Browse Items (202 total)

Published in 1776 by Scottish philosopher Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations continues to be a seminal piece of classical economics. Smith’s contributions, however, went far beyond the scope of the classical school of thought, defining the very…

William I of Nassau, Prince of Orange, who was also known as William the Silent, was an important figure in the Dutch Revolt against the Spanish Empire. The Dutch Revolt had its roots in the spread of Calvinism to the region and the subsequent…

The development of the earliest telescopes is the source of some debate among historians, as numerous individuals claimed to be the inventors of the telescope. The Low Countries and Italy both emerge as potential locations for its invention, and…

This tapestry was the first work from Florence of a new tapestry workshop founded by Duke Cosimo de’Medici in the 1540s. Around two meters tall, it was likely used as a door hanger, and a later inventory lists it as a “dovizia with a landscape,”…

Perhaps the most famous figure of the Scientific Revolution is the Italian mathematician Galileo Galilei, known for his contributions to the fields of astronomy and physics. He famously quarreled with the Inquisition due to controversy over his…

In 1515, Albrecht Durer, a notable German painter of the Renaissance, produced a woodcut engraving of a rhinoceros that the Sultan of Gujarat gifted to Europe. It made its way to the King of Portugal and almost to Pope Leo X before a shipwreck caused…

An introduction to the collection "Politics and Power in the Holy Roman Empire"

Le Petit Trianon is a château on the Palace of Versailles grounds. Its construction started in 1758 under the order of Louis XV and was completed in 1768 by Ange-Jacques Gabriel, one of Louis XV's favorite architects during the time period. Gabriel's…

This painting depicts a group of people listening to a reading of Voltaire’s L’Orphelin de la Chine, a play published in 1755. This gathering is a meeting of a salon, a private group of individuals who would meet to read and discuss various works.…

The War of Austrian Succession established the dualism of Prussia and Austria which would characterize the empire until its collapse in 1806. At the end of the 30 years war in 1648 very few Germans likely would have been able to predict Prussia’s…

Enlightenment ideals were not, on the surface at least, confined to just the leading intellectuals of the time. European monarchs began attaching themselves to Enlightenment principles and thinkers. For instance, the French philosopher Voltaire…

Aphra Behn was an English writer whose work Oronooko addressed the slave trade. She wrote about a slave rebellion in Surinam, drawing upon her own experiences there along with her knowledge of the slave trade (Wiesner-Hanks, 390). The slave trade,…