New Books in Early Modern History
Interviews with scholars of the Early Modern World about the new books
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Juan José Rivas Moreno, "The Capital Market of Manila and the Pacific Trade, 1668-1838" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)
Many authors have written about the Manila Galleons, the massive ships that took goods back and forth between Acapulco and Manila, ferrying silver one way, and Chinese-made goods the other. But how did the Galleons actually work? Who paid for them? How did buyers and sellers negotiate with each other? Who set the rules
Hartley Lachter, "Kabbalah and Catastrophe: Historical Memory in Premodern Jewish Mysticism" (Stanford UP, 2024)
While premodern kabbalistic texts were not chronicles of historical events, they provided elaborate models for understanding the secret divine plan guiding human affairs. Hartley Lachter analyzes innovative kabbalistic doctrines, such as the idea of reincarnation and the notion of multiple successive universes, through
In June 1609, two judges left Bordeaux for a territory at the very edge of their jurisdiction, a Basque-speaking province on the Atlantic coast called the Pays de Labourd. In four months, they executed up to 80 women and men for the crime of witchcraft, causing a wave of suspects to flee into Spain and sparking terror
Chelsea Berry, "Poisoned Relations: Healing, Power, and Contested Knowledge in the Atlantic World" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)
By the time of the opening of the Atlantic world in the fifteenth century, Europeans and Atlantic Africans had developed significantly different cultural idioms for and understandings of poison. Europeans considered poison a gendered “weapon of the weak” while Africans viewed it as an abuse by the powerful. Though dist
Ariel Evan Mayse, "Laws of the Spirit: Ritual, Mysticism, and the Commandments in Early Hasidism" (Stanford UP, 2024)
The compelling vision of religious life and practice found in Hasidic sources has made it the most enduring and successful Jewish movement of spiritual renewal of all time. In Laws of the Spirit: Ritual, Mysticism, and the Commandments in Early Hasidism (Stanford UP, 2024), Ariel Evan Mayse grapples with one of Hasidis
Herald van der Linde, "Majapahit: Intrigue, Betrayal and War in Indonesia's Greatest Empire" (Monsoon Books, 2024)
Majapahit was Indonesia, and Southeast Asia’s, largest empire. Centered on the island of Java, Majapahit commanded loyalty from vassals across the archipelago: on Sumatra, Borneo, Sulawesi, and even the Malay Peninsula, including a tiny village called Tumasik–known today as Singapore. The empire lasted for around 230 y