There has never been a more appropriate time to emphasize the intimate interconnectedness that has always existed between Britain and continental Europe, in every aspect of life. This Virtual Special Issue offers, with free access, a selection of 20 articles that have been chosen to illustrate both the importance and the diversity of such relationships during the early modern period; and also their reciprocity, a fact that is easily overlooked in critical analysis whose primary focus is on Britain.
These articles include perspectives from France, Italy, Spain, Poland, the Netherlands, the German states, Bohemia, and the Holy Roman Empire, as well as from Britain. The wide range of subject-areas covered frequently overlap, but they form five broad groupings:
Court culture – both in the elaborate court entertainments and in art collecting – and its close relationship to international politics (articles by David Norbrook, Axel Saähler, Toby Osborne, Markus Klinge, and Kevin Chovanec).
Diplomacy (Melanie Ord).
The interchange of religious, political, and philosophical ideas (Alan Rudrum, Christopher Tilmouth, Marco Barducci on Cromwell in Italy, Rady Roldan-Figueroa, Marco Barducci on Grotius in England, and Leigh Penman).
Literary cross-currents (Martin Wiggins, William Poole, C.R. Joby, Giulio Pertile, and Nigel Smith).
Finally, trading relations (Giada Pizzoni), and what one might call economic migrants, from English actors in Paris (Alan Howe) to the wide involvement of British exiles in Poland (Antoni Krawczyk).
As an international and interdisciplinary journal it is a central principle of The Seventeenth Century that the study of every aspect of the period is enriched by an awareness of the wider perspectives that contribute to its fertile complexity. This selection of articles is drawn from the full range of the journal’s rich archive, and offers an indication of the scope and depth of its coverage in all areas.
Richard Maber
General Editor, The Seventeenth Century