Jonathan Irvine Israel

The Dutch Golden Age, known for its renowned artists and writers, was also remarkable for its immense impact on the spheres of commerce, finance, shipping, and technology. Israel gives the definitive account of the emergence of the United Provinces as a great power, its subsequent decline in the 18th century, and the changing relationship between the northern Netherlands and the south, which was to develop into modern Belgium. 32 color plates.

Its Rise, Greatness and Fall, 1477-1806

The Dutch Republic

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 its 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 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.

Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall, 1477-1806

Salverda Reinier

This volume, consisting of seventeen studies by leading experts in the field, constitutes an important new survey of Dutch jewish history.

Its History and Secular Culture (1500-2000)

Dutch Jewry

David S. Katz

One of the main consequences of recent work in early modern intellectual and religious history has been a discrediting of the notion of a sudden and dramatic transition to the spiritual world of the Enlightenment. Scholars are increasingly examining the underlying spiritual trends and tendencies which confirm the variety and complexity of the slow movement from Renaissance to Enlightenment, and the profound impact of many of the manifestations of intellectual and religious tension during the early modern period. The essays in this volume are a contribution to this process of reappraisal, focusing specifically on the phenomena of scepticism and millenarianism, especially as part of the more pronounced role of the Jews and their culture.

Sceptics, Millenarians, and Jews

Professor of Dutch History and Institutions Jonathan Israel

This volume is concerned with the religious, social and commercial networking methods extending over a large part of the world, ranging from the Near East to South America, used by the western Sephardic Jewish diaspora - and the linked New Christian diaspora (in lands where the Inquisition prevailed)- from the mid sixteenth to the mid eighteenth century. Particular attention is given to the role of these unique diasporas in the functioning of the six great European world maritime empires of the time - the Venetian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, English and French. New material and argument is offered relating to the questions of diaspora formation, Sephardic social practices, crypto-Judaism, religious syncretism, cross-cultural brokerage, and the contribution of diasporas to European expansion.

Jews, Crypto-Jews, and the World of Maritime Empires (1540-1740)

Diasporas Within a Diaspora

Professor of Modern European History Jonathan I Israel

Arguably the most decisive shift in the history of ideas in modern times was the complete demolition during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries - in the wake of the Scientific Revolution - of traditional structures of authority, scientific thought, and belief by the new philosophyand the philosophes, culminating in Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau. In this revolutionary process which effectively overthrew all justicfication for monarchy, aristocracy, and ecclesiastical power, as well as man's dominance over woman, theological dominance of education, and slavery, substitutingthe modern principles of equality, democracy, and universality, the Radical Enlightenment played a crucially important part. Despite the present day interest in the revolutions of the late eighteenth century, the origins and rise of the Radical Enlightenment have been astonishingly little studieddoubtless largely because of its very wide international sweep and the obvious difficulty of fitting in into the restrictive conventions of 'national history' which until recently tended to dominate all historiography. The greatest obstacle to the Radical Enlightenment finding its proper place inmodern historical writing is simply that it was not French, British, German, Italian, Jewish or Dutch, but all of these at the same time. In this novel interpretation of the Radical Enlightenment down to La Mettie and Diderot, two of its key exponents, particular stress is placed on the pivotal roleof Spinoza and the widespread underground international philosophical movement known before 1750 as Spinozism.

Jonathan Irvine Israel

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