The Dutch Republic - Jonathan Israel

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An exhaustive history of the golden age of the Dutch Republic, when Holland was hugely influential in its impact on the spheres of the arts, commerce, finance, shipping and technology. 32pp plates.

Résumé :
The `Dutch Golden Age', the age of Grotius, Spinoza, Rembrandt, Vermeer, and a host of other renowned artists and writers was also remarkable for its immense impact in the spheres of commerce, finance, shipping, and technology. It was in fact one of the most spectacularly creative episodes in the history of the world. In this book, Jonathan Israel gives the definitive account of the emergence of the United Provinces as a great power, and explains the subsequent decline in the eighteenth century. He places the thought, politics, religion, and social developments of the Golden Age in their broad context, and examines the changing relationship between the northern Netherlands and the south, which was to develop into modern Belgium. One of the principal aims of the book is to counter the oversimplification which characterizes so much history writing today, and to provide a new type of integrated history which draws the different dimensions of the discipline firmly together in strictly non-technical language. The result is a comprehensive and lucid account as useful to the reader primarily interested in artistic and cultural history as to the student who needs a survey of the Republic's institutions, class structure, and economic development. At the same time it will provide an invaluable aid to scholars interested in new research and new interpretations....

Biographie:
Jonathan Israel is the author of many well-respected books in European and particularly Dutch history, amongst them Dutch Primacy in World Trade, 1585-1740 (OUP, 1989), European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism, 1550-1750 (OUP, 1985), The Dutch Republic in the Hispanic World, 1606-1661 (OUP, 1982), and joint editor of From Persecution to Toleration (OUP, 1991)....

Sommaire:

• Preface


• Lists of maps, tables, and abbreviations


• Part 1: The Making of the Republic, 1477-1588


• 1: Introduction


• 2: On the Threshold of a Modern era


• 3: Humanism and the Origins of the Reformation, 1470-1520


• 4: Territorial Consolidation, 1516-1559


• 5: The Early Dutch Reformation, 1519-1565


• 6: Society Before the Revolt


• 7: The Breakdown of the Habsburg Regime, 1549-1566


• 8: Repression Under Alva, 1567-1572


• 9: The Revolt Begins


• 10: The Revolt and the Emergence of a New State


• Part 2: The Early Golden Age, 1588-1647


• 11: Consolidation of the Republic, 1588-1590


• 12: The Republic becomes a Great Power


• 13: The Institutions of the Republic


• 14: The Commencement of Dutch World Trade Primacy


• 15: Society after the Revolt


• 16: Protestantization, Catholicization, Confessionalization


• 17: The Separation of Identities: the Twelve Years Truce


• 18: Crisis Within the Dutch Body Politic, 1607-1616


• 19: The fall of the Oldenbarnevelt Regime, 1616-1618


• 20: The Calvinist Revolution of the Counter-Remonstrants, 1618-1621


• 21: The Republic Under Siege, 1621-1628


• 22: The Republic in Triumph, 1629-1647


• 23: Art and Architecture, 1509-1648


• 24: Intellectual Life, 1572-1650


• Part III: The Later Golden Age, 1647-1702


• 25: The Stadholderate of William II, 1647-1650


• 26: Society


• 27: Confessionalization, 1647-1702


• 28: Freedom and Order


• 29: The Republic at its Zenith I: the 1650s


• 30: The Republic at its Zenith II:1659-1672


• 31: 1672: Year of Disaster


• 32: The Stadholderate of William III, 1672-1702


• 33: Art and Architecture, 1645-1702


• 34: Intellectual Life, 1650-1700


• 35: The Colonial Empire


• Part IV: The Age of Decline, 1702-1806


• 36: The Republic of the Regents, 1702-1747


• 37: Society


• 38: The Churches


• 39: The Enlightenment


• 40: The Second Orangist Revolution, 1747-1751


• 41: The Faltering Republic and the New Dynamism in the `South'


• 42: The Patriot Revolution, 1780-1787


• 43: The Fall of the Republic


• 44: Denouement


• Bibliography


• Index