New Horizons for Early Modern European Scholarship

Book excerpt: An illuminating exploration of the new frontiers—and unsettled geographical, temporal, and thematic borders—of early modern European history. The study of early modern Europe has long been the source of some of the most creative and influential movements in historical scholarship. New Horizons for Early Modern European Scholarship explores recent developments in historiography both to exhibit the field's continuing vibrancy and to highlight emerging challenges to long-assumed truths. Essays examine • how key ideas and intellectual practices arose, circulated through scholarly culture, and gave way to subsequent forms • Europe's transforming relationship with Asia, the Americas, Africa, and the rest of the world • how overlooked evidence illuminates vital but obscured people, practices, and objects • connections between disciplines, types of sources, time periods, and places Opening up emerging possibilities, this book demonstrates that early modern European scholarship remains a source for groundbreaking historical insights and methodologies that would benefit the study of any time and place. Contributors: Alexander Bevilacqua, Ann Blair, Daniela Bleichmar, William J. Bulman, Frederic Clark, Anthony Grafton, Jill Kraye, Yuen-Gen Liang, Elizabeth McCahill, Nicholas Popper, Amanda Wunder