Between the Middle Ages and Modernity

Charles H. Parker is associate professor of history at Saint Louis University. Jerry H. Bentley is professor of history and director, Center for World History, at the University of Hawai`i.

• Introduction: Individual and Community in the Early Modern WorldPart I: StructuresChapter 1: Early Modern Europe and the Early Modern WorldChapter 2: German Burghers and Peasants in the Reformation and the Peasants' War: Partners or Competitors?Chapter 3: A Tale of Two Brothers: Corporate Identity and the Revolt in the Towns of HollandChapter 4: Family and Community in the Spanish WorldPart II: InteractionsChapter 5: Individual and Community among the Medieval Travelers to AsiaChapter 6: Settle or Return: Migrant Communities in Northern Europe, c. 1600–1800Chapter 7: Forcing the Doors of Heathendom: Ethnography, Violence, and the Dutch East India CompanyChapter 8: Creating a Littoral Community: Muslim Reformers in the Early Modern Indian Ocean WorldPart III: TransitionsChapter 9: Custom, Community, and the Crown: Lawyers and the Reordering of French Customary LawChapter 10: The Individual on Trial in Sixteenth-Century Netherlands: Between Tradition and ModernityChapter 11: "They have highly offended the community of God": Rituals of Ecclesiastical Discipline and Pastoral Membership in the Community in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century German ParishesChapter 12: Embodying the Middle Ages, Advancing Modernity: Religious Women in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe and BeyondChapter 13: The Transitional Role of Jacques Coeur in the Fifteenth CenturyChapter 14: The Individual Merchant and the Trading Nation in Sixteenth-Century AntwerpChapter 15: Between Profit and Power: The Dutch East India Company and Institutional Early Modernities in the Age of Mercantilism

Parker and Bentley have done a nice job of pulling together a wide range of topics in these 16 essays, which make the case for the early modern world as a field of historical studies. . . . This collection is a significant contribution to the study of early modernity. Highly recommended.