Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620–1914

J. R. McNeill

This book explores the links among ecology, disease, and international politics in the context of the Greater Caribbean - the landscapes lying between Surinam and the Chesapeake - in the seventeenth through early twentieth centuries. Ecological changes made these landscapes especially suitable for the vector mosquitoes of yellow fever and malaria, and these diseases wrought systematic havoc among armies and would-be settlers.

James B. Collins

A new edition of James Collins's acclaimed synthesis that challenged longstanding views of the origins of modern states and absolute monarchy through an analysis of early modern Europe's most important continental state. Incorporating recent scholarship on the French state and his own research, James Collins has revised the text throughout.

Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400–1900

Lauren Benton

A Search for Sovereignty maps a new approach to world history by examining the relation of law and geography in European empires between 1400 and 1900. Lauren Benton argues that Europeans imagined imperial space as networks of corridors and enclaves, and that they constructed sovereignty in ways that merged ideas about geography and law.

The Kingdoms and Churches of Scandinavia, 1520–1545

James L. Larson

The turbulence of the Protestant Reformation marks a turning point in European history, but the Scandinavian contribution to this revolution is not well known outside the Northern world. Reforming the North focuses on twenty-five years (1520–1545 A.D.) of this history, during which Scandinavians terminated the medieval Union of Kalmar, toppled the Catholic Church, ended the commercial dominance of the German Hanse, and laid the foundations for centralized states on the ruins of old institutions and organizations.

The Rise of French Cuisine, 1650–1800

Susan Pinkard

Modern French habits of cooking, eating, and drinking were born in the Ancien Regime, radically breaking with culinary traditions that originated in antiquity and creating a new aesthetic. This new culinary culture saw food and wine as important links between human beings and nature. Authentic foodstuffs and simple preparations became the hallmarks of the modern style.

Thomas A. Brady Jr.

This book studies the connections between the political reform of the Holy Roman Empire and the German lands around 1500 and the sixteenth-century religious reformations, both Protestant and Catholic. It argues that the character of the political changes (dispersed sovereignty, local autonomy) prevented both a general reformation of the Church before 1520 and a national reformation thereafter.

William Beik

A magisterial new history of French society between the end of the middle ages and the Revolution by one of the world’s leading authorities on early modern France. Using colorful examples and incorporating the latest scholarship, William Beik conveys the distinctiveness of early modern society and identifies the cultural practices that defined the lives of people at all levels of society.

Robert C. Allen

Why did the industrial revolution take place in eighteenth-century Britain and not elsewhere in Europe or Asia? In this convincing new account Robert Allen argues that the British industrial revolution was a successful response to the global economy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He shows that in Britain wages were high and capital and energy cheap in comparison to other countries in Europe and Asia.

A Global History 1478–1834

Francisco Bethencourt, Translated by Jean Birrell

The Inquisition was the most powerful disciplinary institution in the early modern world, responsible for 300,000 trials and over 1.5 million denunciations. How did it root itself in different social and ethnic environments? Why did it last for three centuries? What cultural, social and political changes led to its abolition? In this first global comparative study, Francisco Bethencourt examines the Inquisition’s activities in Spain, Italy, Portugal and overseas Iberian colonies.

From Beginnings to 1807

A. R. Disney

The Kingdom of Portugal was created as a by-product of the Christian Reconquest of Hispania. With no geographical raison d'etre and no obvious political roots in its Roman, Germanic, or Islamic pasts, it for long remained a small, struggling realm on Europe's outer fringe.

From Beginnings to 1807

A. R. Disney

The Kingdom of Portugal was created as a by-product of the Christian Reconquest of Hispania. With no geographical raison d’être and no obvious roots in its Roman, Germanic, or Islamic pasts, it for long remained a small, struggling realm on Europe’s outer fringe.