Full Description
Was there such a thing as 'public opinion' before the age of newspapers and party politics? The essays in this collection show that in the Low Countries, at least, there certainly was. In this highly urbanised society, with high literacy rates and good connections, news and public debate could spread fast in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, enabling the growth of powerful opposition movements against the Crown, the creation of the Dutch Republic, and of the distinctive Netherlandish culture of the Golden Age.
Contributors include: Hugh Dunthorne, Raingard Esser, Jonathan Israel, Gustaaf Janssens, Henk van Nierop, Guido Marnef, M.E.H. Nicolette Mout, Andrew Pettegree, Judith Pollmann, Paul Regan*, Andrew Sawyer*, Jo Spaans, Andrew Spicer*, and Juliaan Woltjer. (* Supervised by Alastair Duke)
Contents
List of Illustrations
Abbreviations
Notes on Contributors
Introduction, Judith Pollmann & Andrew Spicer
1. Dramatizing the Dutch Revolt. Romantic History and its Sixteenth-Century Antecedents, Hugh Dunthorne
2. A Provincial News Community in Sixteenth-Century Europe, Andrew Pettegree
3. Cartography, Chorography and Patriotic Sentiment in the Sixteenth-Century Low Countries, Paul Regan
4. 'And Ye Shall Hear of Wars and Rumours of Wars'. Rumour and the Revolt of the Netherlands, Henk van Nierop
5. Public Opinion and the Persecution of Heretics in the Netherlands, 1550-59, Juliaan Woltjer
6. 'Superexcellat autem misericordia iudicium'. The Homily of François Richardot on the Occasion of the Solemn Announcement of the General Pardon in the Netherlands (Antwerp, 16 July 1570), Gustaaf Janssens
7. Resistance and the Celebration of Privileges in Sixteenth-Century Brabant, Guido Marnef
8. Justus Lipsius between War and Peace. His Public Letter on Spanish Foreign Policy and the Respective Merits of War, Peace or Truce (1595), Nicolette Mout
9. Medium and Message. Political Prints in the Dutch Republic, 1568-1632, Andrew Sawyer
10. Public Opinion or Ritual Celebration of Concord? Politics, Religion and Society in the Competition between the Chambers of Rhetoric at Vlaardingen, 1616, Joke Spaans
11. 'Brabanters Do Fairly Resemble Spaniards After All'. Memory, Propaganda and Identity in the Twelve Years' Truce, Judith Pollmann
12. 'Concordia res parvae crescunt'. Regional Histories and the Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century, Raingard Esser
13. 'So Many Painted Jezebels'. Stained Glass Windows and the Formation of an Urban Identity in the Dutch Republic, Andrew Spicer
14. Group Identity and Opinion among the Huguenot Diaspora and the Challenge of Pierre Bayle's Toleration Theory (1685-1706), Jonathan Israel
Index
