Elegant and accessible, this book is a powerful and imaginative exploration of themes in the history of European ideas.

Volume 43

The oldest and most renowned Dutch university, Leiden was an attractive proposition for travelling foreign students in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Alongside offering an excellent academic program and outstanding facilities, Leiden was also able to cater to the desires of noble students providing various extra-curricular activities. Leiden was the most popular continental university among English students, and this book investigates the 831 English students who studied there between 1575 and 1650. The preference of English students for Leiden was, on the one hand, related to close Anglo-Dutch relations of the period, and these are investigated with respect to politics, economy, religion, culture, as well as to the large 'stranger' communities residing in the respective countries. On the other hand, Leiden's attraction resulted from its academic achievements, which are traced back to the conditions in the United Provinces, the limited influence of the Calvinist Church, Leiden's professors, as well as the university's facilities. The core of this study is an exhaustive quantitative study of the composition of the Leiden student population in general, and that of its English segment in particular. Information is provided on the duration of the studies of English students at Leiden, their age, social background and fields of study. We learn about the careers of English students both prior to and after their time at Leiden, and of the motivation that led the English to choose Leiden over other continental universities. More than a study of one group of students at one university, this book is a valuable contribution to the history of early modern universities and will appeal to a wide international readership interested in cultural and intellectual history as well as in Anglo-Dutch relations.

First full study of the life and career of the Glaswegian minister Robert Baillie, establishing his significance and influence

How did the classical tradition survive on the North Sea shores? This richly illustrated book explores the interplay between art and erudition in the seventeenth century. It analyses the sources, editions, and reception of Franciscus Junius’s writings to chart how ideas about Northern European painting, from Van Dyck to Rembrandt, developed as a counterweight to the Italian tradition. Thus the language of art in Junius’s The Painting of the Ancients appears to be related to his seminal work in the field of Germanic linguistics and his discovery of the shared pre-Christian civilization of Holland and England. Junius’s innovative pairing of scholarship to the painter’s practice illuminates the reception of antiquity and the creation of an Anglo-Dutch artistic Arcadia.

European Contexts for English Republicanism offers new perspectives on early modern English republicanism through its focus on the Continental reception of and engagement with seventeenth-century English thinkers and political events. Looking both at political ideas and at the people that shaped them, the collection examines English republican thought in its wider European context during the later seventeenth and eighteenth century. In a number of case studies, the contributors assess the different ways in which English republican ideas were not only shaped by the thought of the ancients, but also by contemporary authors from all over Europe, such as Hugo Grotius or Christoph Besold. They demonstrate that English republican thinkers did not only act in dialogue with Continental authors and scholars, their ideas in turn also left a long-lasting legacy in Europe as they were received, transformed and put to new uses by thinkers in France, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and Poland. Far from being an exclusively transatlantic affair, as much of the established scholarship suggests, English republican thought also left its legacy on the European Continent, finding its way into wider debates about the rights and wrongs of the English Civil War and the nature of government, while later translations of English republican works also influenced the key thinkers of the French Revolution and the liberals of the nineteenth century. Bringing together a range of fresh and original essays by British and European scholars in the field of early modern intellectual history and English studies, this collection of essays revises a one-sided approach to English republicanism and widens the scope of study beyond linguistic and national boundaries by looking at English republicans and their continental networks and legacy.