Dynastic Legitimacy

In this essay Wight clarified the importance of dynastic legitimacy—that is, hereditary monarchy—in European history. In the Middle Ages and subsequent centuries, rulers were mainly princes who inherited their crowns. The principal exceptions were the leaders of republics, including Venice, Ragusa, Genoa, and Lucca in Italy; the Swiss confederation; and the United Provinces of the Low Countries. Dynastic principles included the theory that the ruler was chosen by God through hereditary succession, and that the monarch represented his or her subjects, notably with regard to the official religious denomination of the country. Such principles made dynastic marriages valuable means to provide heirs to the crown, to clarify succession to the throne, to consolidate alliances, to gain influence and wealth, and to legitimize territorial gains. Despite imprudent and egocentric behaviour by some royal leaders, monarchs were increasingly expected to pursue national rather than personal dynastic interests. After the Napoleonic Wars, the Congress of Vienna reaffirmed dynastic principles of legitimacy, including in Venice and the Netherlands; the Swiss confederation was a conspicuous exception. Dynastic rulers have, however, tended to become symbols and instruments of national unity and self-determination. Popular support for dynastic houses has in many cases led to popular legitimacy for constitutional monarchies.

Changing Times

Returning to England, Herbert found James I’s court and government in disarray but was forced to witness events from the side-lines due to illness. Chapter 6 explores his re-engagement with his family, estates, and court politics and his interest in the religious conflict of the period. It looks at his response to the trial of the earl and countess of Somerset for Sir Thomas Overbury’s murder, the removal of the Howard family from royal office, and the rising influence of the earl of Pembroke and his protégé, Sir George Villiers. It examines Herbert’s intellectual engagement with the soteriological conflict between Gomarists and Arminians in the United Provinces over the doctrine of predestination and his growing interest in Arminian and Socinian religious teaching. The development of his religious thinking is captured in letters written to Sir Robert Harley during 1617 to 1619, critiquing hard-line Calvinist teaching on salvation, and clearly influenced the writing of De Veritate which he drafted during the same period. The chapter ends with his return to court circles and successful application (with the support of Villiers, created earl and later duke of Buckingham by the besotted king) to advance his career as ambassador to the court of Louis XIII following the outbreak of rebellion in Bohemia.

The eighteenth-century Dutch Republic and its inhabitants in the eyes of Teodor Anzelm Dzwonkowski

Teodor Anzelm Dzwonkowski was an average-educated nobleman who left Poland at the end of the 18th century in search of wealth. In Amsterdam, he enlisted in the army and, with the rank of corporal in the infantry, travelled to the Dutch East Indies (1787–1793) — the account of this expedition forms the main part of his memoirs written years later. The article shows how Dzwonkowski viewed the Netherlands, its people, and the way the Dutch East India Company (whose officials he considered to be an extension of the arm of the Republic’s government) operated. His remarks concerning them are present in a small part of his diary (and, in addition, not always expressed directly), because the author’s main interest was in the exoticism of southern Africa and the Far East, and in the Poles he met during his travels. Dzwonkowski was impressed by the management and wealth of the United Provinces, especially by the ease of making a career, although he could hardly be called uncritical: he also saw the dark sides of the local reality, including the loosening of moral norms and corruption. Interestingly, despite his noble background, he seems to be free of state and religious bias against the people of the United Provinces. His view of the Dutch does not differ from the way they were described by British tourists visiting the Dutch Republic during the Stuart Period.

Heidelberg

This chapter focuses on Elizabeth Stuart's life-changing journey as she followed her husband to his ancestral seat, Heidelberg. Elizabeth's extended tour underlined the subtle, symbolic alliance between the United Provinces and the Protestant Union which had already been forged by Frederick V and Maurice of Nassau's appointment to the Order of the Garter. Elizabeth would later describe her reception in Heidelberg as 'most worthy and magnificent'. The court at Heidelberg had accommodated two, complementary, households since the death of Elector Friedrich IV in 1610: that of the Administrator of the Lower Palatinate, the Duke of Zweibrücken-Veldenz, who was to govern until the young Frederick came of age, and that of Frederick's mother, the Electress-Dowager Louise Juliana. The arrival of Frederick and Elizabeth in 1613 introduced two new, and very foreign, households into the equation. The chapter considers how Elizabeth's carrying the heir to the House Palatine gave the head of Frederick's household, Hans Meinrard Schomberg, the perfect excuse to interfere in her household affairs. The significance of Elizabeth's first child, Prince Frederick Henry, was easily matched by the grandeur of his baptism. The chapter then looks at Elizabeth Stuart's financial difficulties in Heidelberg.

The Archbishop Strikes Back

This chapter focuses on how Elizabeth Stuart became the poor widow that she had always pretended to be. Her behaviour became less antagonistic, and it was not long before friend and enemy alike began to take advantage of the newly conciliatory exiled queen. Archbishop Laud, a man who might reasonably be placed in both camps, saw an opportunity to assert control over the religious proclivities of English expatriates in the United Provinces. Laud was particularly concerned with English Puritan practices in the United Provinces because their relentless unorthodoxy undermined his authority in a very visible manner, and did so very close to home. Laud reasoned that if he could gain control over Elizabeth's chaplain, he could influence the religious practices of a few hundred men and women in The Hague, and perhaps bring them back into the Anglican Church. As Archbishop of Canterbury, Laud was able to promote people out of harm's way, and so in 1638 he removed Elizabeth's chaplain of twelve years, Doctor Griffin Higgs, by making him Dean of Lichfield. Laud no doubt rejoiced at the thought that he had managed to influence Elizabeth's courtly personnel and thereby the services at the English Church at The Hague.

Communities of skill in the age of capitalism: Handloom weavers in twentieth-century United Provinces, India

The role of skills has been eclipsed in the transition from an agrarian-craft economy rooted in hand-labour in small households to a modern political economy where productive work takes place outside the household, in offices and factories. Yet the ideological erasure of skilled work should not be confused with its actual disappearance. Precisely because such work was typically construed as private and unimportant, the embedded hierarchies and skills that shaped the handloom weaving industry in the North Indian province of United Provinces under colonial rule could escape systematic conversion to capitalist structures. Skill as human capital constituted the capitalist labour processes in the modern handloom industry, not as an abstract act, but as a historical experience. Handloom workers were reproduced, generationally, socially, and hierarchically, through the passing on of skilled labour within the unorganized informal sector of handloom weaving. Thus the stuff of community skills should move beyond its projection as either ‘endangered’ or ‘regressive’ to explore its access to capitalist structures and the exploitative networks that contain, transmit, and enable the production of skills.

Vida cotidiana de la marinería corsaria de las Provincias Unidas del Río de la Plata.

Este artículo explora algunas cuestiones de la cotidianidad a bordo de los buques corsarios de las Provincias Unidas del Río de la Plata, adoptando enfoques y preguntas que incluyen, como objeto de estudio, a los marineros, es decir, la jerarquía más baja de la tripulación. El marco cronológico elegido corresponde a los años en que las Provincias Unidas del Río de la Plata emplearon un corso marítimo, en su lucha por la independencia de la corona española y la guerra contra el Imperio del Brasil. This article explores some of the daily life issues that took place on board privateer ships of the United Provinces of the Rio de la Plata, adopting approaches and concerns that involve the lower hierarchy of the crew, the sailors, as the object of study. The chronological framework chosen corresponds to the years in which the United Provinces of the Rio de la Plata employed a sea privateering in their struggle for independence from the Spanish crown, and the war against the Brazilian Empire.

Hourglass Effect: The Late Seventeenth Encyclopaedic Dictionary and the Dissemination of Knowledge

The publication of the Dictionnaire universel of Furetière in 1690 ushered in the age of the encyclopaedic dictionary. This was a relatively short-lived phenomenon of little more than a hundred years, but one which pathed the way to modern encyclopaedias. Furetière having died in 1688, his successor was Basnage de Beauval, a protestant exile based in the United Provinces of the Netherlands. It was Basnage who in the new 1701 edition transformed the dictionary by enlarging it considerably to a more genuine encyclopaedic coverage and calling on specialists to rewrite key sections, notably on the natural sciences. The simile of the hourglass is a means to show how the dictionary mediated knowledge from a vast array of sources and made the data available to contemporary and current day users. This paper demonstrates the hourglass effect through the lexicographical and learned sources that Basnage and his major compiler of scientific data, Regis of Amsterdam, brought into service. It looks at how Regis used numerous botanical sources in writing entries on Brazilian flora. Finally, we examine the influence of the work on the phenomenon of the universal dictionary and the development of the encyclopaedia.

Huguenot Contributions to English Pan-Protestantism, 1685-1700

Following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, hundreds of thousands of French refugees sought shelter in Protestant states like the United Provinces and England. In England, the influx of Huguenots contributed significantly towards the argument for greater pan-Protestant engagement with the European continent. Huguenot-authored pamphlets advertised Catholic barbarity, deepening pre-existing anti-Catholic sentiments and imbibing those sentiments with other anti-French concerns, such as Louis XIV’s supposed immorality and his striving for universal monarchy. Further, key Huguenot authors reinterpreted the Glorious Revolution as one synchronizing the country with its Protestant brethren. In so doing, the Huguenots supported William III’s commitment to the Nine Years’ War and increased the quantitative and qualitative arguments to carry out an expensive religious-ideological foreign policy, often against domestic criticisms in England that the outcomes of the war did not match the expense.

Religious Tolerance and Freedom of Prophesying

This essay focuses on the presence of Polish Brethren (usually known as Socinians) exiles in Amsterdam in the mid-seventeenth century, examining the social and intellectual interrelations between them and other Dutch religious minorities. It describes the phenomenon of the Brethren’s emigration to the United Provinces, roughly between 1638 (when the Socinians were banished from Raków) and the late 1660s, relying on both published and manuscript sources. It particularly emphasizes the social relations that the Brethren established with the Remonstrants, the Mennonites, and the Collegiants. It then focuses on the last group and argues that shared views on religious tolerance were the common intellectual ground that likely contributed to the friendly relationships between the Brethren and the Collegiants. It also argues that these relationships fostered further intellectual crossovers between the two groups, as the Brethren in Amsterdam were influenced by the Collegiants’ emphasis on freedom of prophesying, egalitarianism, and anti-confessionalism.