The defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans in 1475 at the Battle of Vaslui heralded the beginnings of a historic legacy. The victor became known as Stephen the Great or Athleta Christi, Champion of Christ. Perceived as the founder of a Balkan identity, Stephen the Great maintained Moldova's independence during periods of fierce Ottoman attack between 1457 and 1504. His Christian religious stance meant that, in the eyes of Europe, he had not only defeated a significant territorial thre...

THE ONLY BOOK ON IRISH HISTORY YOU'LL EVER NEED!From invasions to rebellions, heroic martyrs to pragmatic politicians, industrial development to mass emigration, A History of Ireland in 250 Episodes by renowned Irish historian Jonathan Bardon will take you on a sweeping journey through Irish history, getting behind the historical headlines to reveal the lived experience of Irish people.Written in easy-to-read bitesize episodes, Bardon's original and engaging style will make you feel as tho...

In 1482, the Florentine humanist and statesman Francesco Berlinghieri produced the Geographia, a book of over one hundred folio leaves describing the world in Italian verse, inspired by the ancient Greek geography of Ptolemy. The poem, divided into seven books (one for each day of the week the author “travels” the known world), is interleaved with lavishly engraved maps to accompany readers on this journey.Sean Roberts demonstrates that the Geographia represents t...

Tulips and coffee are defining cultural products of the Ottoman eighteenth century, along with their related institutions of palace and coffeehouse. These cultural products hold multiple meanings in the history and historiography of the period. For example, scholars argue that the janissary coffee house was used variously for such diverse means as headquarters for rebellion, a Sufi lodge, police station and racketeering office. 'Ottoman Tulips, Ottoman Coffee' offers a critical exploration...

Hugo Grotius and the Century of Revolution, 1613-1718 is a reconstruction of the way Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) was read and used by English political and religious writers in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Engaging with the reception of all of Grotius's key works and a wide range of topics, the volume has much to say about the search for peace in an age of religious conflict and about the cultural roots of the Enlightenment. Most of all, Marco Barducci aims to deep...

Conceptions of distance are foundational to historical thought, but Mark Salber Phillips gives the idea new subtlety and meaning. He argues that distance is a matter not just of time and space but also of form, affect, ideology, and understanding. In this exceptionally wide-ranging study, Phillips examines Renaissance, Enlightenment, and contemporary histories, as well as a broad spectrum of historical genres—including local history, literary history, counter-factual fiction, history pai...

The figure of the renegade - a European Christian or Jew who had converted to Islam and was now serving the Ottoman sultan - is omnipresent in all genres produced by those early modern Christian Europeans who wrote about the Ottoman Empire. As few contemporaries failed to remark, converts were disproportionately represented among those who governed, administered, and fought for the sultan. Unsurprisingly, therefore, renegades have attracted considerable attention from historians of Europe ...

Is there a “Nordic history”? If so, what are its origins, its scope, and its defining features? In this informative volume, scholars from all five Nordic nations tackle a notoriously problematic historical concept. Whether recounting Foucault’s departure from Sweden or tracing the rise of movements such as “aristocratic empiricism,” each contribution takes a deliberately transnational approach that is grounded in careful research, yielding rich, nuanced perspectives on shifting and contest...

“Have you read Buckle's second volume? It has interested me greatly; I do not care whether his views are right or wrong, but I should think they contained much truth. There is a noble love of advancement and truth throughout, and to my taste he is the very best writer of the English language that ever lived.” — CHARLES DARWIN …The aspects of Scottish history to which Buckle turned his attention were ones that worried his contemporaries as much as himself Why was th...

Even before the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Turkic communities, living in states newly independent from Ottoman rule, were 'protected' by the Ottomans. With the creation of the new Turkish Republic, the notion of 'Outside Turks' became embedded in a new foreign policy which aimed to unite these communities, with whom Kemalist Turkey claimed to share ethnic origin, to the homeland. After 1980, and particularly during the Justice and Development Party rule, the country's domestic agenda,...

Through a study of a variety of Ottoman and modern Turkish accounts of the Ottoman-Habsburg sieges of Nagykanizsa Castle (1600-01) including official documents, correspondence, histories, and more literary genres such as gazavatnames [campaign narratives], Plural Pasts explores Ottoman literacy practices. By considering the diverse roles that the various accounts served – construction of identities, forging of diplomatic alliances and legitimization of political ideologie...

It has often been assumed that the subjects of the Ottoman sultans were unable to travel beyond their localities - since peasants needed the permission of their local administrators before they could legitimately leave their villages. However Suraiya Faroqhi's extensive archival research shows that this was not the case. Pious men from all walks of life went on pilgrimage to Mecca, slaves fled from their masters and craftspeople travelled in search of work. Faroqhi shows that even those cr...