Renaissance

Enslaved people cultivating and curing tobacco in the West Indies, 1686. Heritage Images/TopFoto.

Slavery in the Colonial Caribbean

This month marks the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved people in the English Caribbean.

Page from the Textus Roffensis, Rochester, 12th century. Rochester Cathedral.

How England Learnt Old English

In the 16th and 17th centuries, as scholars first started to translate and study Old English, they struggled to reconcile England’s past with its present.

Tobacco box with royal arms of Great Britain, c.1679-97. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public Domain.

‘This Little World’ and ‘A Golden World’ review

Two recent books – This Little World: A New History of Tudor and Stuart England by Nandini Das and A Golden World: How the Americas Transformed Renaissance England by Lauren Working – put 16th- and 17th-century England on the map.

Pope Sixtus V, surrounded by achievements of his papacy and places with which he was associated, c.1589. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public Domain.

Gambling on the Pope

The death of a pope presented a lucrative opportunity in Renaissance Italy. Fortunes could be made – but only if you could correctly guess the conclave’s chosen successor.

Frigate bird, by John White, 1585-93. Trustees of the British Museum.

Following 16th-Century Seabirds

European mariners in the Atlantic in the 16th century used a reliable navigational aid: seabirds.

King Philip II of Spain banqueting with his family and courtiers, Alonso Sánchez Coello, 1596. Museum Narodowe w Warzawie. Public Domain.

‘Infanta’ by Magdalena S. Sánchez review

In Infanta: The Short, Remarkable Life of Catalina Micaela, Magdalena S. Sánchez discovers a 16th-century marriage documented in remarkable detail.

Iceland, miniature from The Book of Marvels, French, c.1460-65. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Ms. 124, fol. 13v, 2022.15.13v. Public Domain.

Iceland’s English Century

In the 15th century Iceland was caught in a trade war between the Kalmar Union, the Hanseatic League, and England. Which power defined the island’s fate?

The Pazzi Conspiracy

On 26 April 1478 the attempted coup against Florentine tyrant Lorenzo de’ Medici ended in disaster.

A Performance of the farce 'Een Cluyte van Plaeyerwater' (A Clod from Plaeyerwater) at a Flemish Kermis, Peeter Baltens, c.1570. Rijksmuseum. Public Domain.

‘A Defence of Pretence’ by Indira Ghose review

If all the world’s a stage, argues Indira Ghose in A Defence of Pretence: Civility and the Theatre in Early Modern England, then on the stage is where we see change most vividly.