Library Results | Royal Museums Greenwich

Artemisia Gentileschi and feminism in early modern Europe / Mary D. Garrard. "Artemisia Gentileschi is by far the most famous woman artist of the pre-modern era. Her art addresses issues that resonate today, such as sexual violence and women's problematic access to political power. Her forceful paintings with their vigorous female protagonists have excited modern audiences, especially feminists. This book breaks new ground by placing the artist in the context of women's political history, and the feminist protest that was bubbling in early modern Europe. Mary D. Garrard discusses recently discovered paintings, offers fresh perspectives on known works and examines the artist anew in the context of early modern feminism."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 759.5

The sublime in the visual culture of the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic / Stijn Bussels and Bram Van Oostveldt. "Contrary to what Kant believed about the Dutch (and their visual culture) as "being of an orderly and diligent position" and thus having no feeling for the sublime, this book argues that the sublime played an important role in seventeenth-century Dutch visual culture. By looking at different visualizations of exceptional heights, divine presence, political grandeur, extreme violence, and extraordinary artifacts, the authors demonstrate how viewers were confronted with the sublime, which evoked in them a combination of contrasting feelings of awe and fear, attraction and repulsion. In studying seventeenth-century Dutch visual culture through the lens of notions of the sublime, we can move beyond the traditional and still widespread views on Dutch art as the ultimate representation of everyday life and the expression of a prosperous society in terms of calmness, neatness, and order. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, visual culture, architectural history, and cultural history"-- 2024. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 701/.03

The Virginia venture : American colonization and English society, 1580-1660 /Misha Ewen. "The Virginia Venture is an innovative exploration of how a wider public of women, children, and men across English society contributed to the foundation of the first permanent English colony in America: Jamestown, Virginia. Drawing on sources from dozens of archives in the United States and England, it provides a fresh perspective on how capital and labor were mobilized to help build the colony - not from the perspective of elite investors alone, but from the point of view of ordinary people across the country. Women and the laboring poor have been overlooked in these efforts: The Virginia Venture brings them center stage. As well as exploring how society at home supported colonization, the book examines the impact that colonization had on English society, including changes in attitudes and behaviors - from the provision of poor relief to domestic tobacco cultivation. The book shows that as English society became more tightly invested in colonization in America, this sparked contestations over the prioritization of 'English' and 'American' interests. English social history in the seventeenth century cannot be understood without this imperial perspective."-- 2022. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 975.5/425102

Painting in Britain, 1500-1630 : production, influences, and patronage /Tarnya Cooper "This book is the first major essay volume in over a decade to focus on Tudor and Jacobean painting. Its interdisciplinary approach reflects the dynamic state of research in the field, utilising a range of methodologies in order to answer key art historical questions about the production and consumption of art in Britain in the 16th and early 17th century. The introduction sets the tone for the interdisciplinary approach that is taken throughout the volume .It brings together a discussion of the context for the production of painted images in Tudor and Jacobean England with a selection of technical images of twenty paintings that span the period and demonstrate the information that can be gained from material analysis of paintings. In further chapters, leading exponents of painting conservation and conservation science discuss the material practices of the period, using and explaining a range of analytical techniques, such as infrared reflectography and dendochronology. Questions of authorship and aspects of workshop practice are also discussed. As well as looking at specific artists and their studios, the authors take a broader view in order to capture information about the range of artistic production during the period, stretching from the production of medieval rood screens to the position of heraldic painters. The final section of the book addresses artistic patronage, from the commissioning of works by kings and courtiers, to the regional networks that developed during the period and the influence of a developing antiquarianism on the market for paintings. The book is lavishly illustrated in colour throughout, with reproductions of whole paintings and many details selected to amplify the text. It will be an essential source for those working in the fields of art history, conservation and material science, and of interest to lovers of British Tudor and Stuart painting."--Provided by the publisher. 2015. • FOLIO • 1 copy available. 75(42)

Inventing the English massacre : Amboyna in history and memory /Alison Games. "My Lai, Wounded Knee, Sandy Hook: the place names evoke grief and horror, each the site of a massacre. Massacres - the mass slaughter of people - might seem as old as time, but the word itself is not. It worked its way into the English language in the late sixteenth century, and ultimately came to signify a specific type of death, one characterized by cruelty, intimacy, and treachery. How that happened is the story of yet another place, Amboyna, an island in the Indonesian archipelago where English and Dutch merchants fought over the spice trade. There a conspiracy trial featuring English, Japanese, and Indo-Portuguese plotters took place in 1623 and led to the beheading of more than a dozen men in a public execution. Inventing the English Massacre shows how the English East India Company transformed that conspiracy into a massacre through printed works, both books and images, which ensured the story's tenacity over four centuries. By the eighteenth century, the story emerged as a familiar and shared cultural touchstone and a term that needed no further explanation. By the nineteenth century, the Amboyna Massacre became the linchpin of the British empire, an event that historians argued well into the twentieth century had changed the course of history and explained why the British had a stronghold in India. The broad familiarity with the incident and the Amboyna Massacre's position as an early and formative violent event turned the episode into the first English massacre. Drawing on archival documents in Dutch, French, and English, Alison Games masterfully recovers the history, ramifications, and afterlives of this event, which shaped the meaning of subsequent acts of violence and made intimacy, treachery, and cruelty indelibly connected with massacres.."-- [2020] • BOOK • 1 copy available. 959.8/021

Samuel Pepys and the strange wrecking of the Gloucester : a true restoration tragedy /Nigel Pickford. "In 1682, Charles II invited his scandalous younger brother, James, Duke of York, to return from exile and take his rightful place as heir to the throne. To celebrate, the future king set sail in a fleet of eight ships destined for Edinburgh, where he would reunite with his young pregnant wife. Yet disaster struck en route, somewhere off the Norfolk coast. The royal frigate carrying James and his entourage sank, causing some two hundred sailors and courtiers to perish. The diarist Samuel Pepys had been asked to sail with James but refused the invitation, preferring to travel in one of the other ships. Why? What did he know that others did not? Religious and political tensions were rife in the years leading up to the wreck of the Gloucester. James was a Catholic, as was his wife, and there was a large constituency who wished them dead. Plots and conspiracies abounded. The Royal Navy was itself in disarray, badly equipped and poorly organised. Could someone on board be to blame for the sinking, either from malice or incompetence? Nigel Pickford's compelling account of the catastrophe draws on a richness of historical material including letters, diaries and ships' logs, revealing for the first time the full drama and tragic consequences of a shipwreck that shook Restoration Britain."--Provided by the publisher. 2021. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 910.452

The pirate who stole Scotland : William Dampier and the creation of the United Kingdom /Leon Hopkins. "Economic warfare is not a new phenomenon. In the protectionist climate of the seventeenth century, trade embargoes, exclusions and boycotts were common. England was among the most active nations when it came to using economic clout to get its own way. It did so to force Scotland to accept an Act of Union: to submerge its independence within a United Kingdom governed from London. Instrumental in this attack upon the Scots was William Dampier, the principal subject of this book. He was an extraordinary man. A farmer's son, he became the most travelled man of his generation. He was a pirate, a brute and a devious sociopath. But he was also a scientist and a talented writer who gave his readers accurate descriptions of previously unknown places, peoples, plants and animals. He was a daring explorer and an expert navigator who mapped coastlines and logged wind patterns and ocean currents. He led the first Royal Navy expedition to Australia, over 70 years before Captain Cook's arrival. Dampier's writing made him famous, but not rich. It allowed him to rub shoulders with the leading men of his day; scientists such as Robert Hooke, Edmund Halley and Hans Sloane, businessmen such as Sir John Houblon (first governor of the Bank of England) and William Paterson, politicians such as James Vernon and Charles Montagu (first Earl of Halifax), and Admiralty men such as Admiral Sir George Rooke and Samuel Pepys. And Dampier was in the pay of the English Government; an agent known to Queen Anne, in which capacity he engineered a financial disaster and political drubbing for Scotland." 2023. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 910.92

Black lives in the English archives, 1500-1677 : imprints of the invisible /Imtiaz Habib. "Containing an urgently needed archival database of historical evidence, this volume includes both a consolidated presentation of the documentary records of black people in Tudor and Stuart England, and an interpretive narrative that confirms and significantly extends the insights of current theoretical excursus on race in early modern England." "Here for the first time Imtiaz Habib collects the scattered references to black people - whether from Africa, India or America - in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, and arranges them into a systematic, chronological descriptive index. He offers an extended historical and theoretical interpretation of the records in six chapters, which serve as an introductory guide to the index even as they articulate a specific argument about the meaning of the records." "Both the archival information and interpretive scholarship provide a strong framework from which future historical debates on race in early modern England can proceed."--Provided by the publisher. 2008. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 942.05(=013)(09)

The alliance of pirates : Ireland and Atlantic piracy in the early seventeenth century /Connie Kelleher. "In the early part of the seventeenth-century, along the southwest coast of Ireland, piracy was a way of life. Following the outlawing of privateering in 1603 by the new king of England, disenfranchised like-minded men of the sea, many former privateers, naval sailors, ordinary seamen and traditional plunderers moved their base of operations to Ireland and formed an alliance. Within the context of the Munster Plantation, many of the pirates came to settle, some bringing families, and these men and their activities not alone influenced the socio-economic and geo-political landscape of Ireland at that time but challenged European maritime power centres, while forging links across the North Atlantic that touched the Mediterranean, Northwest Africa and the New World. Tracing the origins of this maritime plunder from the 1570s until its heyday in the opening decades of the 1600s, 'The Alliance of Pirates' analyses the nature and extent of this predation and looks at its impact and influence in Ireland and across the Atlantic. Operating during a period of emerging global maritime empires, when nations across Europe were vying for supremacy of the seas, the pirates built their own highly lucrative and powerful piratical state. Drawing on extensive primary and secondary historical sources Connie Kelleher explores who these pirates were, their main theatre of operations and the characters that aided and abetted them. Archaeological evidence uniquely supports the investigation and provides a tangible cultural link through time to the pirates, their cohorts and their bases."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 940.2

Anna of Denmark and Henrietta Maria : virgins, witches, and Catholic queens /Susan Dunn-Hensley. "This book examines how early Stuart queens navigated their roles as political players and artistic patrons in a culture deeply conflicted about the legitimacy of female authority. Anna of Denmark and Henrietta Maria both employed powerful female archetypes such as Amazons and the Virgin Mary in court performances. Susan Dunn-Hensley analyzes how darker images of usurping, contaminating women, epitomized by the witch, often merged with these celebratory depictions. By tracing these competing representations through the Jacobean and Caroline periods, Dunn-Hensley peels back layers of misogyny from historical scholarship and points to rich new lines of inquiry. Few have written about Anna's religious beliefs, and comparing her Catholicism with Henrietta Maria's illuminates the ways in which both women were politically subversive. This book offers an important corrective to centuries of negative representation, and contributes to a fuller understanding of the role of queenship in the English Civil War and the fall of the Stuart monarchy."--Provided by the publisher. 2017 • BOOK • 1 copy available. 942.06

Dutch warships in the age of sail, 1600-1714 : design, construction, careers and fates /James Bender ; introduction by J. D. Davies. "For most of the seventeenth century the Netherlands constituted the most important maritime power in the world, with by far the largest merchant fleet and a dominance in seaborne trade that other countries feared and envied. Born out of an 80-year struggle against Spain for independence, the Dutch republic relied on naval power to guarantee its freedom, promote its trade and defend its overseas colonies. The Dutch navy was crucial to its survival and success, yet the ships that made up its fleets are among the least studied of any in the age of sail. The reasons for this include a decentralised administration of five separate admiralties, often producing ships of the same name at the same time, the widespread co-opting of merchantmen into naval fleets, and competing systems of measuring ships, all of which leads to confusion and error. The most significant contribution of this book is to produce the first definitive listing of all Dutch fighting ships - whether purpose-built, purchased, hired or captured - from the heyday of the United Provinces, complete with technical details and summaries of their careers. It also provides an appreciation of the administrative, economic and technical background, and outlines the many campaigns fought by one of the most successful navies in history. With its unique depth of information, this is a work of the utmost importance to every naval historian and general reader interested in the navies of the sailing era."--Provided by the publisher. 2014. • FOLIO • 2 copies available. 623.82(492)

Englishmen at sea : labor and the nation at the dawn of empire, 1570-1630 /Eleanor Hubbard. "Drawing on a wealth of understudied sources, historian Eleanor Hubbard explores the labor conflicts behind the rise of the English maritime empire. Freewheeling Elizabethan privateering attracted thousands of young men to the sea, where they acquired valuable skills and a reputation for ruthlessness. Peace in 1603 forced these predatory seamen to adapt to a radically changed world, one in which they were expected to risk their lives for merchants' gain, not plunder. Merchant trading companies expected sailors to relinquish their unruly ways and to help convince overseas rulers and trading partners that the English were a courteous and trustworthy 'nation'. Some sailors rebelled, becoming pirates and renegades; others demanded and often received concessions and shares in new trading opportunities. Treated gently by a state that was anxious to promote seafaring in order to man the navy, these determined sailors helped to keep the sea a viable and attractive trade for Englishmen." --Provided by publisher. 2021 • BOOK • 1 copy available. 382.0942009031

L'art de jetter les bombes Blondel, Francois 1699 • RARE-BOOK • 1 copy available. 094:623.5

Relation fidele de l'expedition de Cartagene Desjeans, Jean Bernard Louis 1699 • RARE-BOOK • 1 copy available. 094:355.49"1697"(86)

A new voyage and description of the Isthmus of America ... Wafer, Lionel 1699 • RARE-BOOK • 1 copy available. 094:917.287

The British Civil Wars at sea, 1638-1653 / Richard J. Blakemore and Elaine Murphy. "The civil wars in England, Scotland and Ireland in the period 1638-1653 are usually viewed from the perspective of land warfare. This book, on the other hand, presents a comprehensive overview of the wars from a maritime perspective. It considers the structure, organisation and manning of the parliamentarian, royalist, and Irish confederate navies, discussing how these changed over the course of the wars. It also traces the development of the wars at sea, showing that the initial opting for parliament by seamen and officers in 1642 was a crucial development, as was the mutiny and defection of part of the parliamentarian navy in 1648. Moving beyond this it examines the nature of maritime warfare, including coastal sieges, the securing of major ports for parliament, the attempts by royalists to ship arms and other supplies from continental Europe, commerce raiding, and the transportation of armies and their supporters in the invasions of Scotland and Ireland. Overall the book demonstrates that the war at sea was an integral and important part of these dramatic conflicts."--Provided by the publisher. 2018. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 355.49"1638/1653"(42)

Sovereign of the Seas, 1637 : a reconstruction of the most powerful warship of its day /John McKay. "Sovereign of the Seas was the most spectacular, extravagant and controversial warship of the early seventeenth century. The ultimate royal prestige project, whose armament was increased by the King's decree to the unheard-of figure of 100 guns, the ship finally cost the equivalent of ten more conventional warships. A significant proportion of this total was spent on her gilded decoration, which gave the ship a unique combination of firepower and visual impact in battle that led her Dutch opponents to dub her the 'Golden Devil'. The vessel was the poster-child of the notorious 'Ship Money' tax, raised without parliamentary approval and so unpopular it was a major factor leading to the Civil War in which Charles I lost his sovereignty and his head. In that sense, she was a ship that cost a kingdom. It is unsurprising that such a high-profile ship should be well-documented, but there are no contemporary plans and much of the visual evidence is contradictory. In this book, John McKay sets out to analyse the data and reconstruct the design and appearance of the ship in a degree of detail never previously attempted. The results are presented as a folio of superbly draughted plans, isometric drawings and coloured renderings, covering every aspect of the design from the hull form to the minutiae of sails and rigging. Each section is accompanied by an explanatory text, setting out the rationale for his conclusions, so the book will be of value to historians of the period as well as providing superb reference for any modeller tackling of one of the most popular of all sailing ship subjects."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • FOLIO • 1 copy available. 623.82SOVEREIGN OF THE SEAS

The loss of the Trades Increase : an early modern maritime catastrophe /Richmond Barbour. "Was it the Titanic of its age? Christened by an optimistic King James I in December 1609, the Trades Increase was the greatest English merchant vessel of the Jacobean era--a magnificent ship embodying the hopes of the nascent East India Company to claim a commanding share of the Eastern trade. But the ship's launch failed when it proved too large to exit from its dock, an ill-fated start to an expedition that would end some three years later, when a dangerously leaking Trades Increase at last reached the shores of Java. While its smaller companion vessel would sail home with handsome profits for investors, the rotting hull of the great ship itself was beyond repair. The Trades Increase and nearly all who sailed it perished wretchedly on the far side of the world. The terrible pattern proven by this voyage, with profits to an elite few in London stained by catastrophic losses in equipment and personnel abroad, ignited rancorous controversy in England over the human, moral, and economic costs of such commerce. In The Loss of the 'Trades Increase' Richmond Barbour has written an engrossing account of the tragic expedition and of global capitalism at its hour of emergence. Its sources fragmented among journals, minutes, and letters in the archives of the East India Company, the full story of the Trades Increase is told here for the first time. Earlier writers minimized the loss as a temporary setback and necessary sacrifice on the road to empire. In a work informed by corporate history and postcolonial theory, Barbour sees the saga of the voyage, and all that produced and justified it, differently: as an expression of the structural conflicts, operational risks, and material incapacities that haunted and ultimately unraveled the British Empire--and that destabilize multinational corporations, global markets, and our common biosphere to this day"--Provided by the publisher. 2021. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 387.2/24

Elizabethan globalism : England, China and the rainbow portrait /Matthew Dimmock. "Challenging the myth of Elizabethan England as insular and xenophobic, this revelatory study sheds light on how the nation's growing global encounters - from the Caribbean to Asia - created an interest and curiosity in the wider world that resonated deeply throughout society. Matthew Dimmock reconstructs an extraordinary housewarming party thrown at the newly built Cecil House in London in 1602 for Elizabeth I where a stunning display of Chinese porcelain served as a physical manifestation of how global trade and diplomacy had led to a new appreciation of foreign cultures. This party was also the likely inspiration for Elizabeth's celebrated Rainbow Portrait, an image that Dimmock describes as a carefully orchestrated vision of England's emerging ambitions for its engagements with the rest of the world. Bringing together an eclectic variety of sources including play texts, inventories, and artifacts, this extensively researched volume presents a picture of early modern England as an outward-looking nation intoxicated by what the world had to offer."--Provided by the publisher. 2019. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 942.05/5

The English and French navies, 1500-1650 : expansion, organisation and state-building /Benjamin W. D. Redding. "Challenges the received wisdom about the relative weakness of French naval power when compared with that of England. This book traces the advances and deterioration of the early modern English and French sea forces and relates these changes to concurrent developments within the respective states. Based on extensive original research in correspondence and memoirs, official reports and accounts, receipts of the exchequer and inventories in both France, where the sources are disparate and dispersed, and England, the book explores the rise of both kingdoms' naval resources from the early sixteenth to the mid seventeenth centuries. As a comparative study, it shows that, in sharing the Channel and with both countries increasing their involvement in maritime affairs, English and French naval expansion was intertwined. Directly and indirectly, the two kingdoms influenced their neighbours' sea programmes. The book first examines the administrative transformations of both navies, then goes on to discuss fiscal and technological change, and finally assesses the material expansion of the respective fleets. In so doing it demonstrates the close relationship between naval power and state strength in early modern Europe. One important argument challenges the received wisdom about the relative weakness of French naval power when compared with that of England."--Provided by the publisher. 2022. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 359.0094209031

An account of a voyage from Archangel in Russia, in the year 1697 Allison, Thomas 1699 • RARE-BOOK • 1 copy available. 094:910.4(985)"1697"

Derde vervolg van saken van staat en oorlog, in, en omtrent de Vereenigde Nederlanden ... 1692 ... 1697 ... Aitzema, Lieuwe van 1699 • RARE-OVER • 1 copy available. 094:355.49(492)

A new voyage and description of the Isthmus of America Wafer, Lionel 1903 • BOOK • 1 copy available. 917.287

Loyalty and fidelity rejected and oppressed : or, the case of George Everett, shipwright, truly stated ... Everett, George 1699 • RARE-BOOK • 1 copy available. 094 <EXTI Naval tracts 1690-1700:355.6(42)"169"

Explore our Collection