Alastair Duke

The Revolt of the Netherlands has long been familiar to English-speaking readers, but the Reformation there has remained largely a closed book. The Reformation in the Low Countries developed along very different lines from German Lutheranism. While the decentralised character of political authority ensured the survival of religious dissent, a prolonged persecution of heresy postponed the formation of public Protestant churches until after 1572. Conflicting interests and beliefs, as well as the war and political struggle, shaped the final religious outcome. Local considerations and individual responses played their part alongside the decisions of rulers, whether Philip II and his lieutenant, the duke of Alva, or William the Silent. Alastair Duke's work is of central importance to a proper understanding of both Reformation and Revolt.

Reformation and Revolt in the Low Countries

Lotte Hellinga

Theo Hermans

Lotte Hellinga-Querido

Elaine Paintin

Jacob Harskamp

Proceedings of a Conference held in London, 15-17 September 1999, organized by The Association for Low Countries Studies, University College London, Centre for Dutch and Flemish Culture, The British Library, Dutch and Flemish section, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine. Twenty-five papers by experts in their particular period or area were selected for publication. Covering almost five centuries, they represent a wholly modern approach to the history of the book and publishing in a European context, highlighting for the first time the crucial role of the Low Countries in transmitting the intellectual heritage of an area well beyond their own changing borders. Illustrated.

The Role of the Low Countries in the Book-trade, 1473-1941

The Bookshop of the World

Andrew Spicer

Alastair Duke has long been recognized as one of the leading scholars of the early modern Netherlands, known internationally for his important work on the impact of religious change on political events which was the focus of his Reformation and Revolt in the Low Countries (1990). Bringing together an updated selection of his previously published essays - together with one entirely new chapter and two that appear in English here for the first time - this volume explores the emergence of new political and religious identities in the early modern Netherlands. Firstly it analyses the emergence of a common identity amongst the amorphous collection of states in north-western Europe that were united first under the rule of the Valois Dukes of Burgundy and later the Habsburg princes, and traces the fortunes of this notion during the political and religious conflicts that divided the Low Countries during the second half of the sixteenth century. A second group of essays considers the emergence of dissidence and opposition to the regime, and explores how this was expressed and disseminated through popular culture. Finally, the volume shows how in the age of confessionalisation and civil war, challenging issues of identity presented themselves to both dissenting groups and individuals. Taken together these essays demonstrate how these dissident identities shaped and contributed to the development of the Netherlands during the early modern period.

Dissident Identities in the Early Modern Low Countries

The Reformation and Revolt in the Low Countries

Alastair Duke

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