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Early Modern History
Military History June 4, 2023

Guibert's General Essay on Tactics

Jonathan Abel

Hosted by Caleb Zakarin
Listen:
"'The God of War' is near to revealing himself, because we have heard his prophet." So wrote Jean Colin, naming Napoleon the God of War and Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte, comte de Guibert …

Early Modern History

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Interviews with scholars of early modern history about their new books.

Early Modern History June 3, 2023

We, the King

Creating Royal Legislation in the Sixteenth-Century Spanish New World

Adrian Masters

Hosted by Miranda Melcher
Listen:
We, the King: Creating Royal Legislation in the Sixteenth-Century Spanish New World (Cambridge University Press, 2023) by Dr. Adrian Masters challenges the dominant top-down interpretation of the Spanish Empire and …
Indian Ocean World May 29, 2023

Histories of Health and Materiality in the Indian Ocean World

Medicine, Material Culture and Trade, 1600-2000

Anne Gerritsen and Burton Cleetus

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
Histories of Health and Materiality in the Indian Ocean World: Medicine, Material Culture and Trade, 1600-2000 (Bloomsbury, 2023): Introducing materiality into the study of the history of medicine, this volume hones …
Madison's Notes May 27, 2023

Strategy and Saratoga

A Conversation with Kevin Weddle

Kevin Weddle

Hosted by Annika Nordquist
At the Battle of Saratoga, the tide of the Revolutionary War turned in favor of unlikely victors: the American patriots. What were the major strategy elements at play in the …
Early Modern History May 26, 2023

In Fortune's Theater

Financial Risk and the Future in Renaissance Italy

Nicholas Scott Baker

Hosted by Michael Martoccio
In this episode, I was joined by Nicholas Scott Baker to discuss his book, In Fortune’s Theater: Financial Risk and the Future in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge University Press, 2021). Professor …
Early Modern History May 24, 2023

Intelligence and Espionage in the English Republic C. 1600-60

Alan Marshall

Hosted by Crawford Gribben
Alan Marshall's book Intelligence and Espionage in the English Republic C. 1600-60 (Manchester UP, 2023) is a richly detailed account of the ideas and activities in the early-modern 'secret state' and its …
Military History May 23, 2023

The Rise of the Military Entrepreneur

War, Diplomacy, and Knowledge in Habsburg Europe

Suzanne Sutherland

Hosted by Douglas Bell
In The Rise of the Military Entrepreneur: War, Diplomacy, and Knowledge in Habsburg Europe (Cornell UP, 2022), Suzanne Sutherland explores the role of the military entrepreneur and explains how these international …
East Asian Studies May 22, 2023

The Precious Summary

A History of the Mongols from Chinggis Khan to the Qing Dynasty

Sagang Sechen. Translated by Johan Elverskog.

Hosted by Sarah Bramao-Ramos
Buddhist cosmological history of the universe, history of Chinggis Khan, history of China, and history of the Mongols — The Precious Summary, written in 1662 by Sagang Sechen, is many …
Indian Ocean World May 21, 2023

India in the Indian Ocean World

From the Earliest Times to 1800 CE

Rila Mukherjee

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
India in the Indian Ocean World: From the Earliest Times to 1800 CE (Springer, 2022) integrates the latest scholarly literature on the entire Indian Ocean region, from East Africa to China. Issues …
Military History May 20, 2023

Dagger Fencing

The Italian School

Carlo Parisi

Hosted by Boris Karpa
Today, fighting with dagger versus dagger, or with knife versus knife, is not a common scenario that people might expect to face. However, it was more common in the Middle …
British Studies May 19, 2023

Eating the Empire

Food and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain

Troy Bickham

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
When students gathered in a London coffeehouse and smoked tobacco; when Yorkshire women sipped sugar-infused tea; or when a Glasgow family ate a bowl of Indian curry, were they aware …
Indian Religions May 18, 2023

Merchants of Virtue

Hindus, Muslims, and Untouchables in Eighteenth-Century South Asia

Divya Cherian

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
Merchants of Virtue: Hindus, Muslims, and Untouchables in Eighteenth-Century South Asia (U California Press, 2023) explores the question of what it meant to be Hindu in precolonial South Asia. Divya Cherian …
American Studies May 16, 2023

The Classical and Christian Origins of American Politics

Political Theology, Natural Law, and the American Founding

Kody W. Cooper and Justin Buckley Dyer

Hosted by Hope J. Leman
America’s religious and political public forum is no longer confined to debates between liberals (be they Catholics or Protestants) and socially conservative evangelicals and traditional Catholics—with atheists condemning all of …
Early Modern History May 11, 2023

An Artful Relic

The Shroud of Turin in Baroque Italy

Andrew R. Casper

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
In 1578, a fourteen-foot linen sheet bearing the faint bloodstained imprint of a human corpse was presented to tens of thousands of worshippers in Turin, Italy, as one of the …
Madison's Notes May 9, 2023

Christianity and the American Founding

A Discussion with Mark David Hall

Mark David Hall

Hosted by Annika Nordquist
Questions about the nature of the American founding undergird our fraught political discourse: was the American Revolution justified? How religious were the Founding Fathers? How should we deal with the …
Early Modern History May 6, 2023

Reformation in the Low Countries, 1500-1620

Christine Kooi

Hosted by Douglas Bell
In this new history of the Reformation in the Netherlands, Christine Kooi synthesizes fifty years of scholarship provide a broad general history of the Low Countries in the sixteenth century …
Economic and Business History May 5, 2023

Power and Progress

Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity

Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson

Hosted by Javier Mejia
Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity (PublicAffairs, 2023) is a groundbreaking work by bestselling authors Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, in which they challenge conventional wisdom about …
Library Science May 5, 2023

Spoils of Knowledge

Seventeenth-Century Plunder in Swedish Archives and Libraries

Emma Hagström Molin

Hosted by Jen Hoyer
In Spoils of Knowledge: Seventeenth-Century Plunder in Swedish Archives and Libraries (Brill, 2023), Emma Hagström Molin offers novel perspectives on document and book plundering. At the forefront of her study …
Indian Religions May 4, 2023

Saint Joseph in South India

Poetry, Mission and Theology in Costanzo Gioseffo Beschi's Tēmpāvaṇi

Francis Xavier Clooney

Hosted by Raj Balkaran
Costanzo Gioseffo Beschi was an Italian Jesuit who worked in South India from 1710 to 1747. A brilliant scholar of Tamil, his works include hymns, instructions for catechists, and a …
East Asian Studies April 30, 2023

Uncertainty in the Empire of Routine

The Administrative Revolution of the Eighteenth-Century Qing State

Maura Dykstra

Hosted by Ed Pulford
Uncertainty about the way a state should be working is not necessarily produced by having multiple voices offering competing ideas about it. As Maura Dykstra’s Uncertainty in the Empire of …