Iconic early European maps of the Caribbean depict neatly parcelled plantations, sugar mills, towns, and fortifications juxtaposed against untamed interiors sketched with runaway slaves and Indigenous toponyms. These extra-geographical symbols of racial and spatial meaning projected desire and design to powerful audiences. Abstractions about material life influenced colonial perceptions and actions upon a space, often to deleterious effects for the Indigenous and African people who were abused in tandem with the region's flora and fauna. The scientific revolution curbed these proscriptive and descriptive ‘thick-mapped’ features that offer historians an underexplored record of early colonial Caribbean life beyond the geographically descriptive. Before this shift from mystery to mastery, the early correlation of colonization and cartography in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries provides a fascinating glimpse into the process of creating the Americas. This article offers ideas for deconstructing old maps as new sources for historians of the early Atlantic World. As digital readers may explore through the roughly fifty maps linked via the footnotes, their informative spectacle naturalized colonialism upon lived and imagined race and space, created an exoticized, commodified Caribbean, and facilitated wealth extraction projects of competing empires made profitable by African labour on Indigenous land.

As the field of food history has come to fruition in the last few decades, cultural historians of early modern England have begun to recognize the significance of food and eating practices in the process of identity construction. Yet its effect on religious identities has yet to be written. This article illuminates a printed discourse in which Protestants laboured to define a new relationship to food and eating in light of the Reformation, from Elizabeth I's reign up until the Civil War. It is based on a wealth of religious tracts written by the clergy, alongside the work of physicians in the form of dietaries and regimens, which together highlight the close relationship between bodily and spiritual concerns. As a result of the theological changes of the Reformation, reformers sought to desacralize Catholic notions of holy food. However, by paying greater attention to the body, this article argues that eating continued to be a religiously significant act, which could both threaten spiritual health and enrich it. This discourse on food and eating helped draw the confessional boundaries and identities of the Reformation period, and so offers a rewarding and novel insight into English Protestantism.

In his inaugural lecture, Saul Dubow, Smuts Professor of Commonwealth History at Cambridge University, discusses the modern history of science in South Africa in terms of ‘deep time’ and space, drawing links between developments in astronomy, palaeontology, and Antarctic research. He argues that Jan Smuts's synthetic discussion of South African science in 1925, followed by J. H. Hofmeyr's discussion of the ‘South Africanization’ of science in 1929, has parallels in post-apartheid conceptions of scientific-led nation-building, for example in Thabo Mbeki's elaboration of the ‘African Renaissance’. Yet, whereas the vision of science elaborated by Smuts was geared exclusively to white unity, Mbeki's Africanist vision of South African science was ostensibly more inclusive. The lecture concludes by considering South Africa as one of several middle order countries which have used national science and scientific patriotism to address experiences of colonialism and relations of inequality and to assert their influence in regional contexts.

What is the history of science? How has it changed over the course of the twentieth century? And what does the future hold for the discipline? This ‘Retrospect’ provides an introduction to the historiography of science as it developed in the Anglophone world. It begins with the foundation of the Cambridge History of Science Committee in the 1940s and ends with the growth of cultural history in the 2000s. At the broadest level, it emphasizes the need to consider the close relationship between history and the history of science. All too often the historiography of science is treated separately from history at large. But as this essay shows, these seemingly distinct fields often developed in relation to one another. This essay also reveals the ways in which Cold War politics shaped the history of science as a discipline. It then concludes by considering the future, suggesting that the history of science and the history of political thought would benefit from greater engagement with one another.

Although the argument of the Essay on population originated in a family disagreement between Malthus and his father Daniel, who idolized Rousseau, and the Essay itself attacks Condorcet and Godwin, both of whom drew on Rousseau's ideas about human perfectibility, Malthus's project can plausibly be seen as an extension of the social theory set out above all in Rousseau's Discourse on the origin of inequality. Malthus was animated by some of Rousseau's characteristic concerns, and he deployed recognizable versions of some of Rousseau's distinctive arguments, in particular relating to the natural sociability and natural condition of humankind, conjectural history, and political economy, especially with respect to the question of balanced growth. His arguments about ‘decent pride’, furthermore, that were emphasized in later editions of the Essay map neatly onto what has been called ‘uninflamed amour-propre’ in the Rousseau literature. When we treat the social question as a nineteenth-century question, or when we locate its origins in the post-Revolutionary political controversies of the 1790s, we risk losing sight of the way in which what was being discussed were variations on mid-eighteenth-century themes.

Rebuilding plans submitted after the Great Fire of London in 1666 have been widely treated by historians of the Great Fire and in wide-scope histories of London and modern city planning. However, few attempts have been made to assign an overarching logic to all of them, while paying attention to their texts as well as to their maps. The following article highlights certain common features in these abortive efforts to plan London, assigns a common logic to all of them, and traces the origins of this logic. Such an analysis illuminates the economic principles in plans that are usually examined for their architectural features, and places them in a different historical context. Rather than seeing them as manifestations of contemporary architectural trends, or as a continuation of ongoing attempts to regulate London's cityscape, the plans are presented here as a response to emerging ideas in mid-seventeenth-century England about the nature of value and the economic function of cities within the world of commerce. Such a view reveals the complex interplay between London's early modern growth and the emergence of new forms of knowledge in seventeenth-century England and reasserts the importance of these plans as forerunners of present-day city planning.

This article argues that parliamentary debates over the access to and control of the crown jewels from 1641 to 1644 were intrinsic to the emergence and proliferation of revolutionary ideas about political sovereignty in the earliest stages of the English Civil Wars. In combining the methodologies of parliamentary history with theoretical scholarship on the material foundations of power, it demonstrates that shifting attitudes toward the royal regalia were indicative of more general developments in parliamentary thinking on the origins and limits of monarchical authority. In so doing, it contributes to recent scholarship on the problem of ‘ideological escalation’ at Westminster, demonstrating how quickly an initially radical proposal for access to the crown jewels became sufficiently popular in the House of Commons to authorize the melting down of the royal regalia only a year later. By emphasizing the centrality of the crown jewels to ongoing debates over the ‘ancient constitution’, it suggests that their destruction was understood as a step towards the abolition of monarchy per se.

At the beginning of De jure naturae et gentium (1672), Samuel von Pufendorf proposed a radical dichotomy between nature and morality. He was followed down this arid path by his great admirer John Locke. This article begins by exploring their descriptions of this dichotomy, examining the ways in which human animals were supposed to haul themselves out of the push and pull of the mechanistic world in order to become free moral agents. The article then argues that bubbling up from within this principal account of morality is an alternative account according to which virtue seems to infuse nature, thereby blurring the lines between obligation and motivation, and refiguring the character of moral and political agency. In uncovering this refiguration, I highlight the importance of Aristotelianism and Stoicism for Pufendorf and Locke, suggest continuities rather than breaks between the natural lawyers of the seventeenth century and the theorists of moral sentiment of the next, and gesture towards a hitherto underappreciated discourse in early modern thought: the normativity of nature.

The implicit view in many studies of Renaissance culture is that only the very wealthy were able actively to participate in, and to influence, the changing market for consumer goods. However, in recent years there has been an increasing awareness of the importance of studying the material culture of the non-elite. Building on the work of historians such as Sandra Cavallo, Paula Hohti, and Isabella Palumbo Fossati Casa, this article explores the items within the dotal inventories of the wives and daughters of artisans in sixteenth-century Verona. Through an analysis of 100 inventories, it will be argued that during the sixteenth century, artisans and their families played an active role in the burgeoning market for consumer goods. Even in provincial cities such as Verona, artisans were able to own vast numbers of commodities, which were at once practical, luxurious, and devotional, that functioned to increase both the comfort and splendour of the household. Dotal inventories are an underused source; however, this article will demonstrate how they can shed light on the material culture of the non-noble classes in the Renaissance.

Between the Restoration in 1660 and the Revolution in 1688 the English public abandoned its century-long animus against Spain and began to identify France as its chief enemy. Historians often hold that the most significant intervention in shifting the balance of public opinion was the Dutch-inspired pamphlet, England's appeal from the private cabal at Whitehall (1673), written by the Huguenot Pierre du Moulin. It is argued here that an immensely influential earlier intervention was made by François-Paul de Lisola, in his Buckler of state and justice (1667), which, at a critical juncture, presented a rhetorically powerful body of arguments about the nature of the European state system. A Catholic in the service of the Habsburg emperor, who spent nearly two years in England in 1666–8, Lisola was an accomplished and versatile diplomat and publicist. This article interweaves diplomatic history with the history of geopolitical argument, tracing paths which led to Europe's Grand Alliance against Louis XIV.

Malthus was severely critical of the old poor law, especially when the payments paid to recipients were made in conformity to the principles adopted by the local magistrates in Speenhamland in 1795. He considered that it encouraged early and improvident marriage with unfortunate consequences. There have been a number of attempts to determine whether Malthus was justified in supposing that the old poor law had this effect, some concluding that he was correct in his assumption, others that he was mistaken. The information contained in the first four English censuses did not include a breakdown of the population by age, sex, and marital status, and therefore did not provide a basis for a definitive test of Malthus's assertion before the repeal of the old poor law in 1834. The 1851 census, however, did provide this breakdown for five-year age groups which makes it possible to compare marriage patterns in counties in which a large proportion of the male workforce were ‘peasants’ (Malthus's term for agricultural labourers), and the Speenhamland provisions were widely adopted, with other counties. The results show that Malthus was mistaken.

The construction and distribution of books containing large copperplate images was of great importance to practitioners of natural history during the eighteenth century. This article examines the case of the botanist and president of the Royal Society Sir Joseph Banks (1743–1820), who attempted to publish a series of images based on the botanical illustrations produced by Georg Forster (1754–94) on Cook's second voyage of exploration (1772–5) during the 1790s. The analysis reveals how the French Revolution influenced approaches to constructing and distributing works of natural history in Britain, moving beyond commercial studies of book production to show how Banks's political agenda shaped the taxonomic content and distribution of this publication. Matters were complicated by Forster's association with radical politics and the revolutionary ideologies attached to materials collected in the Pacific by the 1790s. Banks's response to the Revolution influenced the distribution of this great work, showing how British loyalist agendas interacted with scientific practice and shaped the diffusion of natural knowledge in the revolutionary age.

The article examines the enduring phenomenon of double monasticism, the type of religious organization whereby a single monastic unit combined a male and a female community that followed the same rule, recognized the authority of the same superior, and functioned within the boundaries of the same monastic compound or in close proximity to each other, but not in shared quarters. After centuries of evolution since late antiquity, double monasteries effectively ceased to exist in the Latin West by the high middle ages, but demonstrated remarkable staying powers in the sphere of historic Byzantine cultural influences, particularly in Orthodox Eastern Europe and Christian Middle East, where this archaic type of monastic institution survived into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Based on previously unexplored archival material from the Orthodox lands of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and later the Ukrainian Hetmanate, a semi-autonomous state ruled by elective officers who recognized the tsar of Muscovy as their suzerain, the article analyses the place of kinship structures, economic and political factors, legal frameworks, and the role of the imperial state in the evolution and ultimate decline of the double monastery.

This article examines the rate and nature of female representation before the board of trustees for the forfeited estates in Ireland, established by the Act of Resumption in 1700. The legislation was introduced by a discontented English parliament to nullify William III's grants of forfeited Irish land, which he awarded after victory over James II in the War of the Two Kings (1689–91). The act's remit extended well beyond the resumption of freehold land, incorporating real property, judgements, securities, obligations, debts, and goods and chattels forfeited by outlawed Jacobites. It was also retroactive, as all parties with a legitimate title to a property that predated 13 February 1689 were entitled to enter a claim. Using a printed list of 3,140 claims submitted to the trustees, this article analyses the commonality of female claimants, considers their economic, social, and marital status, and identifies the legal or equitable basis for their representation before the trustees. In doing so, it examines prenuptial and familial practices in post-Restoration Ireland, underlines the economic importance of marriage and inheritance as means of conveyance, and suggests that women's and female minors’ successful claims provided a number of Catholic families with a lifeline in the early eighteenth century.

The importance of print in the ‘rage of party’ of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Britain is well known, but scholars have paid insufficient attention to the press phenomenon that provided the most persistent and undiluted partisan voices of the era, the comment serial. Comment serials – regular printed publications designed explicitly to present topical analysis, opinion, and advice – were fashioned as powerful weapons for partisan combat. Due to their regularity and flexibility, they could be more potent than other forms of topical print, especially pamphlets and newspapers. Although many publications have been individually recognized as comment serials, such as Roger L'Estrange's Observator (1681–7), Daniel Defoe's Review (1704–13), and Jonathan Swift and others’ Examiner (1710–14), their development as a holistic phenomenon has not been properly understood. They first appeared during the Succession Crisis (1678–82), and proliferated under Queen Anne (1702–14), supporting both tory and whig causes. Through widespread consumption, both direct and indirect, they shaped partisan culture in various ways, including by reinforcing and galvanizing partisan identities, facilitating the development of partisan ‘reading communities’, and manifesting and representing party divisions in public. This article focuses on John Tutchin's Observator (1702–12) as a case-study of a major comment serial.

In 1626, after losing a bitterly fought parliamentary election in Canterbury, Thomas Scott wrote Canterburie cittizens. Initially, he planned to present it to the House of Commons, but the text quickly became too lengthy and, most importantly, too controversial in its assessments. Scholars can only be glad that he produced such an extensive account of the contest. His book allows us to see how the ‘Rule-alls’ on the corporation, dominated by brewers and innkeepers, struggled against Scott's humbler supporters. As Scott makes abundantly clear, this contest was not a result of any chance misunderstanding; rather it stemmed from long-standing divisions within the city which emerged at the 1621 elections and continued well into the Civil War. For days before the election, a group of godly ministers sought to rally votes for Scott, while the ‘Rule-alls’ systematically bullied voters into line. Consequently, although Scott had the largest numbers of supporters at the election, some were too frightened to voice their support loudly. After discussing this episode in detail, the article will reassess the literature on early Stuart elections and particularly, Mark Kishlansky's 1986 book, Parliamentary selections.

Historians of empire are well aware of the importance of finding moments and spaces of connectedness between empires. The question of how to do so meaningfully remains open. This article brings to light a significant moment of imperial connectedness, through imperial contest. It tells the story of the humiliating expulsion of the British consul John Falcon from the strategic Mediterranean port of Algiers, during the Napoleonic wars. Both France and Britain sought to establish an informal imperial presence in the regency of Algiers, for access to the grain that both needed – France for its southern regions and armies, and Britain for the supply of its Mediterranean base in Gibraltar. The consuls of both powers were obliged to deal with a Jewish trading house that acted as middleman, both in trade and in diplomatic relations in the regency: the House of Bacri and Busnach. As the two powers competed, and sought to shut one another out, they attributed failures and frustrations to this trading house. Through French and British perceptions of Falcon's expulsion, and both powers’ understanding of the role of the trading house in events, this article offers a picture of imperial connection, bringing together middlemen, diplomacy, and international relations.

T. R. Malthus was deeply interested in how his principle of population operated in societies distant to, and different from, his own. In this respect, China served as an intriguing case, already famous in his own time for its large and dense population and the central regulation of a closed economy. Malthus drew on both centuries-old Jesuit material and recent accounts from the Macartney embassy to the Qianlong emperor to assess its past and present food–land–population dynamics. This article explores Malthus's interest in China in the context of British public and private commercial interest in opening its trade, not least interest from his own East India Company. Historiographically, Malthus's China has been critiqued as an early rendition of orientalist demographic transition, posing a dichotomy of East/West fertility and mortality change. In disagreement with this interpretation, this article argues Malthus's key distinction was not East/West but Old World/New World.

This article uses Anna Eliza Grenville, first duchess of Buckingham and Chandos, as a lens through which to explore the gendering of aristocratic property- and slave-ownership in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain. Alongside the extensive metropolitan property that Grenville brought to her marriage was Hope estate, a Jamaican plantation upon which worked 379 enslaved men, women, and children. Using legal records, family papers, and correspondence, the article examines the ways in which Grenville negotiated her position as a married woman and substantial property-owner, and considers what it meant for a married woman to ‘own’ property, landed and in the form of other human beings, in the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century aristocratic world. Examining her absentee slave-ownership alongside her metropolitan property-ownership highlights the complex intersections between race, class, and gender across both metropole and colony. In doing so, the article makes an important contribution to the rapidly expanding scholarship exploring female property-ownership in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain, hitherto almost entirely metropolitan in focus. It demonstrates how seamlessly enslaved property could be integrated into aristocratic forms of property-ownership and transmission, and highlights the important role that women played in bringing slave-ownership ‘home’ to metropolitan Britain.