In the Dutch Republic, charitable collectionswere regularly organized by both religious and secular authorities. This book examines the policies of church boards and town councils in organizing these charitable appeals, as well as the general population s giving behavior. Using archival sources from the towns of Delft, Utrecht, Zwolle, and s-Hertogenbosch, Danielle Teeuwen shows how these authorities deployed organizational and rhetorical tactics including creating awareness, establishing trust, and exerting pressure to successfully promote fundraising campaigns. Not only did many relief...

Claartje Rasterhoff shows how industrial organisations played a role in shaping patterns of growth and innovations in painting and publishing in the Dutch Republic.

This is the first book to offer a translation into English--as well as a critical study--of a Spanish treatise written in about 1650 by Rabbi Saul Levi Morteira, whose most renowned congregant was Baruch Spinoza. Aimed at encouraging the practice of halachic Judaism among the Amsterdam-based descendants of conversos, Spanish and Portuguese Sephardic Jews who had been forced to convert to Christianity, the book stages a dialogue between two conversos that ultimately leads to a vision of a Jewish homeland--an outcome that Morteira thought was only possible through his program for...