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When you walk in to the Propaganda: Power and Persuasion Exhibition at the British Library you are told that ‘propaganda is used to fight wars and combat disease, build unity and create division’. You then walk through a guard of honour of black mannequins that offer different definitions of the word ‘propaganda’.
The quest for saltpeter, the ‘inestimable treasure’ of Tudor and Stuart monarchs, crucial for the production of gunpowder, is the subject of David Cressy’s work, which spans the reign of the first Tudor, Henry VII, to the industrialised warfare of the 20th century.
This is a welcome translation of an important book. Arlette Jouanna’s studies of the French nobility in its relations with the monarchy and the 16th-century Wars of Religion give her the breadth of vision and contextual knowledge necessary to offer new insights into perhaps the single most famous event of these wars.
The question of the nature of allegiance in the English Civil Wars has been a perennial issue for at least three generations of professional academics.
Rayne Allinson’s new book, A Monarchy in Letters: Royal Correspondence and English Diplomacy in the Reign of Elizabeth I, highlights some of the gaps missing in the historiography of the queen’s own involvement in foreign affairs. The author acknowledges that there is a curious void here; what about the queen’s own words?
After a period in which much historical attention has been directed to the rise of the early modern state, it now seems to be becoming fashionable to take the state out of the centre of the picture again.
Vincent O'Malley is an experienced and respected historian of Treaty of Waitangi claims research.
Evan Haefeli’s excellent new book, New Netherland and the Dutch Origins of American Religious Liberty, does nothing less than expand and transform our understanding of religious diversity and toleration in colonial Dutch North America.
Bernard Capp explores how godly reformers in England sought to create a better society and assesses the extent of their achievements at a time when Puritans were in an unprecedented position of power to reshape English society.
This is a monumental book, covering 91 noble families and 311 individual noblemen in 17 chapters of 482 pages of text and 89 pages of endnotes. The supporting material includes 19 plates, ten maps, 31 tables, ten figures and six appendices.