Seventeenth-Century Europe

Fülszöveg

The seventeenth century has in recent years been the object of major and often controversial re-assessment as historians have attempted to discern and interpret the underlying factors which determined the extraordinary vitality of the age in every aspect of life. Society, culture, economy, philosophy, political ideology, science, religion, education—all these experienced significant, sometimes violent, change. Authority in all forms was challenged. Men adopted entirely new attitudes to each other and to the world itself.
This book gives a fair and reasoned account of new lines of investigation and argument concerning aU topics of seventeenth century European history. The author has organised his material so that the first and longer part of the book deals comprehensively with the principal topics of seventeenth century history. Chapters on social and economic developments include examinations of demographic changes, inflation and the 'crises of subsistence' that dominated the... Tovább

Fülszöveg

The seventeenth century has in recent years been the object of major and often controversial re-assessment as historians have attempted to discern and interpret the underlying factors which determined the extraordinary vitality of the age in every aspect of life. Society, culture, economy, philosophy, political ideology, science, religion, education—all these experienced significant, sometimes violent, change. Authority in all forms was challenged. Men adopted entirely new attitudes to each other and to the world itself.
This book gives a fair and reasoned account of new lines of investigation and argument concerning aU topics of seventeenth century European history. The author has organised his material so that the first and longer part of the book deals comprehensively with the principal topics of seventeenth century history. Chapters on social and economic developments include examinations of demographic changes, inflation and the 'crises of subsistence' that dominated the Uves of the major portion of the population. These chapters summarise the work of the 'quantitative' historians without becoming too much involved in detailed technicaUties. In discussing rehgion, the author finds room for the doubters and for behef in witchcraft as well as for the churches and the theologians. Science, from Galileo to Newton, is given ample treatment, and the arts are seen in their social as well as in their inteUectual context; the effect of both scientific and artistic evolution on the spirit of the seventeenth century is also assessed. Popular ideas as well as the work of the philosophers are
Continued on back flap Vissza