New Books in Early Modern History

Historians of early modern religion recognise the importance of the development of covenant theology in the formation of Calvinism. Harrison Perkins, who teaches systematic theology at Edinburgh Theological Seminary and serves as assistant minister of London Presbyterian Church, has recently published what promises to be one of the most important accounts of the development of Reformed covenantal thinking. His new book, Catholicity and the Covenant of Works: James Ussher and the Reformed Tradition (Oxford UP, 2020), investigates the covenant theology of James Ussher, archbishop of Armagh, and shows that the idea of a covenant of works structures in significant ways his account of predestination, Christology and soteriology.Crawford Gribben is a professor of history at Queen’s University Belfast. His research interests focus on the history of puritanism and evangelicalism, and he is the author most recently of An introduction to John Owen (Crossway, 2020). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On the four hundredth anniversary of the arrival in the new world of the Mayflower, Dustin Benge and Nate Pickowicz have written a lively and accessible account of America’s earliest English immigrants. Their new book, The American Puritans (Reformation Heritage Books, 2020) presents nine mini-biographies that outline key events in the lives of individuals including Anne Bradstreet, John Eliot, John Cotton and Cotton Mather. Drawing on the rich body of scholarly work that has been developed to describe these contexts, The American Puritans offers a sympathetic account of these hotter sort of protestants and the enduring significance of their errand into the wilderness.Crawford Gribben is a professor of history at Queen’s University Belfast. His research interests focus on the history of puritanism and evangelicalism, and he is the author most recently of An introduction to John Owen (Crossway, 2020). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

David Tavárez is a historian and linguistic anthropologist; he is Professor of Anthropology and Director of Latin American and Latino/a Studies at Vassar College. He is a specialist in Nahuatl and Zapotec texts, the study of Mesoamerican religions and rituals, Catholic campaigns against idolatry, Indigenous intellectuals, and native Christianities. He is the author or co-author of several books and dozens of articles and chapters.This is his second time on the podcast; the first one was about his edited volume, Words & Worlds Turned Around (2017), and here is the link for that discussion.Today’s interview is about Professor Tavárez’s book The Invisible War: Indigenous Devotions, Discipline, and Dissent in Colonial Mexico (Stanford University Press), which was first his doctoral dissertation, then was published in 2011, and came out in paperback in 2013. In this book, Professor Tavárez guides his readers through four centuries of the Mexican Inquisition in the episcopal sees of México and Oaxaca. His work is the result of ten years of research in twenty-nine archives in Mexico, Spain, the United States, France, Belgium, Italy, and Vatican City, following 160 judges and 896 defendants accused of “idolatry, sorcery, and superstition”.In this discussion Dr. Tavárez explains the origin and ethos of the ecclesial and judicial authorities, their changes over time, and their internal disagreements. He also describes the nature of the societies they were trying to influence, and how these movements changed since the sixteenth century, following them to the present day. The painting of the 1716 Auto de Fe that is on the cover of his book and that Dr. Tavárez talks about with the host during the interview can be seen here.Krzysztof Odyniec is a historian of the Spanish Empire, specializing in sixteenth-century diplomacy and travel. He has also written about missionary efforts in Early Modern Colonial Mexico. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adriaan Neele, who is director of the doctoral programme and Professor of Historical Theology at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary, has edited an outstanding collection of essays on Petrus van Mastricht. This new book, Petrus van Mastricht (1630-1706): Text, Context, and Interpretation (Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2020), combines work by new and well-established scholars to examine the ways in which the achievements of this eminent protestant scholastic theologian have impacted upon theology and philosophy. The book contains ground-breaking arguments, challenges an emerging consensus about the nature of religious and political thinking in the period, and provides a road-map for new directions in the burgeoning field of early modern historical theology.Crawford Gribben is a professor of history at Queen’s University Belfast. His research interests focus on the history of puritanism and evangelicalism, and he is the author most recently of An introduction to John Owen (Crossway, 2020). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the people of the Dawnland, they were floating islands. The sails resembled clouds, and the men gathered on deck looked like bears. When Europeans came ashore, whether Danes in what would become Newfoundland, English settlers in the land they named ‘Virginia’, their mastery of the oceans did not translate into supremacy on land. Small conflicts in colonial enslaves evolved into trans-Atlantic wars that transformed the political and social worlds of millions.Europeans were people of the oceans, fanning out across the globe in vessels that pursued and extracted natural resources while doubling as weapons of war. For some time now, historians have approached the Atlantic as an integrated and connected world, defined by the movement of people, goods, and ideas. In Atlantic Wars: From the Fifteenth Century to the Age of Revolution (Oxford UP, 2020), Geoffrey Plank uses war as a lens to examine the interactions of peoples who forged shared experiences amid endemic conflict. The result is a sweeping synthesis of the intermingling of European, Indigenous and African histories, which connects the Atlantic with Continental, Pacific, and Oceanic perspectives.Geoffrey Plank is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of East Anglia (UK).Charles Prior is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Hull (UK), who has written on the politics of religion in early modern Britain, and whose work has recently expanded to the intersection of colonial, indigenous, and imperial politics in early America. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kenneth Austin, who teaches history at the University of Bristol, UK, is well-known for his work on Jews and Judaism in early modern Europe. His new book, The Jews and the Reformation (Yale University Press, 2020), offers the most thorough description and analysis of its subject to date. Austin describes the long and complex history of the two traditions, shows how both religions defined themselves in opposition to each other, and how competing confessional communities that emerged out of the European reformations adopted quite different attitudes to their Jewish neighbors. This outstanding work promises to revolutionize the ways in which future scholars will approach this complex and demanding subject.Crawford Gribben is a professor of history at Queen’s University Belfast. His research interests focus on the history of puritanism and evangelicalism, and he is the author most recently of An introduction to John Owen (Crossway, 2020). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The essays in Rights at the Margins: Historical, Legal and Philosophical Perspectives (Brill) explore the ways rights were available to those in the margins of society.By tracing pivotal judicial concepts such as ‘right of necessity’ and ‘subjective rights’ back to their medieval versions, and by situating them in unexpected contexts such as the Franciscans’ theory of poverty and colonization or today’s immigration and border control, this volume invites its readers to consider whether individual rights were in fact, or at least in theory, available to the marginalized.By focusing not only on the economically impoverished but also those who were disenfranchised because of disability, gender, race, religion or infidelity, this book also sheds light on the relationship between the early history of individual rights and social justice at the margins.Jonathan Robinson, Ph.D. (2010) in Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto, Canada. He currently acts as a lawyer and is the author of William of Ockham’s Theory of Property Rights in Context (Brill, 2012).Virpi Mäkinen is Senior Lecturer in Theological and Social Ethics at the University of Helsinki, Finland.Pamela Slotte is Associate Professor of Minority Studies at the Åbo Akademi University, Finland.Heikki Haara is Senior Lecturer of Political History at the University of Helsinki.Alexandra Ortolja-Baird is Lecturer in Early Modern European History at King’s College London  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Omar H. Ali’s Malik Ambar: Power and Slavery across the Indian Ocean (Oxford University Press, 2016), provides insight into the life of slave soldier Malik Ambar.It offers a rare look at an individual who began in obscurity in the Horn of Africa and reached the highest levels of South Asian political and military affairs in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Ambar's rise from slavery in the Horn of Africa to rulership in South Asia sheds light on the diverse mix of people, products, and practices that shaped the Indian Ocean world during the early modern period.Originally from Ethiopia--historically called Abyssinia--Ambar is best known for having defended the Deccan from being occupied by the Mughals during the first quarter of the seventeenth century. His ingenuity as a military leader, his diplomatic skills, and his land-reform policies contributed to his success in keeping the Deccan free of Mughal imperial rule.Omar H. Ali is Dean of Lloyd International Honors College and Professor of Comparative African Diaspora History at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Through archival and ethnographic research he explores issues of power and culture across the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds from the early modern period through the present. He is the author of several books, including Islam in the Indian Ocean World: A Brief History with Documents (Bedford/St. Martin's, 2016).Ahmed Yaqoub AlMaazmi is a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University. His research focuses on the intersection of law and the environment across the Western Indian Ocean. He can be reached by email at almaazmi@princeton.edu or on Twitter @Ahmed_Yaqoub. Listeners’ feedback, questions, and book suggestions are most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In her new book, Economistes and the Reinvention of Empire: France in the Americas and Africa, c. 1750-1802 (Cambridge UP, 2020), Dr. Pernille Røge charts the confluence and reciprocal impacts of ideas and policies espoused by political economists, colonial administrators, planters, and entrepreneurs to reform the French empire in the second half of the eighteenth century. Due to this diffusion of observations and ideas, French economic philosophers who called themselves “economistes” and later “physiocrats” were able to formulate and advocated for new French colonial doctrines that emphasized agricultural development, free labor, commercial liberalization, and colonial economic and legal integration during and after the Seven Years War (1756-1763). While meeting initial resistance, such reform efforts inspired many imperial agendas enacted by French Revolutionary leaders as well as those by subsequent French imperialists. Deeply researched from records from three continents, Economistes and the Reinvention of Empire offers an enlightening perspective on critical French Atlantic political-economic development and imperial reformulation, with intellectual, economic, and political relevance that last till this day.Dr. Pernille Røge is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh and the convener of Pitt’s Early Modern Worlds Initiative.Grant Kleiser is a Ph.D. candidate in the Columbia University History Department. His dissertation researches the development of the free-port system in the eighteenth-century Caribbean, investigating the rationale for such moves towards “free trade” and the impact these policies had on subsequent philosophers, policy-makers, and revolutionaries in the Atlantic word.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye (Shōbōgenzō) is the masterwork of Dōgen (1200–1253), founder of the Sōtō Zen Buddhist sect in Kamakura-era Japan. It is one of the most important Zen Buddhist collections, composed during a period of remarkable religious diversity and experimentation. The text is complex and compelling, famed for its eloquent yet perplexing manner of expressing the core precepts of Zen teachings and practice.Readings of Dōgen's "Treasury of the True Dharma Eye" (Columbia University Press) is a comprehensive introduction to this essential Zen text, offering a textual, historical, literary, and philosophical examination of Dōgen’s treatise. Steven Heine explores the religious and cultural context in which the Treasury was composed and provides a detailed study of the various versions of the medieval text that have been compiled over the centuries.He includes nuanced readings of Dōgen’s use of inventive rhetorical flourishes and the range of East Asian Buddhist textual and cultural influences that shaped the work. Heine explicates the philosophical implications of Dōgen’s views on contemplative experience and attaining and sustaining enlightenment, showing the depth of his distinctive understanding of spiritual awakening.Readings of Dōgen’s Treasury of the True Dharma Eye will give students and other readers a full understanding of this fundamental work of world religious literature.Steven Heine is professor of religious studies and history and director of Asian studies at Florida International University.Dr. Yakir Englander is the National Director of Leadership programs at the Israeli-American Council. He also teaches at the AJR. He is a Fulbright scholar and was a visiting professor of Religion at Northwestern University, the Shalom Hartman Institute and Harvard Divinity School. His books are Sexuality and the Body in New Religious Zionist Discourse (English/Hebrew and The Male Body in Jewish Lithuanian Ultra-Orthodoxy (Hebrew). He can be reached at: Yakir1212englander@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices