This study of Cardinal Richelieu's career as chief minister to Louis XIII of France presents the original research of eight experts in the field. Linking their work is the belief that Richelieu's ministry was a significant moment in the history of early modern France. The authors reject the traditional picture of Richelieu as the single-handed creator of the French absolute state and the original exponent of Realpolitik. Instead they paint a collective portrait of a statesman politically astute but none the less devout. The Richelieu who emerges is in many respects a conservative figure, but...

Volume XI of History of Universities contains the customary mix of learned articles, book reviews, conference reports, and bibliographical information which makes this annual publication such an indispensable tool for the historian of higher education. It carries a wide range of contributions which cover the early history of Europe's universities as well as their later development. Among the articles are studies of medieval Paris, sixteenth-century Wittenberg, early nineteenth-century Padua and the twentieth-century Hebrew University of Jerusalem. History of Universities is a lively...

As in the previous volumes, volume IX of the History of Universities contains a mix of learned articles, book reviews, conference reports, and bibliographical information, which makes this annual publication such an indispensable tool for the historian of higher education. The present volume carries a wide range of articles which cover the early history of Europe's universities, as well as their later development. The authors and contributors are drawn from all parts of the western world, giving the journal a decidedly international flavor.

Calvet's Web is a study of the correspondence network of an Avignon physician in the period 1750-1810. Esprit Calvet was an antiquarian, natural historian, and bibliophile, and was at the centre of a circle of like-minded intellectuals from various backgrounds, chiefly based in the Rhone valley. Laurence Brockliss explores for the first time an important contribution to our understanding of the social construction of knowledge, and offers a new picture of the relationship between the Republic of Letters and the Enlightenment.

Providing the first ever statistical study of a professional cohort in the era of the industrial revolution, this prosopographical study of some 450 surgeons who joined the army medical service during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, charts the background, education, military and civilian career, marriage, sons' occupations, wealth at death, and broader social and cultural interests of the members of the cohort. It reveals the role that could be played by the nascent professions in this period in promoting rapid social mobility. The group of medical practitioners selected for this...

Despite the significant role played by the health and fitness of the British crews in Nelson's defeat of the Combined Fleet in 1805, little has been written hitherto about the naval surgeon in the era of the long war against France. This book is intended to fill the gap. Sir William Beatty (1773-1842) was surgeon of the Victory at Trafalgar. An Ulsterman from Londonderry, he had joined the navy in 1791. Before being warranted to Nelson's flagship, Beatty had served upon ten other warships, and survived a yellow fever epidemic, court martial, and shipwreck to share in the capture of a Spanish...

In the lead-up to the bicentenary of Trafalgar a number of important new studies have been published about the life of Nelson and his defeat of the Combined Fleet in 1805. Despite the significant role played by the health and fitness of the British crews in securing the victory, little has been written hitherto about the naval surgeon in the era of the long war against France. This book is intended to fill the gap. Sir William Beatty (1773-1842) was surgeon of the Victory at Trafalgar. An Ulsterman from Londonderry, he had joined the navy in 1791. Before being warranted to Nelson's flagship,...

Isaiah Berlin (1909-97) was recognized as Britain's most distinguished historian of ideas. Many of his essays discussed thinkers of what this book calls the 'long Enlightenment' (from Vico in the eighteenth century to Marx and Mill in the nineteenth, with Machiavelli as a precursor). Yet he is particularly associated with the concept of the 'Counter-Enlightenment', comprising those thinkers (Herder, Hamann, and even Kant) who in Berlin's view reacted against the Enlightenment's naive rationalism, scientism and progressivism, its assumption that human beings were basically homogeneous and...