Proud, turbulent, fiercely Catholic, the citizens of sixteenth-century Paris played an important part in French history. Here N.M. Sutherland depicts them at home against the background of their daily work and pleasures.
J.R. Pole describes how the idea of equality, when applied to the new multi-racial, multi-lingual, multireligious America of vast industry and teeming cities, was destined to conflict with some of the deepest existing preconceptions about the fundamental character of American society.
J.W. Blake describes how, during the colonial period, just over half a million emigrants—English, Scottish, Irish, French, German, Dutch, Swedish and Finnish—are calculated to have left Europe for a new home in America. Often they reached their goal only at the cost of hideous suffering.
J. Leslie Nightingale describes how, during the 17th century, Puritanism spread into English villages, with the twelve sons of Jacob and all the major and minor prophets to be found on the village greens. Names after the Christian graces and virtues—Patience, Honour, Faith, Hope, Charity—were also widely bestowed at Puritan baptisms.
A.F.C. Baber writes that traditions of English local government, carried to the New World, provide an important clue to the success of the Pilgrims' emigration.
Church and State stood foursquare behind the superiority of man in seventeenth century England. It was only when a lady became a widow, writes Maurice Ashley, that a glorious opportunity for authority and freedom suddenly flooded in upon her.
J.W. Newmarch Holmes transports the reader to Novgorod, the hub of a mercantile empire in medieval Russia.
George Woodcock describes how the destruction of the Inca economy brought untold suffering to their former subjects; and there were many Indian revolts, brutally crushed by the Spaniard, during the course of the next two centuries.
Christopher Hill introduces Roger Crab, former Cromwellian soldier and hatter of Chesham, who took literally the text: “Go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor.” Vegetarian, teetotal, celibate, he led the life of a hermit. This is the first of two studies in 17th-century eccentricity.
Despite its isolation from the mainstream of human development, Basil Davidson writes, African society before the coming of the Europeans was neither savage nor stagnant.
