Early Modern
Isabella Who?
I recently took a little research detour to find out something about Isabella Jagellion, who has been popping up in my reading for roughly a year now, usually in the form of a one-liner to the effect that she was the first ruler in history to issue an edict of universal religious toleration in 1558–an…
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Guest Post: The Plague Village of Eyam: A Story of Courage and Self-Sacrifice
Lisa Manterfield and I have been following each other around the internet for a long time now. She’s a novelist with an appealing “voice”, an eye (or perhaps an ear?) for an intriguing concept, and the story-telling chops to pull them off. (The magic is in the storytelling, not the idea.) Her newest novel, The…
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Asia’s Inland Trade, or How the Spice Trade Worked
The way we learn the story in elementary school in the United States, European trading companies sailed East in search of spices and other luxury goods. What those merchants took with them to trade is generally left unmentioned–perhaps because it makes it clear that Europe was a backwater in the global marketplace until well into…
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