Exploiting the Urban System? The Frictions of Military Finance and Diplomacy in the Dutch Republic, 1688–1714

This article examines how international military finance operated in the Dutch Republic between 1688–1714. The region’s unique urban geography in which the political and financial infrastructures crucial for military financing were geographically dispersed created stresses and strains. These inconveniences were overcome due to the Republic’s excellent intra-urban infrastructure – creating fast and reliable communication between the different urban centers – and their reliance on (semi-)private agents, the solliciteurs-militair. As a result, the urban system created a level of flexibility: credit for military purposes could be found both in The Hague and Amsterdam, rather than having to rely on a single city as was the case in London. This focus on the urban has broader historiographical importance because recent scholarship on early modern war and state formation is increasingly questioning whether the focus on political and financial centralization is necessarily the best way to understand these processes.

Introduction

After a discussion of the twentieth anniversary issue, the author of the book which is the subject of our “round table” review of this twenty-fifth anniversary issue: Merry Wiesner Hanks’ What is Early Modern History (2021) is introduced. This is followed by a brief account of the rationale behind the foundation of the JEMH in the 1990s and how, from the very first issue, the journal has tried to decolonize our understanding of the period 1300–1800, as exemplified by Antony Black’s warning that: “we should stop selling off second-hand concepts to unsuspecting non-European cultures.” Passing comment is made on the chronological (as well as geographical) breadth of the coverage of the JEMH which accords well with the recent merger of the Centers for Medieval and Early Modern History at the University of Minnesota (to form the Center for Premodern Studies). At a time when the advocacy of the study of pre-modern history is vital as never before, this situates the JEMH very well. The introduction closes with a series of acknowledgements and thanks not only directed to the editorial team both in Minnesota and Leiden for the support they have given me, as editor-in-chief, since July 2010, but also to the numerous authors and readers of manuscripts who have made the journal what it is today.

Popular and Public History

This essay offers a reflection on the role public and popular history play in creating understanding and awareness about early modern history. It considers Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks’ chapter “Popular and Public History” in her book, What is Early Modern History, and uses Wiesner-Hanks’ ideas as a starting point to expand understanding of early modern scholarly identity, the role museums and historic sites could play in creating broad awareness about the early modern period, and why podcasts provide historians with a powerful tool to help non-historians better connect with and understand the early modern period.

Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

This article, concentrating on trends in the field of gender and sexuality studies of the last decade or so, makes a case for expanding both the geography and the methodology for early modern gender studies, broadly conceived. Themes considered here include the intermingling of the intimate and the imperial as well as marriage, law, slavery and labor, freedom, settler colonialism, intersectionality, queer studies, mothering, and reproduction. This topic, and article, also point to the need to make use of material culture and to interrogate the silence and violence of the archive remaining.

Religious, Intellectual, and Cultural History

Inspired by Merry Wiesner-Hanks’ What is Early Modern History? chapter on religious, intellectual, and cultural history, this reflection considers the current state of these three subfields. It advocates for early modern historians to expand their bounding of religion beyond Christianity and Europe. It is also a call to extend the list of agents credited with the production of science, Enlightenment, and “culture.”

The Journal of Early Modern History, 1994–2010: Some Personal Recollections

When Simon Ditchfield asked me for a contribution to the anniversary issue, it seemed the right occasion for a brief origin story, with reference to some of the many colleagues who had a hand in launching The Journal of Early Modern History.