This collection of essays on seventeenth-century Virginia, the first such collection on the Chesapeake in nearly twenty-five years, highlights emerging directions in scholarship and helps set a new agenda for research in the next decade and beyond. The contributors represent some of the best of a younger generation of scholars who are building on, but also criticizing and moving beyond, the work of the so-called Chesapeake School of social history that dominated the historiography of the region in the 1970s and 1980s. Employing a variety of methodologies, analytical strategies, and types of evidence, these essays explore a wide range of topics and offer a fresh look at the early religious, political, economic, social, and intellectual life of the colony. Contributors Douglas Bradburn, Binghamton University, State University of New York * John C. Coombs, Hampden-Sydney College * Victor Enthoven, Netherlands Defense Academy * Alexander B. Haskell, University of California Riverside * Wim Klooster, Clark University * Philip Levy, University of South Florida * Philip D. Morgan, Johns Hopkins University * William A. Pettigrew, University of Kent * Edward DuBois Ragan, Valentine Richmond History Center * Terri L. Snyder, California State University, Fullerton * Camilla Townsend, Rutgers University * Lorena S. Walsh, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation

In Hobbes's Theory of the Will, Jurgen Overhoff reveals the religious, ethical, and political consequences of Thomas Hobbes's doctrine of volition. The author gracefully describes how Hobbes's thought was governed by assumptions based firmly in Galilean natural philosophy and orthodox Protestant theology. Overhoff also demonstrates how his subject used materialist eschatology and an absolutist political theory to resolve the social and ethical predicaments that coincided with these assumptions. Finally, Overhoff provides a chronological study of the numerous philosophical, theological, religious and political aspects of Hobbes's idea of the will and situates Hobbes's doctrine within the context of the most important responses and objections put forward by his critics.

This volume covers the last century (interpreted broadly) of the traditional western Middle Ages. Often seen as a time of doubt, decline and division, the period is shown here as a period of considerable innovation and development, much of which resulted from a conscious attempt by contemporaries to meet the growing demands of society and to find practical solutions to the social, religious and political problems which beset it. The volume consists of four sections. Part I focuses on both the ideas and other considerations which guided men as they sought good government, and on the practical development of representation. Part II deals with aspects of social and economic development at a time of change and expansion. Part III discusses the importance of the life of the spirit: religion, education and the arts. Moving from the general to the particular, Part IV concerns itself with the history of the countries of Europe, emphasis being placed on the growth of the nation states of the 'early modern' world.

In this original study of the Portuguese Empire in the East, the Estado da India, George Souza looks in detail at the activities of Macao. His aim is to enquire into the nature of Portuguese society in China and the South China Sea and explain why the political and economic activities of the Portuguese crown did not inhibit the growth of local entrepreneurial trade. He also examines the nature of Portuguese maritime trade in Asia and analyses the focal role of Macao as an adjunct to the Canton market. The operations of Portuguese private merchants, the so-called 'country traders', are described and tellingly assessed in the wider context of the economic development of China and Southeast Asia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

This book presents the socio-cultural and historical trajectories of the Deccan plateau as well as the coastal areas of the current states of Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Goa. It studies the art of diplomacy by discussing the diplomatic relations between the Marathas and various European companies, as well as the indigenous regional states. The author also probes into the Maratha naval policy, the evolution of a composite Deccani culture and the cultural flux that was taking place within the Maratha country. Through an interdisciplinary lens, the volume examines how caste and gender relations operated, how the idea of dissent was generated as well as the socio-political impact of various linguistic, ethnic and religious groups. Through a study of monuments, sculpture and paintings prevalent in the region, the book also discusses the developments in art and architecture in the Deccan. Rich in archival sources, this book is a must read for scholars and researchers of Indian history, colonial history, South Asian history, Maratha history and history in general.

An encyclopedia covering the political, social, intellectual, religious and cultural history of the German- and Dutch-speaking medieval world, between 500 and 1500. Entries cover individuals and their deeds as well as broader historical topics.