Europe In A Wider World 1350 1650

Between roughly 1350 and 1650, Europe underwent seismic changes in economics, politics, culture, and religion. Feudal monarchies were reconceived as abstract states. The new technology of the printing press transformed how information was disseminated, bringing texts to different social groups. Painters perfected the artifice of perspective for an increasingly commercial patronage, even as they themselves cultivated the value of their own "genius" through increasingly distinctive styles and visions. Reformers called into question 1500 years of tradition, splitting the One True Church into multiple churches. In the midst of all these changes, Europeans reached farther and farther out into a world they did not yet dominate, even as they lived uneasily under the shadow of an expansionist Islamic Mediterranean. Indeed, that wider world was inseparable from those seismic changes in the political and cultural landscape of Europe. Europe in a Wider World, 1350-1650 offers a concise discussion of these events and the impact they had upon an evolving European society. It provides a clear outline of political events and a lively exploration of developments in the social and cultural landscape. Along with traditional themes, such as Protestantism, the book examines the changing roles of European women and the effects of environmental fluctuation on the history of the continent. By looking at these years as a whole, the authors attempt to restore interconnections among events that are often lost when the time period is viewed through the double categories of "The Renaissance" and "The Reformation." Illustrated with nine detailed maps and twenty-four images, and offering chapter summaries and a chronology to aid students, this text is ideal for undergraduate courses in early modern European history.

This illustrated text covers the history of the Middle Ages. The narrative discusses events in Europe alongside the spread of Islam and the rise and fall of the Byzantine Empire. While the text gives ample coverage to political events, an equal emphasis is placed on social and cultural developments.

This book examines the concept of Europe in its relations to those areas of the globe beyond its borders. In particular it is concerned with the historical evolution and contemporary setting of Europe vis-a-vis The United States of America, the developing world and the former Soviet Union. This involves drawing on the perspectives of international history, politics and economics. A unifying feature of the analysis included here is provided by the fact that the "bi-polar world" that emerged in the aftermath of the Second World War has effectively been brought to an end with the collapse first of Soviet control in Eastern Europe, and then by the break-up of the Soviet Union itself and a prospective reduction of American influence in western Europe. What will Europe look like in an increasingly "multi-polar world"? An answer to this depends not only on the evolving external connections between Europe and other parts of the world but also on the internal development of European political and economic integration. The dynamic of this crucial dual relationship is examined here.

Europe and the World, 1650-1830 is an important thematic study of the first age of globalisation. It surveys the interaction of Europe, Europe's growing colonies and other major global powers, such as the Ottoman Empire, China, India and Japan. Focusing on Europe's impact on the world, Jeremy Black analyses European attitudes, exploration, trade and acquisition of knowledge.

A study of the crimes of women in early modern Germany, this text draws on court records to examine the lives of shrewd cutpurses, quarrelling artisan wives, and soldiers' concubines.

This book recasts the story of the Reformation by bringing together two histories: the Encounter between Europe and the western hemisphere beginning in 1492; and the fragmentation of European Christendom in the sixteenth century. In so doing, it restores resonance to 'idolatry', 'cannibal', 'barbarian', even as it moves past such polemics to trace multiple understandings of divinity, matter and human nature. So many aspects of human life, from marriage and family through politics to ways of thinking about space and time, were called into question. Debates on human nature and conversion forged new understandings of religious identity. Debates on the relationship of humanity to the material world forged new understandings of image and ritual, new understandings of physics. By the end of the century, there was not one 'Christian religion', but many, and many understandings of the Christian in the world.

This major survey of political life in late medieval Europe provides a framework for understanding the developments that shaped this turbulent period. Rather than emphasising crisis, decline, disorder or the birth of the modern state, this account centres on the mixed results of political and governmental growth across the continent. The age of the Hundred Years War, schism and revolt was also a time of rapid growth in jurisdiction, taxation and representation, of spreading literacy and evolving political technique. This mixture of state formation and political convulsion lay at the heart of the 'making of polities'. Offering a full introduction to political events and processes from the fourteenth century to the sixteenth, this book combines a broad, comparative account with discussion of individual regions and states, including eastern and northern Europe alongside the more familiar west and south.