath apparently orthodox claims. Thomas Lennon relies on the opposite approach to argue...

Diaspora entrepreneurial networks: four centuries of history

Foreword: The State of the Field--Ina Baghdiantz McCabe, Tufts University, Gelina Harlaftis, Ionian University, Corfu and Ioanna Pepelasis Minoglou, Athens University of Economics 'On Entrepreneurial Diaspora'--Jonathan Israel, Institute for Avanced Studies, Princeton* Global Trading Ambitions in Diaspora: The Armenians and their Eurasian Silk Trade (1530-1750)'--Ina Baghdiantz McCabe, Tufts University * 'Trading Networks in a Traditional Diaspora :Armenians in India, 1650-1800'--Sushil Chaudhuri, University of Calcutta * 'The 17th-Century Japanese Diaspora: Questions of Boundary and Policy'--William D. Wray, University of British Columbia, Canada * 'Coping with Transition. Greek Merchants and Shipowners between Venice and England in the 16th century'--Maria Fusaro, University of Chicago * 'The Maltese Entrepreneurial Diaspora from the Seventeenth Century Onwards'--Carmel Vassalo, University of Malta * *Mapping the Greek Maritime Diaspora from the Early Eighteenth to the Late Twentieth Centuries* Gelina Harlaftis, Ionian University, Corfu, * Toward a Typology of Greek Diaspora Entrepreneurship* Ioanna Pepelasis Minoglou, Athens University, *Jewish Bankers between 1850 and 1914: Examples of Internationalization along Ethic Lines* Huibert Schijf, University of Amsterdam * Middle-eastern Entrepreneurs in South-east Asia, c. 1750 to c. 1940 * William Gervase Clarence-Smith, University of London *Globalizing Ethnicity with Multi-local Identification: The Parsee, Indian Muslim and Sephardic Trade Diasporas in Hong Kong* Caroline Plss,The University of Hong Kong *The Trade Diaspora of Baghdadi Jews: From India to Chinas Treaty Ports, 18421937* Chiara Betta, University of Indianapolis * Western Corporate Forms and the Social Origins of Chinese Diaspora Entrepreneurial Networks Wai-keung Chung, University of Washington Seattle* Irrational Exuberance: The Fatal Conceit of Chinese Financial Capitalism in Contemporary Indonesia Rajeswary Ampalavanar Brown, University of London *Diaspora Networks in the Asian Maritime Context* Antony Reid, Director of the Asia Research Institute Singapore* A Profile of Ethno-national Diasporas Gabriel Sheffer, Hebrew University of Jerusalem 359 17 Crossing Empires: Greek Merchant Networks Before the Imperialistic Expansion, 17701870 Maria-Christina Chadziioannou, Director Hellenic Centre of Research *The Concept of Diaspora in the Contemporary World* Stathis Gourgouris, Columbia University *Epilogue In Memoriam A Scottish Merchant in Batavia, 18201840: Gilean Maclaine and the Dutch Connection* Frank Broeze

Cocceius and the Jewish Commentators

The case of Johannes Cocceius defies the commonplace that Leiden University (and perhaps post-Reformation, confessionalized Europe in general) turned away from humanist scholarship in the first quarter of the seventeenth century. In 1650 Cocceius (1603-69), a Bremen-born Oriental philology professor at Franeker, joined the Leiden theological faculty and wrote a treatise, Protheoria de ratione interpretandi sive introductio in philologiam sacram (De ratione). He praised such rabbinic exegetes as Rashi (1040-1105) and David Kimchi (ca. 1160-ca. 1235) in humanist terms for their erudition. At the same time the new Cartesian philosophy was taking hold in the arts faculty, and mathematics instruction was encroaching on scholastic formal logic.1 Leiden would become famous for Cartesianism, mathematics, and Copernicanism in the second half of the seventeenth century, but Cocceius still worked in the tradition of advanced humanist scholarship that had made the institution famous in the sixteenth century.2Leiden's earlier reputation was due in large part to the biblical humanist work of such Renaissance polymaths as Joseph Justus Scaliger (1540-1609) and Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), but by Cocceius's time Leiden theologians were subject to greater Church and State control. As Jonathan Israel and Edwin Rabbie have shown, in response to the controversy that surrounded Jacobus Arminius and his stand on predestination, the Synod of Dordrecht (Dort) drafted an anti-Arminian statement in 1619; any professor who did not sign was subject to exile from the republic in addition to dismissal from his post.3 Innovative theology, exegesis, and philology suffered as professors, fearing State and Church reprisals, turned to humanism. As Henk Jan de Jonge has explained, this meant that almost all the theologians of seventeenth-century Leiden who concerned themselves with the explanation of the New Testament placed exegesis at the service of dogmatic objectives.4 Unlike his fellow Leiden theologians, Cocceius pursued biblical humanism and Christian Hebraism through the study of Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic-and he did so in a unique way. He was not the first to use Jewish commentaries and even Jewish post-biblical literature for the purpose of reconstructing the original Hebrew Bible, but he was innovative in praising rabbinic scholars as fellow humanists and in incorporating their scholarship into his Christological exegesis and philosophy. He did so, furthermore, not as an independent scholar or pastor or even as a professor of Hebrew; but as the holder of a university chair in theology at a confessionalized university in a century hostile to his brand of late humanism.Although he came to Leiden as a theologian, Cocceius had impressive training as an Orientalist. He had studied with the famous scholar Sixtinus Amama (1593-1629) and polished his Hebrew and Aramaic by working with a Jewish tutor from Hamburg.5 While still a student at Franeker, Cocceius wrote a translation and commentary of the Talmudic tractate Sanhedrin. A few years later he began composing commentaries on the Pentateuch, and, by the time he arrived at Leiden, he had completed one lecture, series of lectures, or piece of writing on every book of the Old Testament. These commentaries were based not only on Cocceius's extensive knowledge of Oriental languages but also on his readings of medieval Jewish commentators. These were the same commentators that Cocceius would later praise in chapter eight of the De ratione.These humanist achievements were much at variance with Cocceius's public persona as perhaps the most prominent Dutch Calvinist theologian of the seventeenth century. For approximately 100 years after his death in 1669 a faction of Leiden theologians calling themselves Cocceians battled the Voetians, followers of Gisbertus Voetius, for the soul of the Dutch Church.6 At Leiden he lectured on the Pauline Epistles, a typical subject for a seventeenth-century Calvinist theologian, and he worked on his famous theological tract, the salvation-historical Summa doctrinae de foedere et testamento Dei (1648). …

Reclaiming Theology for the Enlightenment: The Case of Siegmund Jacob Baumgarten (1706–1757)

The new millennium appears to be ushering in a new view of the Enlightenment. The synthesis of the 1930s to the 1970s had posited a unitary Enlightenment that was the matrix of a modern secular or secularizing culture. The authority of reason and science either fully displaced, or fundamentally challenged and thus forced the reconstruction of, the claims of belief and tradition. From the 1970s a social history of ideas and institutions explored the Enlightenment's seemingly infinite regional and national variations, subverting the unitary notion and yielding a mass of new information. The works of J.G.A. Pocock and Jonathan Israel, James E. Bradley and Dale K. Van Kley, have begun to build on this accumulated scholarship, offering a new synthesis that rests on two related notions.

Thinking about modernity

Abstract In his recent book on the rise of modernity, Jonathan Israel argues that philosophers and philosophical ideas played a significant role in the transformation of opinions and attitudes across early modern Europe. In the 17th century, Cartesian philosophy in particular was at the forefront of the formation of modern concepts and institutions. Many aspects of Cartesianism are now seen as typical of the ‘modern project’, including its challenge to ancient authority, the questioning of past prejudices and assumptions, its egalitarian conception of reason, and the privileging of the intellect over the passions. The rise of Cartesianism also marked the advent of the new mechanistic conception of the natural world, the rise of scientific objectivity, the separation of theology and philosophy, and a radical division between human beings and the rest of nature, including animals. To this list of ‘modern innovations’, we might also add that Cartesian philosophy played a modest role in promoting intellectual equality between the sexes. In 1673, a Frenchman named Francois Poulain de la Barre employed Cartesian ideas to argue that common opinions about the innate intellectual deficiency of women are based on unexamined prejudices rather than clear and distinct ideas. He maintained that there is no essential difference between the rational abilities of men and women (the soul itself, he says, ‘has no sex’); and therefore any defect in women's reasoning capacities must be due to custom, rather than natural inferiority.

The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume 1: The Origins of Empire (review)

Reviewed by: The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume 1: The Origins of Empire. Alastair Bellany The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume 1: The Origins of Empire. By Nicholas Canny. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. The opening volume of Oxford’s major new History of the British Empire has the unenviable task of covering a lengthy and dynamic period (c.1500–1700) during most of which neither Britain nor the Empire existed in any meaningful sense. It is thus perforce a book about “origins”, tracing the developments in colonization, interoceanic trade, naval power, state-building and ideology that, by 1700, had brought England to the threshold of world imperial power. The collection’s general thesis, compellingly presented in Nicholas Canny’s introduction, is that by the early eighteenth century there existed both an actual empire and a concept of empire; that this empire was more English than British, but that the peoples of Ireland and Scotland played a role, if only a secondary one, in its formation; that this empire centered on the Americas, in particular on long-standing colonial settlements in the Caribbean, New England and the Chesapeake; and that the essence and driving force of the imperial project was, above all, commercial. Canny argues further that this empire was the product more of “the trial-and-error efforts of the subjects of the British Crown” (32) than of consistent or coherent state intervention, although from the middle of the seventeenth century onwards the English state played a more purposeful role in encouraging and controlling colonization, fostering trade, and deploying ever more impressive military and naval power to achieve commercial and colonial ends. Canny has enlisted a distinguished group of experts to tell this complicated story, and the essays function well both as part of a cumulative portrait and as stand alone pieces. Most of the contributions are narrative or synthetic, and thus particularly useful for students beginning to find their way in the historiography. Of the more controversial pieces, some are more effective than others, but all deserve the attention of both students and experts. The collection ranges widely across the early modern period and across the globe. Although not the first essay in the book, John Appleby’s contribution supplies the chronological foundation with an exceptionally lucid narrative of a wide range of English proto-colonial activity in the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras. Canny’s introduction and essays from Jane Ohlmeyer and Toby Barnard cover aspects of the Anglo-Scottish plantations in Ireland—England’s first colony, and the primary focus of the state’s imperial energies until the 1640s. An excellent quintet of essays (James Horn on the Chesapeake, Virginia Anderson on New England, Hilary Beckles on the Caribbean, Ned Landsman on the Mid-Atlantic, and Robert Weir on the Carolinas) focuses on the American colonies, synthesizing the latest research on immigration; English-Indian relations; labour patterns; economic and social development; political, religious and familial cultures; and relations with the metropole. Canny and Peter Mancall also contribute informative essays on changing English attitudes and policies towards the indigenous peoples of the Americas. And Richard Dunn supplements the quintet’s accounts of colonial politics with a forceful intervention in the ongoing debate over the impact of the Glorious Revolution on the American colonies. Other contributors focus on the evolution of English naval and military power and on the strength and aspirations of the English state. N.A.M. Rodger offers a new interpretation of the “broadside revolution” and other aspects of early modern English naval technology. Michael Braddick sketches a useful account of the growing role and reach of the state in military, naval, commercial and colonial ventures. Jonathan Israel offers a European (mostly Dutch, Spanish and French) perspective on English maritime and colonial power in the second half of the seventeenth century, while the late Gerald Aylmer concludes the volume with some thoughts on the English state and navy during the same period. Another group of essays focuses on colonial and interoceanic trading and on preliminary English contacts with regions of the world that, in later centuries, would fall under British imperial control. P.E.H. Hair and Robin Law survey English commercial...

The Atlantic Coast of German Trade: German Rural Industry and Trade in the Atlantic, 1680–1840

Throughout the last decade a number of rather detailed studies on eighteenth-century Atlantic merchants and merchant colonies in Atlantic port cities has been published. The works ofJacob Price, David Hancock, Jonathan Israel, Olivier Pétré-Grenouilleau, and Manuel Bustos Rodríguez demonstrate the growing historical interest in maritime trade and Atlantic studies. All of these works carry on the investigative traditions of the authors respective countries, represented, for example, by Bernard Bailyn's works on the New England merchants, Pierre and Huguette Chaunu's and Paul Butel's studies on the economies of the Spanish and French Atlantic, and the investigations of Antonio García-Baquero González on the topic of Spanish Atlantic trade. As a pervasive pattern within this field of research it can be observed that, since the foundations had been laid with these classical studies, the focus of historical inquiry has shifted from quantitative investigations (that is, those on the currents of ships, goods, and precious metals) and from studies on the legal frameworks regulating the Atlantic trades to detailed studies of the individuals responsible for this trade. Arising from their countries colonial pasts, it is not surprising that most of these author's works concentrate on the colonial trade of the Western European sea powers, thus neglecting the central and eastern interiors of the continent. In the 1960s and 70s, some German historians, notably Hermann Kellenbenz and Hans Pohl, published studies in this area, but it has lain fallow ever since. The aim of this article is to shed some light on the perspectives that might open up by reconsidering the influence of Atlantic trade on Central Europe in the Early Modern period.

:The Princely Courts of Europe: Ritual, Politics and Culture under the Ancien Regime 1500-1750

The Kingdom of France, Olivier Chaline the Kingdoms of Spain, Fernando Checa the Kingdom of England, John Adamson the united provinces of the Netherlands, Jonathan Israel the patrimony of St Peter, Henry Dietrich Fernandez Austria and Bohemia, Jeroen Duindam the Electorate of Bavaria, Rainer Babel the Electorate of Brandenburg and the Kingdom of Prussia, Markus Volkel the Duchy of Savoy, Robert Oresko the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, Marcello Fantoni the Empire of Russia, Lindsay Hughes the Kingdom of Sweden, Fabian Persson.

Decline in history: the European experience

The study of decline in history deserves as much attention as progress, and yet there are very few comparative studies available. This book fills that gap. Drawing on the works of Immanuel Wallerstein, Fernand Braudel, Michael Mann and Jonathan Israel to inform his approach, Thomson examines the experience of decline in history with particular reference to Europe. He argues that the history of Afro–Asian and European civilizations has been characterized by a slow diffusion of cultural and technical skills which has occasioned repeated cycles of progress and decline. The European variant of this dynamic was shaped by its unique qualities of political pluralism and economic dynamism, resulting in declines that were ′micro′ rather than ′macro′ in character. Thomson develops his argument through a structured narrative of economic and technical change in European history from the fall of Rome and the decline of Byzantium to Italy′s declines and to those of Portugal and Spain. Within Spain, the decline of Castile is distinguished from those of Andalucia and Aragon; Thomson shows that the final decline of Andalucia and Aragon in the seventeenth century, rather than being a specifically Spanish crisis, was part of a general upheaval affecting the whole of the western Mediterranean and much of central Europe.

Early Modern

The Cambridge History of Political Thought, 1450–1700. Edited by J.H. Burns with the assistance of Mark Goldie Chivalry in the Renaissance. Edited by S. Anglo Erasmus, Colet and More: The Early Tudor Humanists and their Books. By J.B. Trapp Richard Mulcaster (c.1531–1611) and Educational Reform in the Renaissance. By Richard L. DeMolen A Community Transformed: The Manor and Liberty of Havering, 1500–1620. By Marjorie K. Mcintosh The Population History of Britain and Ireland, 1500–1750. By R. A. Houston Local Family History in England, 1538–1914. By Colin D. Rogers and John H. Smith Venice: A Documentary History, 1450–1630. Edited by David Chambers and Brian Pulton, with Jennifer Fletcher The Continuity of Feudal Power: The Caracciolo di Brienza in Spanish Naples. By Tommaso Astarita Diplomats at Work: Three Renaissance Studies. By Joycelyne G. Russell Out of Italy: 1450–1650. By Fernand Braudel Spain and the Jews: The Sephardi Experience, 1492 and After. Edited by Elie Kedourie Spain 1516–1598: From Nation State to World Empire. By John Lynch The Hispanic World in Crisis and Change, 1598–1700. By John Lynch The European Reformation. By Euan Cameron Crown, Church and Estates: Central European Politics in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Edited by R.J.W. Evans and T.V. Thomas Venice, Austria and the Turks in the Seventeenth Century. By Kenneth M. Setton Giordano Bruno and the Embassy Affair. By John Bossy The Pursuit of Stability: Social Relations in Elizabethan London. By Ian W. Archer War and Government in Britain, 1598–1650. Edited by Mark C. Fissel Germany under the Old Regime, 1600–1790. By John G. Gagliardo The Huguenot Population of France, 1601)–1685: The Demographic Fate and Customs of a Religious Minority. By Philip Benedict Queen Christina of Sweden and her Circle: The Transformation of a Seventeenth‐century Philosophical Libertine. By Susanna Akerman Fire from Heaven: Life in an English Town in the Seventeenth Century. By David Underdown Cromwell. By Barry Coward The New Model Army in England, Ireland and Scotland, 1645–1653. By Ian Gentles Algernon Sidney and the Restoration Crisis, 1677–1683. By Jonathan Scott The Anglo‐Dutch Moment: Essays on the Glorious Revolution and its World Impact. Edited by Jonathan Israel The Fiery Blades of Hallamshire: Sheffield and its Neighbourhood, 1660–1740. By David Hey Customs in Common. By E.P. Thompson Clergi et Pastorale en A ngleterre au X VIIIme siecle: Le diocese de Londres. By Viviane Barrie‐Curien Gunpowder, Government and War in the Mid‐eighteenth Century. By Jenny West Revenue and Reform: The Indian Problem in British Politics, 1757–1773. By H.V. Bowen

Empires and entrepots: the Dutch, the Spanish monarchy, and the Jews, 1585-1713

The confrontation between Spain and the Dutch Republic was a key factor in European and world history. In this collection, Jonathan Israel explores the various aspects of this many-sided struggle, at the level of government policy, military strategy and diplomacy; and in respect of the differing fortunes of regions, towns and groups, and the Sephardic Jews.

Mars bruised. Images of war in the Dutch Republic, 1641-1648

2. Significantly, many of these unkind portrayals were developed in monarchical, traditionally bellicose states, suggesting that the old given of war as inevitable or even virtuous was now under scrutiny. This caused me to wonder how war was portrayed in the Dutch Republic at about the same time. Such an anomalous state would serve as an interesting case study, I mused, for on the one hand the Dutch — inhabitants after all of a Republic — were supposed to have discarded the noble notion of war as virtue, and yet on the other they battled against Spain — often enthusiastically — in one of the longest wars in European history. Indeed, many contemporaries recognized that war was the foundation of the Republic; the seven autonomous members of the United Provinces constituted a military alliance, not a cartel3. Under these conditions, how would Mars fare? Recently, Simon Schama has demonstrated that, particularly in the realm of visual art, portrayals of Mars and his soldier-apprentices became by mid-century less than heroic 4. I therefore turned to examine this question in a different medium: the pamphlets. Two things soon became apparent. First, like Jonathan Israel before me, I noticed that the 1640s—the years of negotiation at Munster—marked the appearance of the first sizeable batch of pamphlets in favor of peace with Spain 5. This alone