"Women and Gender in the Early Modern Low Countries, 1500-1750 brings together research on women and gender across the Low Countries, a culturally contiguous region that was split by the Eighty Years War into the Protestant Dutch Republic in the north and the Spanish-controlled, Catholic Hapsburg Netherlands in the south. The authors of this interdisciplinary volume highlight women's experiences of social class, as family members, before the law, and as authors, artists, and patrons, as well as the workings of gender in art and literature. In studies ranging from microhistories to surveys, the book reveals the Low Countries as a remarkable historical laboratory for its topic and points to the opportunities the region holds for future scholarly investigations"--

Combining historical, historiographical, museological, and touristic analysis, this study investigates how late medieval and early modern women of the Low Countries expressed themselves through texts, art, architecture and material objects, how they were represented by contemporaries, and how they have been interpreted in modern academic and popular contexts. Broomhall and Spinks analyse late medieval and early modern women's opportunities to narrate their experiences and ideas, as well as the processes that have shaped their representation in the heritage and cultural tourism of the Netherlands and Belgium today. The authors study female-authored objects such as familial and political letters, dolls' houses, account books; visual sources, funeral monuments, and buildings commissioned by female patrons; and further artworks as well as heritage sites, streetscapes, souvenirs and clothing with gendered historical resonances. Employing an innovative range of materials from written sources to artworks, material objects, heritage sites and urban precincts, the authors argue that interpretations of late medieval and early modern women's experiences by historians and art scholars interact with presentations by cultural and heritage tourism providers in significant ways that deserve closer interrogation by feminist researchers.

Crime is men’s business, isn’t it? Women are responsible for 10 percent of crime in Europe. Yet, if we look at the Dutch Republic in the early modern period, we find that in the towns of Holland women played a much larger role in crime. In a number of early modern towns about half of the criminals convicted in court were women. These women were in vulnerable positions and thus more likely to become involved in crime. They also had a relatively independent status and led remarkably public lives. Manon van der Heijden convincingly shows that it is the very combination of women’s vulnerability and independence that accounts for the high female crime rates in Holland between 1600 and 1800.

Alastair Duke has long been recognized as one of the leading scholars of the early modern Netherlands, known internationally for his important work on the impact of religious change on political events which was the focus of his Reformation and Revolt in the Low Countries (1990). Bringing together an updated selection of his previously published essays - together with one entirely new chapter and two that appear in English here for the first time - this volume explores the emergence of new political and religious identities in the early modern Netherlands. Firstly it analyses the emergence of a common identity amongst the amorphous collection of states in north-western Europe that were united first under the rule of the Valois Dukes of Burgundy and later the Habsburg princes, and traces the fortunes of this notion during the political and religious conflicts that divided the Low Countries during the second half of the sixteenth century. A second group of essays considers the emergence of dissidence and opposition to the regime, and explores how this was expressed and disseminated through popular culture. Finally, the volume shows how in the age of confessionalisation and civil war, challenging issues of identity presented themselves to both dissenting groups and individuals. Taken together these essays demonstrate how these dissident identities shaped and contributed to the development of the Netherlands during the early modern period.

In the half millennium of their existence, guilds in the Low Countries played a highly significant role in shaping the societies of which they were a part. One key aspect that has been identified in recent historical research to explain the survival of the guilds for such a long time is the guilds' continued adaptability to changing circumstances. This idea of flexibility is the point of departure for the essays in this volume, which sheds new light on the corporate system and identifies its various features and regional variances. The contributors explore the interrelations between economic organisations and political power in late medieval and early modern towns, and address issues of gender, religion and social welfare in the context of the guilds. This cohesive and focussed volume will provide a stimulus for renewed interest and further research in this area. It will appeal to scholars and students with an interest in early modern economic, social and cultural history in particular, but will also be valuable to those researching into political, religious and gender history.

Combining historical, historiographical, museological, and touristic analysis, this study investigates how late medieval and early modern women of the Low Countries expressed themselves through texts, art, architecture and material objects, how they were represented by contemporaries, and how they have been interpreted in modern academic and popular contexts. Broomhall and Spinks analyse late medieval and early modern women's opportunities to narrate their experiences and ideas, as well as the processes that have shaped their representation in the heritage and cultural tourism of the Netherlands and Belgium today. The authors study female-authored objects such as familial and political letters, dolls' houses, account books; visual sources, funeral monuments, and buildings commissioned by female patrons; and further artworks as well as heritage sites, streetscapes, souvenirs and clothing with gendered historical resonances. Employing an innovative range of materials from written sources to artworks, material objects, heritage sites and urban precincts, the authors argue that interpretations of late medieval and early modern women's experiences by historians and art scholars interact with presentations by cultural and heritage tourism providers in significant ways that deserve closer interrogation by feminist researchers.

This book is the first comparative study of early modern English and Dutch women writers. It explores women’s rich and complex responses to the birth of the public sphere, new concepts of privacy, and the ideology of domesticity in the seventeenth century. Women in both countries were briefly allowed a public voice during times of political upheaval, but were increasingly imagined as properly confined to the household by the end of the century. This book compares how English and Dutch women responded to these changes. It discusses praise of women, marriage manuals, and attitudes to female literacy, along with female artistic and literary expressions in the form of painting, engraving, embroidery, print, drama, poetry, and prose, to offer a rich account of women’s contributions to debates on issues that mattered most to them.