Showing results for "History" in 17th Century

Timothy Venning's series of alternative histories explores the pathways of British events from the Anglo-Saxon Age to the English Civil War. In this volume, he presents an in-depth analysis of the Tudor period. Venning discusses the fateful moments at which history could easily have taken a different turn. In a fascinating series of "what if" scenarios, Venning presents a detailed look at the possible and likely results. While speculative, the scenarios are all plausible and rooted in a firm understanding of actually events and their context.

Set against the backdrop of the Age of Exploration, Black Flags, Blue Waters reveals the dramatic and surprising history of American piracy's "Golden Age" when lawless pirates plied the coastal waters of North America and beyond. Best-selling author Eric Jay Dolin illustrates how American colonists at first supported these outrageous pirates in an early display of solidarity against the Crown, and then violently opposed them. Upending popular misconceptions and cartoonish stereotypes, Dolin provides this wholly original account of these seafaring outlaws.

In 1642, King Charles I and the elected Parliament of England went to war over the future of the Stuart kingdom. Over the next nine years, three civil wars would be fought, devastating the populations of England, Scotland, and Ireland. With the authority of the monarchy, the freedom of Parliament, and the power of religion at stake, the English Civil Wars decided the future of Great Britain and influenced the future of politics around the world.

The political upheaval of the mid-17th century has no parallel in English history. Other events have changed the occupancy and the powers of the throne, but the conflict of 1640-60 was more dramatic: the monarchy and the House of Lords were abolished, to be replaced by a republic and military rule. In this thoroughly enjoyable account, Blair Worden explores the events of this period and their origins.

Brought to you by Penguin. Can anyone truly understand Russia? Let one of the world's leading experts show you how, using the fascinating history of a nation to illuminate its future. Russia is a country with no natural borders, no single ethnos, no true central identity. At the crossroads of...

With hindsight, the victory of Parliamentarian forces over the Royalists in the English Civil War may seem inevitable, but this outcome was not a foregone conclusion. Timothy Venning explores many of the turning points and discusses how they might so easily have played out differently.

Step aboard a wind-powered voyage through history—into the heart of one of the most influential, complex, and far-reaching colonial empires ever built. In The History of the Dutch Empire, discover how a small republic forged a global legacy through trade, naval dominance, and strategic colonial control. From the bustling canals of Amsterdam to the shores of Java, the plantations of Suriname, and the brief Dutch foothold in the Americas, this audiobook unpacks the intricate web of commerce, conquest, and governance that defined Dutch expansion.

Accounts of seemingly impossible phenomena abounded in the early modern era—tales of levitation, bilocation, and witchcraft—even as skepticism, atheism, and empirical science were starting to supplant religious belief in the paranormal. In this book, Carlos Eire explores how a culture increasingly devoted to scientific thinking grappled with events deemed impossible by its leading intellectuals.

We live in a world transformed by scientific discovery. Yet today science and its practitioners have come under political attack. In this fascinating history spanning continents and centuries, historian David Wootton offers a lively defense of science, revealing why the Scientific Revolution was truly the greatest event in our history. The Invention of Science goes back 500 years in time to chronicle this crucial transformation, exploring the factors that led to its birth and the people who made it happen.

One of the most controversial figures in British history, Oliver Cromwell entered the world as an insignificant member of the English gentry and left it as the all-powerful Lord Protector of the entirety of England, Scotland, and Ireland. A radical Puritan, Cromwell believed that his meteoric rise through the ranks of the English military and parliament was an expression of God's will.

Founded at the dawn of the 17th century as European nations were establishing global empires, the English East India Company would become a vital part of burgeoning British supremacy. Begun as a joint-stock company for trade with the East Indies, this organization would evolve into one of the world's first capitalistic corporations.

In this intimate history of the extraordinary Black Plague pandemic that swept through the British Isles in 1665, Evelyn Lord focuses on the plague's effects on smaller towns, where every death was a singular blow affecting the entire community. Lord's fascinating reconstruction of life during plague times presents the personal experiences of a wide range of individuals, from historical notables to common folk. The Great Plague brings this dark era to vivid life through stories of loss and survival from those who grieved, those who fled, and those who hid to await their fate.

In the 17th century, the people of London could boast that they had developed some of the most advanced firefighting technology and methods in the world, including the use of primitive fire engines. There were even vendors of such machines who advertised in papers of their machines' abilities to quench great fires.

Brought to you by Penguin. The Civil War was the most traumatic conflict in British history, pitting friends and family members against each other and tearing down the old order. Award-winning historian Jessie Childs plunges the reader into the shock of the struggle through one of its most...

Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour. ‘Remember, remember, the fifth of November’. The gunpowder plot is a famed tale of treachery that continues to fascinate and capture the imagination four hundred years on. The Gunpowder Plot in an Hour reveals the elaborate background to...

London was a tinderbox waiting to ignite. An unusually hot and dry summer had drained the city’s water supplies, and without an organized firefighting force, its citizens were left to fend for themselves. The stage was set for catastrophe, and in the early hours of Sunday, September 2, 1666, the spark was struck. A seemingly inconsequential fire ignited in a baker’s shop on Pudding Lane. Unchecked and underestimated, it would grow to become one of the most devastating disasters London had ever faced.

Once valued at close to seven trillion dollars by today’s standards, the Dutch East India Company, formed in 1602, became the world’s first multinational corporation. In the nearly 200-year reign of their empire at sea, the Dutch East India Company amassed unfathomable fortunes, laid the foundation of the modern globalized world, and built monopolies that controlled the economy of the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe and the East Indies.

Imagine a fervently militaristic state with a feared professional army that included some of the only all-female military units ever seen. Imagine that same state with its own unique and sophisticated culture, religion, language, art, and society. Such a state did exist—not in the ancient past but as recently as the beginning of the 20th century.

In the 14th century, a ruthless killer stalked the streets of England, wiping out up to 60 percent of the terror-stricken nation's inhabitants. This invisible and unforgiving terminator continued to harass the population for hundreds of years, but nothing could compare to the savagery it would unleash three centuries later. This conscienceless menace was none other than the notorious bubonic plague, also known as the "Black Death".

Over a remarkable career Bernard Bailyn has reshaped our understanding of the early American past. Illuminating History is the most personal of Bailyn's works. It is in part an intellectual memoir of the significant turns in an immensely productive and influential scholarly career. It is also alive with people whose actions touched the long arc of history: a struggling Boston merchant tormented by the tensions between capitalist avarice and a constrictive Puritan piety; a charismatic German Pietist who founded a cloister in the Pennsylvania wilderness; and more.