When cholera hit the small village of Scheveningen on the west coast of Holland in June 1832, it took everybody by surprise. It had been generally assumed that the deadly disease would come from the east. From India the pandemic had spread throughout Asia, reaching Russia, Poland, then Prussia…… Soldiers had fired their rifles to clear the air, ships had been quarantined, travellers had been stopped and questioned, all to no avail.

The first cases of cholera in the Netherlands were fierce...

In the Spring of 1813, the French army was just a shadow of the Grande Armée that had travelled to Moscow a year earlier. So for his new German campaign, Napoleon quickly needed a new army. Again conscripts were summoned throughout the French Empire.

The same applied to 24-year-old medical student Carolus Blomme from rural Flanders. He was not called up for the army, but as a surgeon in the service de santé, Napoleon’s military medical service. Carolus travelled via Mainz and Dresden to L...

Georg Marggrafe (1610-1643) is today hailed as the principal author of an influential account of the natural history of Northern Brazil and as compiler of the first accurate map of the area, which is considered as one of the most elegant products of seventeenth-century Dutch cartography. But initial he had the ambition to become known in astronomy. With the support Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen, then governor-general of colonial Dutch Brazil, he built in Recife the first European-style astr...

Originally published in two volumes in 1980, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change is now issued in a paperback edition containing both volumes. The work is a full-scale historical treatment of the advent of printing and its importance as an agent of change. Professor Eisenstein begins by examining the general implications of the shift from script to print, and goes on to examine its part in three of the major movements of early modern times - the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the rise...

The remains of Dutch East India Company forts are scattered throughout littoral Asia and Africa. But how important were the specific characteristics of European bastion-trace fortifications to Early-Modern European expansion? Was European fortification design as important for Early-Modern expansion as has been argued? This book takes on these questions by studying the system of fortifications built and maintained by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in present-day India and Sri Lanka. It unc...

A fully updated fourth edition written by a team of specialists. Enabling students to place early modern Europe within a global context and to see how Europe interacted with the broader early modern world through the exchange of ideas and goods. New chapters on Environment and Food and Drink Cultures which provides students and lecturers with a narrative history and new examples in these fields at an introductory level.

The companion website now includes a primary source resource section with...

For the Military Orders the age of the Reformation was a period of severe crisis in which their very existence was challenged by protestant princes and reformers. Especially in the northern part of Europe the Hospitallers and the Teutonic Order faced serious losses. Religious convictions played an important role, but events were also influenced by processes of state building and the personal ambitions of the orders' leaders on all levels. These and other themes are treated in thirteen contrib...

Julián Romero, Sancho Dávila, Cristóbal de Mondragón, and Francisco de Valdés were prominent Spanish military commanders during the first decade of the Revolt in the Low Countries (1567–1577). Occupying key positions in this conflict, they featured as central characters in various war narratives and episodical descriptions of the events they were involved in, ranging from chronicles, poems, theatre plays, engravings, and songs to news pamphlets. To this day, they still figure as protag...

Sovereignty is a key issue in the baroque, and especially in the Dutch Republic with its incredibly complicated political organisation. Consequently, in and through Joost van den Vondel's theatre plays, sovereignty was explored. Vondel sensed a fundamental problem in the construction of Europe’s politico-cultural 'house'. The questions he asked with respect to that construction concerned the relation between theology and politics, also in terms of gender and culture. Since these questions co...

Many of the most significant studies devoted to Ambrogio Spinola have focused on one particular aspect of his life: his successful military career. This volume, through its interdisciplinary and cultural approach, breaks open this all too narrow perspective and expands our understanding of Spinola and his world. As a great military strategist and Catholic knight, entrepreneur in the international finance market, courtier and diplomat, Spinola was certainly a Genoese, but he was also a member ...