The Dutch Army and the Military Revolutions, 1588-1688
The Dutch Army and the Military Revolutions, 1588-1688

Author: Olaf van Nimwegen

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 604

ISBN-13: 1843835754

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The Dutch army is central to all discussions about the tactical, strategic and organisational military revolution of the early modern period, but this is the first substantial work on the subject in English. This book addresses the changes that were effected in the tactics and organisation of the Dutch armed forces between 1588 and 1688. It shows how in the first decades of this period the Dutch army was transformed from an unreliable band of mercenaries into a disciplined force that could hold its own against the might of Spain. Under the leadership of Maurits of Nassau and his cousin Willem Lodewijk a tactical revolution was achieved that had a profound impact on battle. However, the Dutch army's organisational structure remained unchanged and the Dutch Republic continued to rely on mercenaries and military entrepreneurs. It was not until the latter half of the seventeenth century that the Dutch, under William III of Orange, Captain-General of the Union, introduced revolutionary changes in military organisation and established an efficient standing army. This army withstood attacks by Louis XIV and the Dutch reforms were copied by the English. OLAF VAN NIMWEGEN has held a number of research posts in the Netherlands. He has an extensive publication record in Dutch and has published several articles on the Dutch army in English. In 2004 he was awarded the Schouwenburg Prize for an outstanding publication on Dutch military history for De Republiek der Verenigde Nederlanden als grote mogendheid The Republic of the United Netherlands as a great power], about the role and position of the Dutch Republic in the European system of states in the period 1713 to 1756.

The Frigid Golden Age
The Frigid Golden Age

Author: Dagomar Degroot

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-02-08

Total Pages: 387

ISBN-13: 1108317588

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Dagomar Degroot offers the first detailed analysis of how a society thrived amid the Little Ice Age, a period of climatic cooling that reached its chilliest point between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. The precocious economy, unusual environment, and dynamic intellectual culture of the Dutch Republic in its seventeenth-century Golden Age allowed it to thrive as neighboring societies unraveled in the face of extremes in temperature and precipitation. By tracing the occasionally counterintuitive manifestations of climate change from global to local scales, Degroot finds that the Little Ice Age presented not only challenges for Dutch citizens but also opportunities that they aggressively exploited in conducting commerce, waging war, and creating culture. The overall success of their Republic in coping with climate change offers lessons that we would be wise to heed today, as we confront the growing crisis of global warming.

Commanders of Dutch East India Ships in the Eighteenth Century
Commanders of Dutch East India Ships in the Eighteenth Century

Author: J. R. Bruijn

Publisher: Boydell Press

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 184383622X

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Provides a detailed picture of the lives of the commanders and those around them, both at home and at sea. An original and evocative window onto the lives of men who bridged the two worlds of eighteenth century Europe and the Far East.' Professor Nicholas Rodger. This book represents a major contribution to our knowledge and understanding of the East Indian maritime world of the European trading companies. The Dutch East India Company, which ruled large and important parts of what is now Indonesia, and which controlled the highly lucrative trade from the Dutch East Indies to Europe, much of it a monopoly trade in pepper and other spices, was in this period larger and better established than its British counterpart. The book reconstructs and explores the careers of the highlyimportant and influential commanders of the Dutch East Indiamen, the ships which plied the trade routes between the East Indies and the Netherlands. It covers the company's system of examinations, how mates and masters acquired their navigational knowledge, how they lived their lives at sea and on land, and how, making use of the enormous opportunities for private trade, they were able to make substantial fortunes and climb the social ladder. The book contains a wealth of material on the social history of the commanders and those around them, both at home and at sea. JAAP R. BRUIJN is Professor Emeritus of Maritime History at Leiden University. He is one of the leadingmaritime historians in the Netherlands.

The Military in the Early Modern World
The Military in the Early Modern World

Author: Markus Meumann

Publisher: V&R Unipress

Published: 2020-12-14

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 3847010131

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When looking at the early modern period (c. 1500–c. 1800), we often speak of "the military" or "the army". But what exactly do we mean when using these terms? The forms and structures of the armed forces have not only changed between 1500 and 1800, but also varied throughout different regions of the world and even within Europe. The contributors to this volume examine twelve early modern examples of armed forces in the Holy Roman Empire, Western and Eastern Europe, Eastern Asia and North America and paint a multifarious and even disparate picture during this period. The findings suggest that modern notions of the armed forces common in the early modern period should be used more prudently to avoid prevalent implications of non-existing continuity and uniformity.

Devil-Land
Devil-Land

Author: Clare Jackson

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2021-09-30

Total Pages: 542

ISBN-13: 0141984589

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*WINNER OF THE WOLFSON HISTORY PRIZE 2022* A BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021, AS CHOSEN BY THE TIMES, NEW STATESMAN, TELEGRAPH AND TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT 'A big historical advance. Ours, it turns out, is a very un-insular "Island Story". And its 17th-century chapter will never look quite the same again' John Adamson, Sunday Times A ground-breaking portrait of the most turbulent century in English history Among foreign observers, seventeenth-century England was known as 'Devil-Land': a diabolical country of fallen angels, torn apart by seditious rebellion, religious extremism and royal collapse. Clare Jackson's dazzling, original account of English history's most turbulent and radical era tells the story of a nation in a state of near continual crisis. As an unmarried heretic with no heir, Elizabeth I was regarded with horror by Catholic Europe, while her Stuart successors, James I and Charles I, were seen as impecunious and incompetent. The traumatic civil wars, regicide and a republican Commonwealth were followed by the floundering, foreign-leaning rule of Charles II and his brother, James II, before William of Orange invaded England with a Dutch army and a new order was imposed. Devil-Land reveals England as, in many ways, a 'failed state': endemically unstable and rocked by devastating events from the Gunpowder Plot to the Great Fire of London. Catastrophe nevertheless bred creativity, and Jackson makes brilliant use of eyewitness accounts - many penned by stupefied foreigners - to dramatize her great story. Starting on the eve of the Spanish Armada in 1588 and concluding with a not-so 'Glorious Revolution' a hundred years later, Devil-Land is a spectacular reinterpretation of England's vexed and enthralling past.

The Cambridge Companion to the Dutch Golden Age
The Cambridge Companion to the Dutch Golden Age

Author: Helmer J. Helmers

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-08-31

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 1316780325

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During the seventeenth century, the Dutch Republic was transformed into a leading political power in Europe, with global trading interests. It nurtured some of the period's greatest luminaries, including Rembrandt, Vermeer, Descartes and Spinoza. Long celebrated for its religious tolerance, artistic innovation and economic modernity, the United Provinces of the Netherlands also became known for their involvement with slavery and military repression in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. This Companion provides a compelling overview of the best scholarship on this much debated era, written by a wide range of experts in the field. Unique in its balanced treatment of global, political, socio-economic, literary, artistic, religious, and intellectual history, its nineteen chapters offer an indispensable guide for anyone interested in the world of the Dutch Golden Age.

The Twelve Years Truce (1609)
The Twelve Years Truce (1609)

Author: Randall Lesaffer

Publisher: Brill - Nijhoff

Published: 2014-07-04

Total Pages: 10

ISBN-13: 9789004274914

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The Twelve Years Truce covers the legal history of a crucial text in the formation of the Republic of the Northern Netherlands as a sovereign power and highlights its significance in the formation of the early modern laws of war and peace.

Russia and the Dutch Republic, 1566–1725
Russia and the Dutch Republic, 1566–1725

Author: Kees Boterbloem

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2021-06-29

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 179364859X

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Russia and the Dutch Republic, 1566–1725: A Forgotten Friendship outlines how the Netherlands had an outsized impact on the early development of Russia into a Great Power in the course of the seventeenth century. Although this influence is usually associated with Peter the Great’s reign, the author argues that much of it predates Peter’s accession to the tsarist throne. Kees Boterbloem explores the origins and development of the narrow ties the United Provinces (Dutch Republic) and the Russian Empire maintained in the early modern age, weighing their political, military, economic, and cultural significance for world history.

Military Revolution and the Thirty Years War 1618–1648
Military Revolution and the Thirty Years War 1618–1648

Author: Olli Bäckström

Publisher: Helsinki University Press

Published: 2023-11-08

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 9523690922

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Military Revolution and the Thirty Years War 1618–1648 investigates change and decline in military institutions during a period of protracted and destructive European warfare. Conceptual background is provided by the Military Revolution thesis, which argues that changes in military technology and tactics drove revolutionary transformation in the way states organised and waged war in the early modern era. This transformation of military institutions became evident during the long and destructive Thirty Years War in 1618–1648. The outcome of the Military Revolution was the centralised fiscal-military state that possessed a strong claim to the monopoly of violence within its territorial boundaries. The book examines how the Thirty Years War accelerated and even initiated transformation in four military institutions that defined land warfare: feudal cavalry services, militias, regular armies, and war commissariats. The regional scope of the investigation covers the Holy Roman Empire, France, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Denmark, and the Dutch Republic. The book combines military-historical inquiry with ancillary sciences of sociology and economics. It argues that the Military Revolution of the Thirty Years War stimulated institutions capable of increased complexification and specialisation while curtailing those that were locked in stasis and immutability. The institutional legacy of the Thirty Years War was the emergence of complex military organisations that are characteristic to the modern society and its self-renewing social subsystems. Previous scholarship on the Military Revolution has concentrated on military technicalities and the wider process of early modern state formation. This book proposes an alternative way of viewing early modern military transformations from the perspectives of institutions and systems. System-analytical survey of change and decline in the military institutions of the Thirty Years War introduces qualifications to the Military Revolution theory and offers a novel way of conceptualising early modern military history.

Europe's Tragedy
Europe's Tragedy

Author: Peter H. Wilson

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2009-07-30

Total Pages: 1321

ISBN-13: 0141937807

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The horrific series of conflicts known as the Thirty Years War (1618-48) tore the heart out of Europe, killing perhaps a quarter of all Germans and laying waste to whole areas of Central Europe to such a degree that many towns and regions never recovered. All the major European powers apart from Russia were heavily involved and, while each country started out with rational war aims, the fighting rapidly spiralled out of control, with great battles giving way to marauding bands of starving soldiers spreading plague and murder. The war was both a religious and a political one and it was this tangle of motives that made it impossible to stop. Whether motivated by idealism or cynicism, everyone drawn into the conflict was destroyed by it. At its end a recognizably modern Europe had been created but at a terrible price. Peter Wilson's book is a major work, the first new history of the war in a generation, and a fascinating, brilliantly written attempt to explain a compelling series of events. Wilson's great strength is in allowing the reader to understand the tragedy of mixed motives that allowed rulers to gamble their countries' future with such horrifying results. The principal actors in the drama (Wallenstein, Ferdinand II, Gustavus Adolphus, Richelieu) are all here, but so is the experience of the ordinary soldiers and civilians, desperately trying to stay alive under impossible circumstances. The extraordinary narrative of the war haunted Europe's leaders into the twentieth century (comparisons with 1939-45 were entirely appropriate) and modern Europe cannot be understood without reference to this dreadful conflict.