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.
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.
European mariners in the Atlantic in the 16th century used a reliable navigational aid: seabirds.
In Infanta: The Short, Remarkable Life of Catalina Micaela, Magdalena S. Sánchez discovers a 16th-century marriage documented in remarkable detail.
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?
On 26 April 1478 the attempted coup against Florentine tyrant Lorenzo de’ Medici ended in disaster.
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.
Lying Abroad: Henry Wotton and the Invention of Diplomacy by Carol Chillington Rutter is a case study of the archetypal early modern ambassador.
Although the reception was not always warm, the English East India Company made several attempts to trade in Japan in the 17th century.
Forgotten Experts: Astrologers, Science, and Authority in the Ottoman Empire, 1450-1600 by A. Tunç Şen follows the fortunes of the sultan’s stargazers.
