Gender, Power and Identity in the Early Modern House of Orange-Nassau

Gender, Power and Identity in the Early Modern House of Orange-Nassau
Author: Susan Broomhall
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 485
Release: 2016-08-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317129903

How do gender and power relationships affect the expression of family, House and dynastic identities? The present study explores this question using a case study of the House of Orange-Nassau, whose extensive visual, material and archival sources from both male and female members enable the authors to trace their complex attempts to express, gain and maintain power: in texts, material culture, and spaces, as well as rituals, acts and practices. The book adopts several innovative approaches to the history of the Orange-Nassau family, and to familial and dynastic studies generally. Firstly, the authors analyse in detail a vast body of previously unexplored sources, including correspondence, artwork, architectural, horticultural and textual commissions, ceremonies, practices and individual actions that have, surprisingly, received little attention to date individually, and consider these as the collective practices of a key early modern dynastic family. They investigate new avenues about the meanings and practices of family and dynasty in the early modern period, extending current research that focuses on dominant men to ask how women and subordinate men understood 'family' and 'dynasty', in what respects such notions were shared among members, and how it might have been fractured and fashioned by individual experiences. Adopting a transnational approach to the Nassau family, the authors explore the family's self-presentation across a range of languages, cultures and historiographical traditions, situating their representation of themselves as an influential House within an international context and offering a new vision of power as a gendered concept.

Dynastic Colonialism

Dynastic Colonialism
Author: Susan Broomhall
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2016-03-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317266374

Dynastic Colonialism analyses how women and men employed objects in particular places across the world during the early modern period in order to achieve the remarkable expansion of the House of Orange-Nassau. Susan Broomhall and Jacqueline Van Gent explore how the House emerged as a leading force during a period in which the Dutch accrued one of the greatest seaborne empires. Using the concept of dynastic colonialism, they explore strategic behaviours undertaken on behalf of the House of Orange-Nassau, through material culture in a variety of sites of interpretation from palaces and gardens to prints and teapots, in Europe and beyond. Using over 140 carefully selected images, the authors consider a wide range of visual, material and textual sources including portraits, glassware, tiles, letters, architecture and global spaces in order to rethink dynastic power and identity in gendered terms. Through the House of Orange-Nassau, Broomhall and Van Gent demonstrate how dynasties could assert status and power by enacting a range of colonising strategies. Dynastic Colonialism offers an exciting new interpretation of the complex story of the House of Orange-Nassau‘s rise to power in the early modern period through material means that will make fascinating reading for students and scholars of early modern European history, material culture, and gender. This book is highly illustrated throughout. The print edition features the images in black and white, whereas the eBook edition contains the illustrations in colour.

Going Dutch

Going Dutch
Author: Lisa Jardine
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 1063
Release: 2011-02-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 0062043382

“A thoroughly researched and provocative revisionist study.” — Wall Street Journal “Going Dutch is elegant and thought-provoking. . . . Jardine evokes a dialogue of civilizations.” — Lisa Ko, author of The Leavers “She explores the fascinating Anglo-Dutch relationship to answer how and why two sworn foes became friends so seamlessly. . . . A highly original work that will appeal to fans of Simon Schama’s The Embarrassment of Riches.” — Publishers Weekly “Jardine meticulously studies the exchange of ideas between England and Holland...she leaves no stone unturned...Absorbing, enjoyable reading.” — Kirkus Reviews “Jardine understands and appreciates her sources, and she writes exceptionally lively history. A pleasure to read, this book is enthusiastically recommended...” — Library Journal

The Princes of Orange

The Princes of Orange
Author: Herbert H. Rowen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 1990-09-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521396530

This major study provides the first comprehensive assessment of an important European institution, the Stadholderate of the Dutch Republic. Professor Rowen looks at the career of each Prince of Orange in turn, from William I ('The Silent'), to the last and saddest, William V, examining their roles as Stadholder and interweaving their personal lives and characters with the development of the institution. Without engaging in psycho-history, Rowen treats the individual personality of each Stadholder as a significant factor, and shows how the Stadholderate contributed to a distinctive political and constitutional coloration that rendered the United Provinces unique in Europe. The work assesses the contribution of the Stadholderate to the rise and subsequent fall of the Dutch Republic as one of the great powers of early modern Europe, and analyses each prince within his contemporary context, avoiding the highly present-minded approach of many of the Republic's subsequent historians. The Princes of Orange is thus neither a work of hagiography, glorifying the Dutch royal house, nor a piece of destructive iconoclasm, but an authoritative account of a most unusual political, dynastic and diplomatic institution.

William III

William III
Author: William Pull
Publisher: Unicorn
Total Pages: 576
Release: 2021-07
Genre:
ISBN: 9781913491604

A detailed study in the struggle for power between seventeenth-century European ruling elites. This book tells the story of William of Orange before he became the king of England, examining the system of clan family and patron-client relationships across Europe on which the prince's political and diplomatic influences rested. His skillful personal ability with the political elites in the Dutch Republic and England enabled his rise to power in the republic and later to the throne of England. Providing a full and detailed recounting of the dramatic clash between William's regime with Louis XIV's governance of France, the book does not shy away from engaging in historical controversies. The action that gives the story its impetus will be of equal interest to academics and general historians alike. Drawing from English and Dutch sources and historiography, the book is a major contribution to academic studies of this crucial historical figure of the second half of the seventeenth century.