Author : Paul R. Sellin
Publisher : Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 22,17 MB
Release : 2011
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781409420255
In this engaging book, the oft-told narrative of Sir Walter Raleigh is blown apart through the chance discovery of hitherto neglected correspondence in a Swedish archive. In place of a deceitful and scheming Raleigh, Sellin paints a picture of man executed on trumped-up charges by those hoping to profit from the very gold mine they claimed he had invented. It will be of interest not only to specialists of the period, but to anyone with a sense of the romance of history.
Author : Keith Thomson
Publisher : Little, Brown
Page : 367 pages
File Size : 21,14 MB
Release : 2024-05-21
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0316497207
The transporting account of an obsessive quest to find El Dorado, set against the backdrop of Elizabethan political intrigue and a competition with Spanish conquistadors for the legendary city’s treasure As early as 1530, reports of El Dorado, a city of gold in the South American interior, beckoned to European explorers. Whether there was any truth to the stories remained to be seen, but the allure of unimaginable riches was enough to ensnare dozens of would-be heroes and glory hounds in the desperate hunt. Among them was Sir Walter Raleigh: ambitious courtier, confidant to Queen Elizabeth, and, before long, El Dorado fanatic. Entering the Elizabethan court as an upstart from a family whose days of nobility were far behind them, Raleigh used his military acumen, good looks, and sheer audacity to scramble into the limelight. Yet that same swagger proved to be his undoing, as his secret marriage to a lady-in-waiting enraged Queen Elizabeth and landed him in the Tower of London. Between his ensuing grim prospects at court and his underlying lust for adventure, the legend of El Dorado became an unwavering siren song that hypnotized Raleigh. On securing his release, he journeyed across an ocean to find the fabled city, gambling his painstakingly acquired wealth, hard-won domestic bliss, and his very life. What awaited him in the so-called New World were endless miles of hot, dense jungle packed with deadly flora and fauna, warring Spanish conquistadors and Indigenous civilizations, and other unforeseen dangers. Meanwhile, back at home, his multitude of rivals plotted his demise. Paradise of the Damned, like Keith Thomson’s critically acclaimed Born to Be Hanged, brings this story to life in lush and captivating detail. The book charts Raleigh’s obsessive search for El Dorado—as well as the many doomed expeditions that preceded and accompanied his—providing not only an invaluable history but also a gripping narrative of traveling to the ends of the earth only to realize, too late, that what lies at home is the greatest treasure of all.
Author : Paul R. Sellin
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 290 pages
File Size : 16,8 MB
Release : 2016-12-05
Category : History
ISBN : 1351877542
In this remarkable book, the oft-told narrative of Sir Walter Raleigh is blown apart through the chance discovery of hitherto neglected Dutch correspondence found in a Swedish archive. Following an exciting paper-trail through Jacobean history to modern-day Venezuela, Professor Sellin makes a convincing case for Raleigh's innocence of the charges that led him to the block in 1618. Spurred on by these documents, Sellin undertook two excursions up the Orinoco river in Raleigh's wake, using Raleigh's 1596 book The Discoverie of Guiana as a guide. These trips convinced him that, far from being a fanciful blend of fact and fiction, the Discoverie is a remarkably accurate and verifiable document, which allowed him to locate Raleigh's gold lode on Cerro Redondo, a short distance inland from present-day Los Castillos, Venezuela. In place of a deceitful and scheming Raleigh, Sellin demonstrates how the Duke of Buckingham manoeuvred to have Raleigh executed on trumped-up charges. This left the way open for him to conspire with foreign powers to try to acquire the very mine he claimed Raleigh had invented to justify his actions against Spanish interests in Venezuela. It is rare for a scholarly book to profoundly shake widely-accepted views of so well-known an historical figure as Sir Walter Raleigh, but that is exactly what Paul Sellin achieves here. Crammed with tales of treasure, treason, murder, and international intrigue, this book make us think afresh of one of the greatest Elizabethan heroes. Written in a relaxed and engaging style, it will be of interest not only to specialists of the period but to anyone with a sense of the romance of history.
Author : Ms Anna Grzeskowiak-Krwawicz
Publisher : Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Page : 192 pages
File Size : 33,96 MB
Release : 2013-07-28
Category : History
ISBN : 1409482995
Józef Boruwlaski was the most famous dwarf of the Enlightenment age. Polish-born, he travelled extensively throughout Europe, appearing and performing at royal courts and salons, before settling in Durham in his later life until his death at the age of 97. He was described in Diderot's Encyclopédie and the press of his day - both on the continent and in the UK - sustained an interest in him and kept tabs on his life and experiences. His memoirs, published in a bilingual (French and English) version in 1788, show him to have been an intelligent and sharp observer of the world he inhabited. The life story of this miniature gentleman is not only highly interesting in its own right, but also offers a new perspective on the culture of the Enlightenment. Through a meticulous survey of source materials in Poland, France, and the United Kingdom, the author has managed to unearth and reconstruct many heretofore unknown details about Boruwlaski's life and adventures, about his travels first on the continent and then in the United Kingdom. It is not typical biography, but rather an attempt at identifying certain social roles that were imposed upon Boruwlaski: a plaything of the salons, a source of entertainment for the masses, an adventurist against his own wishes. At the same time, his story is that of a man who spent his whole life trying to escape from such roles imposed upon him. Boruwlaski's memoirs are included in full, containing many of the letters he sent to his wife, with critical annotation. The author also investigates for the first time the sizeable differences between the many different versions of the memoirs published during his own lifetime. This monograph offers not only an opportunity to rediscover the fascinating life story of an intriguing man, but also gives a unique point of view on Europe's uppermost elite in the Enlightenment age - as people who remained deeply fascinated with deformities and oddities despite their own self-professed 'refined' tastes.
Author : Peter Lehr
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 285 pages
File Size : 16,43 MB
Release : 2019-07-16
Category : History
ISBN : 0300180748
A global account of pirates and their modus operandi from the middle ages to the present day In the twenty-first century piracy has regained a central place in Western culture, thanks to a surprising combination of Johnny Depp and the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise as well as the dramatic rise of modern-day piracy around Somalia and the Horn of Africa. In this global history of the phenomenon, maritime terrorism and piracy expert Peter Lehr casts fresh light on pirates. Ranging from the Vikings and Wako pirates in the Middle Ages to modern day Somali pirates, Lehr delves deep into what motivates pirates and how they operate. He also illuminates the state's role in the development of piracy throughout history: from privateers sanctioned by Queen Elizabeth to pirates operating off the coast of Africa taking the law into their own hands. After exploring the structural failures which create fertile ground for pirate activities, Lehr evaluates the success of counter-piracy efforts--and the reasons behind its failures.
Author : Michiel van Groesen
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 36,66 MB
Release : 2017
Category : History
ISBN : 081224866X
In 1624 the Dutch West India Company established the colony of Brazil. Only thirty years later, the Dutch Republic handed over the colony to Portugal, never to return to the South Atlantic. Because Dutch Brazil was the first sustained Protestant colony in Iberian America, the events there became major news in early modern Europe and shaped a lively print culture. In Amsterdam's Atlantic, historian Michiel van Groesen shows how the rise and tumultuous fall of Dutch Brazil marked the emergence of a "public Atlantic" centered around Holland's capital city. Amsterdam served as Europe's main hub for news from the Atlantic world, and breaking reports out of Brazil generated great excitement in the city, which reverberated throughout the continent. Initially, the flow of information was successfully managed by the directors of the West India Company. However, when Portuguese sugar planters revolted against the Dutch regime, and tales of corruption among leading administrators in Brazil emerged, they lost their hold on the media landscape, and reports traveled more freely. Fueled by the powerful local print media, popular discussions about Brazil became so bitter that the Amsterdam authorities ultimately withdrew their support for the colony. The self-inflicted demise of Dutch Brazil has been regarded as an anomaly during an otherwise remarkably liberal period in Dutch history, and consequently generations of historians have neglected its significance. Amsterdam's Atlantic puts Dutch Brazil back on the front pages and argues that the way the Amsterdam media constructed Atlantic events was a key element in the transformation of public opinion in Europe.
Author : Andrekos Varnava
Publisher : Manchester University Press
Page : 253 pages
File Size : 42,59 MB
Release : 2015-09-01
Category : History
ISBN : 1784996475
A wide-ranging edited collection that interrogates colonial expansion, and the mismatch between intention, perception and hype, and the actual realities.
Author : Theo Hermans
Publisher : UCL Press
Page : 316 pages
File Size : 47,30 MB
Release : 2017-03-28
Category : History
ISBN : 1910634891
This collection investigates the culture and history of the Low Countries in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries from both international and interdisciplinary perspectives. The period was one of extraordinary upheaval and change, as the combined impact of Renaissance, Reformation and Revolt resulted in the radically new conditions – political, economic and intellectual – of the Dutch Republic in its Golden Age. While many aspects of this rich and nuanced era have been studied before, the emphasis of this volume is on a series of interactions and interrelations: between communities and their varying but often cognate languages; between different but overlapping spheres of human activity; between culture and history. The chapters are written by historians, linguists, bibliographers, art historians and literary scholars based in the Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain and the United States. In continually crossing disciplinary, linguistic and national boundaries, while keeping the culture and history of the Low Countries in the Renaissance and Golden Age in focus, this book opens up new and often surprising perspectives on a region all the more intriguing for the very complexity of its entanglements.
Author : Jenny Mander
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 292 pages
File Size : 28,85 MB
Release : 2019-09-19
Category : History
ISBN : 1000649954
Ranging geographically from Tierra del Fuego to California and the Caribbean, and historically from early European sightings and the utopian projects of would-be colonizers to the present-day cultural politics of migrant communities and international relations, this volume presents a rich variety of case studies and scholarly perspectives on the interplay of diverse cultures in the Americas since the European conquest. Subjects covered include documentary and archaeological evidence of cultural interaction, the collection of native artifacts and the role of museums in the interpretation of indigenous traditions, the cultural impact of Christian missions and the representation of indigenous cultures in writings addressed to European readers, the development of Latin American artistic traditions and the incorporation of motifs from European classical antiquity into modern popular culture, the contribution of Afro-descendants to the cultural mix of Latin America and the erasure of the Hispanic heritage from cultural perceptions of California since the nineteenth century. By offering accessible and well-illustrated accounts of a wide range of particular cases, the volume aims to stimulate thinking about historical and methodological issues, which can be exploited in a teaching context as well as in the furtherance of research projects in a comparative and transnational framework.
Author : Inger Leemans
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 433 pages
File Size : 20,67 MB
Release : 2020-12-30
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 100033032X
Early Modern Knowledge Societies as Affective Economies researches the development of knowledge economies in Early Modern Europe. Starting with the Southern and Northern Netherlands as important early hubs for marketing knowledge, it analyses knowledge economies in the dynamics of a globalizing world. The book brings together scholars and perspectives from history, art history, material culture, book history, history of science and literature to analyse the relationship between knowledge and markets. How did knowledge grow into a marketable product? What knowledge about markets was available in this period, and how did it develop? By connecting these questions the authors show how knowledge markets operated, not only economically but also culturally, through communication and affect. Knowledge societies are analysed as affective communities, spaces and practices. Compelling case studies describe the role of emotions such as hope, ambition, desire, love, fascination, adventure and disappointment – on driving merchants, contractors and consumers to operate in the market of knowledge. In so doing, the book offers innovative perspectives on the development of knowledge markets and the valuation of knowledge. Introducing the reader to different perspectives on how knowledge markets operated from both an economic and cultural perspective, this book will be of great use to students, graduates and scholars of early modern history, economic history, the history of emotions and the history of the Low Countries.
