New Books in Early Modern History

From Nevis to Newfoundland, Catholics were everywhere in English America. But often feared and distrusted, they hid in plain sight, deftly obscuring themselves from the Protestant authorities. Their strategies of concealment, deception, and misdirection frustrated colonial census takers, and their presence has likewise eluded historians of religion, who have portrayed Catholics as isolated dots in an otherwise vast Protestant expanse. Pushing against this long-standing narrative, in A Common Grave: Being Catholic in English America (UNC Press, 2025) Dr. Susan Juster provides the first comprehensive look at the lived experience of Catholics—whether Irish, African, French, or English—in colonial America. She reveals a vibrant community that, although often forced to conceal itself, maintained a rich sacramental life saturated with traditional devotional objects and structured by familiar rituals. As Dr. Juster shows, the unique pressures of colonial existence forced Catholics to adapt and transform these religious practices. By following the faithful into their homes and private chapels as they married, christened infants, buried loved ones, and prayed for their souls, Juster uncovers a confluence of European, African, and Indigenous spiritual traditions produced by American colonialism. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Prague: The Heart of Europe (Oxford University Press, 2025) traces Prague's origins in the ninth century through the end of the Cold War. Highlights include the golden ages of Charles IV and Rudolph II; the religious conflicts of the Hussite and Thirty Years Wars; the rich culture of Europe's largest Jewish community; the rivalry between the city's German and Czech speakers; the World Wars and Nazi occupation; and the Communist era. Prague: The Heart of Europe highlights the complex culture of the city where Mozart premiered his magnificent Don Giovanni and where Franz Kafka wrote his foreboding tales. Cynthia Paces is Professor of History at the College of New Jersey. Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The years between 1744 and 1757 were a testing time for the British government as political unrest at home exploded into armed rebellion, whilst on the continent French armies were repeatedly victorious. Providing an analytical narrative, supported by thematic chapters, this book examines the relationship between Britain's politics and foreign policy in a period not hitherto treated as a unit. Building upon methods employed in the preceding two books ('Politics and Foreign Policy in the Age of George I, 1714-1727' and 'Politics and Foreign Policy, 1727-44'), this volume charts the significant political changes of 1744-57. It shows how ministerial change and political fortunes were closely linked to foreign policy, with foreign policy affecting, and being affected by, political developments. In particular, it asks important questions about the politics and foreign policy of these years and thus reconsiders the context of imperial growth, economic development and political stability. Far from being simply a study of individual episodes, the book outlines the structural aspects of the relationship between foreign policy and politics, examining issues of political stability, motivation and effectiveness. In particular, the role of monarch, Court and ministers are considered alongside those of Parliament, parliamentary politics, and the public sphere of discussion, notably, but not only, the press. The book therefore offers a guided narrative that both uses and builds on the analysis offered by contemporary commentators, and provides an informed assessment of the significance of the ideas, terms and language employed in eighteenth-century Britain to discuss foreign policy and politics. Charles Coutinho, PH. D., Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Witches – whether broomstick-riding spell-casters or Wiccan earth-worshippers – have been culturally relevant for centuries. For centuries, too, belief in the potency of witchcraft has been debated, accused witches have been hunted and punished, and film and TV productions have brought the witch and the witch-hunter to big and small screens. But where did our perception of witches – good and bad – come from? What motivated wide-scale panics about witchcraft during certain periods? How were alleged witches identified, accused, and variously tortured and punished? In Witches: a King’s Obsession (Birlinn, 2025) Dr. Steven Veerapen traces witches, witchcraft, and witch-hunters from the explosion of mass-trials under King James VI and I in the late sixteenth century to the death of the witch-hunting phenomenon in the early eighteenth century. Based on documents and the latest historical research, he explores what motivated widespread belief in demonic witchcraft throughout Britain as well as in continental Europe, what caused mass panics about alleged witches, and what led, ultimately, to the relegation of the witch – and the witch-hunter – to the realm of fantasy and the fringes of society. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Book of Travels Ḥannā Diyāb: A Conversation with Johannes StephanThe Book of Travels is Ḥannā Diyāb’s remarkable first-person account of his travels as a young man from his hometown of Aleppo to the court of Versailles and back again, which forever linked him to one of the most popular pieces of world literature, the Thousand and One Nights.Diyāb, a Maronite Christian, served as a guide and interpreter for the French naturalist and antiquarian Paul Lucas. Between 1706 and 1716, Diyāb and Lucas traveled through Syria, Cyprus, Egypt, Tripolitania, Tunis, Italy, and France. In Paris, Ḥannā Diyāb met Antoine Galland, who added to his wildly popular translation of the Thousand and One Nights several tales related by Diyāb, including “Aladdin” and “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.” When Lucas failed to make good on his promise of a position for Diyāb at Louis XIV’s Royal Library, Diyāb returned to Aleppo. In his old age, he wrote this engaging account of his youthful adventures, from capture by pirates in the Mediterranean to quack medicine and near-death experiences.Translated into English for the first time, The Book of Travels introduces readers to the young Syrian responsible for some of the most beloved stories from the Thousand and One Nights. Johannes Stephan is a postdoctoral researcher in the ERC-funded project Kalīlah and Dimnah—AnonymClassic at the Freie Universität Berlin. He studied Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies in Halle an der Saale, Damascus, and Bern. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the long eighteenth century, as Britain grappled with the aftermath of the 1707 Acts of Union and consolidated a global empire, Welsh ‘Cambro-Britons’ developed a movement of cultural awakening, reinventing their traditions for a new age. Amid profound local, national and imperial transformations, Welsh authors and activists sought to reimagine their history, language and literature, claiming a place for Wales and the Welsh diaspora in the British imperial order. Far from being an insular phenomenon, this revival intersected with key debates of the era, from enlightenment science and radical politics to colonial expansion, transatlantic abolitionism and metropolitan sociability. Welsh Revivalism in Imperial Britain, 1707-1819: True Britons and Celtic Empires (Boydell & Brewer, 2025) by Dr. Rhys Kaminski-Jones reframes Welsh cultural revivalism, revealing its fundamentally international and archipelagic dimensions. Nationally significant Welsh authors like Lewis Morris, David Samwell, Thomas Pennant, and Iolo Morganwg are placed in their transnational, imperial, and global contexts. Examined alongside Thomas Gray’s British bardism, William Jones’s Orientalism, and the imperialism of Cook’s voyages, their writings demonstrate how Welsh thinkers engaged with – and shaped – shifting ideas of Britishness, empire, race, and identity. Drawing on new archival research, and giving equal attention to Welsh and English language texts, Dr. Kaminski-Jones challenges traditional narratives of Welsh cultural nationalism as a simple precursor to modern Welsh nationhood, instead positioning the revival as central to transatlantic intellectual currents. With its pathbreaking bilingual and interdisciplinary approach, this book offers fresh insights into the complexities of nationhood, empire, and cultural memory. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Maren A. Ehlers’s Give and Take: Poverty and the Status Order in Early Modern Japan (Harvard University Asia Center, 2018) examines the ways in which ordinary subjects—including many so-called outcastes and other marginalized groups—participated in the administration and regulation of society in Tokugawa Japan. Within this context, the book focuses on self-governing occupation-based and other status groups and explore their roles making Tokugawa Japan tick. The title, Give and Take, is part of Ehlers’s argument about the ways in which their relationship to government was one of reciprocity between ostensibly benevolent rulers and dutybound status groups. Within this, Ehlers evinces a special interest in marginalized groups and in poverty, especially “beggar bosses” and blind guilds. Through a detailed examination of an extraordinary collection of primary sources from the castle town of Ōno (Fukui prefecture), Ehlers uses the case study of approaches to the problems of poverty to enrich our understanding of the complex dynamics of interconnectivity and reciprocity that characterized Japan under Tokugawa rule. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How did ordinary people live in Tudor England? This unique history unearths the ways they died to find out.Uncovering thousands of coroners' reports, An Accidental History of Tudor England: From Daily Life to Sudden Death (Hachette UK, 2025) explores the history of everyday life, and everyday death, in a world far from the intrigues of Hampton Court Palace, Shakespeare's plots and the Spanish Armada. Here, farming, building and travel were dangerous. Fruit trees killed more people than guns, and sheep killed about the same number as coalmines. Men stabbed themselves playing football and women drowned in hundreds fetching water. Going to church had its dangers, especially when it came to bell-ringing, archery practice was perilous and haystacks claimed numerous victims. Restless animals roamed the roads which contained some potholes so deep men could drown, and drown they did.From bear attacks in north Oxford to a bowls-on-ice-incident on the Thames, this book uses a remarkable trove of sources and stories to put common folk back into the big picture of Tudor England, bringing the reality of their world to life as never before. *trigger warning, podcast discussion includes death and accidents. Author: Steven Gunn is a Fellow and Tutor in History at Merton College and Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Oxford. Host: Dr. Kristen Vitale Engel is an Associate Fellow at the Royal Historical Society. She is the Editor-in-Chief of "The Court Observer" for The Society for Court Studies, the Submissions Editor for the Royal Studies Journal and the International Ambassador for HistoryLab+ in partnership with the Institute of Historical Research. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Jacobites and the Grand Tour: Educational travel and small-states' diplomacy (Manchester University Press, 2025) by Dr. Jérémy Filet is the first monograph to fully examine the intersecting networks of Jacobites and travellers to the continent. In the book, Dr. Filet considers how small states used official diplomacy and deployed soft power - embodied by educational academies - to achieve foreign policy goals. This work uses little-known archival materials to explain how and why certain small states secretly supported the Jacobite cause during the crucial years surrounding the 1715 rising, while others stayed out of Jacobite affairs. The book demonstrates how early modern small states sought to cultivate good relations with Britain by attracting travellers as part of a wider trend of ensuring connections with future diplomats or politicians in case a Stuart restoration never came. This publication therefore brings together a study of Britain, small states, Jacobitism, and educational travel, in its nexus at continental academies. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Slavery's Fugitives and the Making of the United States Constitution (LSU Press, 2024) unearths a long-hidden factor that led to the Constitutional Convention in 1787. While historians have generally acknowledged that patriot leaders assembled in response to postwar economic chaos, the threat of popular insurgencies, and the inability of the states to agree on how to fund the national government, Timothy Messer-Kruse suggests that scholars have discounted Americans' desire to compel Britain to return fugitives from slavery as a driving force behind the convention. During the Revolutionary War, British governors offered freedom to enslaved Americans who joined the king's army. Thousands responded by fleeing to English camps. After the British defeat at Yorktown, American diplomats demanded the surrender of fugitive slaves. When British generals refused, several states confiscated Loyalist estates and blocked payment of English creditors, hoping to apply enough pressure on the Crown to hand over the runaways. State laws conflicting with the 1783 Treaty of Paris violated the Articles of Confederation--the young nation's first constitution--but Congress, lacking an executive branch or a federal judiciary, had no means to obligate states to comply. The standoff over the escaped slaves quickly escalated following the Revolution as Britain failed to abandon the western forts it occupied and took steps to curtail American commerce. More than any other single matter, the impasse over the return of enslaved Americans threatened to hamper the nation's ability to expand westward, develop its commercial economy, and establish itself as a power among the courts of Europe. Messer-Kruse argues that the issue encouraged the founders to consider the prospect of scrapping the Articles of Confederation and drafting a superseding document that would dramatically increase federal authority--the Constitution. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices