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History - Early Modern (c. 1450-1750) — page 4
190 public-domain history - early modern (c. 1450-1750) books, summarised. Page 4 of 4.
The freedom of the seas
Hugo Grotius
The open sea belongs to all humanity, and no nation can rightfully claim ownership of the vast, untamable waters of the globe. This foundational argument reshaped the way the world understands international law and oceanic trade.
The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea: Being The Narrative of Portuguese and Spanish Discoveries in the Australasian Regions, between the Years 1492-1606, with Descriptions of their Old Charts
George Collingridge
European mariners spent over a century mapping the Southern Ocean, unknowingly encircling Australia while chasing trade routes and sacred gold.
The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation
Richard Hakluyt
Determined sailors, ruthless merchants, and royal envoys push beyond the horizon into frozen, uncharted realms, carving out lucrative trade networks through sheer resilience and cold-blooded diplomacy.
The Confutatio Pontificia
Unknown
A stern imperial response lays down the doctrinal boundary lines between Catholic tradition and Protestant reform in the high-stakes arena of sixteenth-century Europe.
Of Ghostes and Spirites, Walking by Night: And of Straunge Noyses, Crackes, and Sundrie Forewarnings, Which Commonly Happen Before the Death of Men: Great Slaughters, and Alterations of Kingdoms
Ludwig Lavater
Whether spirits are spectral remnants of the dead or merely deceptions of the senses, they demand not our fear, but our vigilance against superstition. This inquiry serves as a reasoned defense of the rational mind against the creeping shadows of supernatural dread.
Mystics of the Renaissance and their relation to modern thought, including Meister Eckhart, Tauler, Paracelsus, Jacob Boehme, Giordano Bruno, and others
Rudolf Steiner
Human consciousness is not a byproduct of biology but a gateway to a universal reality; through self-knowledge, the individual can transcend the division between the inner self and the external world.
History of the Kingdom of Siam and of the revolutions that have caused the overthrow of the empire, up to A.D. 1770
F. H. (François Henri) Turpin
The rise and fall of the Ayutthaya Kingdom is chronicled through the lens of a tumultuous eighteenth-century perspective. This narrative captures the dramatic collapse of a once-great empire under the weight of internal betrayals and external Burmese invasion.
Mr. Ray's travels, Vol. 2
John Ray
A botanist and his companions navigate the treacherous landscapes of the Ottoman East, seeking both the medicinal secrets of desert flora and a way home through a world of suspicion and shifting political tides.
A voyage to Guinea, Brasil and the West Indies
John Atkins
A Royal Navy surgeon takes to the sea in 1721, recording the currents, coastlines, and human cruelties of the transatlantic trade with an uncommonly sharp and questioning eye.
Spanish Prisons: The Inquisition at Home and Abroad, Prisons Past and Present
Arthur Griffiths
Shadows stretch from medieval dungeons to modern penal colonies, tracking how state power enforces obedience through fear.
Travels to Tana and Persia
Giosofat Barbaro
Venetian envoys brave trackless steppes and warring Eastern empires to forge fragile alliances against the Ottoman Turks.
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Catholic Churchmen in Science [First Series]: Sketches of the Lives of Catholic Ecclesiastics Who Were Among the Great Founders in Science
James J. (James Joseph) Walsh
HOOK This collection of biographical sketches challenges the popular assumption that religious faith and rigorous scientific inquiry are inherently at odds, highlighting the significant contributions of Catholic ecclesiastics to the foundation of modern science.
A Proposal for the Better Supplying of Churches in Our Foreign Plantations, and for Converting the Savage Americans to Christianity, By a College to Be Erected in the Summer Islands, Otherwise Called the Isles of Bermuda
George Berkeley
An ambitious plan for educational reform emerges from the heart of the British Empire, seeking to bridge the vast divide between colonial spiritual practice and the indigenous peoples of the American continent.
Grounds of Natural Philosophy: Divided into Thirteen Parts: The Second Edition, much altered from the First, which went under the Name of Philosophical and Physical Opinions
Newcastle, Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of
This expansive work of seventeenth-century natural philosophy functions as a private, meditative laboratory where the movements of the mind and the physical world are analyzed with startling, personal intensity.
Spanish and Portuguese South America during the Colonial Period
Robert Grant Watson
This historical chronicle maps the rise, collision, and transformation of colonial powers in South America. It serves as a meticulous, expansive record of how European ambition carved the continent’s modern foundations.
The ascendancy of France, 1598-1715
Henry Offley Wakeman
In seventeenth-century Europe, the ideal of a unified Christian commonwealth disintegrates into raw statecraft, where dynamic monarchs and calculating ministers treat whole provinces like counters on a diplomat's table.
The Old Yellow Book: Source of Robert Browning's The Ring and the Book
Unknown
A bloody seventeenth-century Roman murder trial steps off the dusty page as a tangle of self-serving testimonies, desperate legal briefs, and tragic human misery.
Travels into North America, Volume 2 (of 3)
Pehr Kalm
This mid-eighteenth-century travelogue offers a rare, ground-level survey of colonial American life, observing everything from the habits of local birds to the rugged, inventive survival of frontier homesteaders.
A Vindication of the Presbyteriall-Government and Ministry
Ministers and Elders of the London Provinciall Assembly
The Presbyterian ministry of London asserts that their form of church government is not a human invention, but a divine mandate essential for the purity and order of the Christian faith.
A narrative of travels in northern Africa in the years 1818, 19, and 20
G. F. (George Francis) Lyon
A stark, meticulous record of a British mission’s desperate push into the heart of Northern Africa, this account captures the harrowing physical toll and cultural friction of early nineteenth-century desert exploration.
The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898
Unknown
This collection of historical documents offers a raw, unvarnished look at the mechanics of colonial administration in the early seventeenth-century Philippines. It captures the frantic daily reality of an empire struggling to maintain order across vast, unforgiving distances.
Euphorion - Vol. I: Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the Renaissance
Vernon Lee
A tragic mismatch between intellectual splendor and moral corruption defined the Italian Renaissance, yielding an art that was serene and a reality that was monstrous.
Narrative of a Voyage to the West Indies and Mexico in the Years 1599-1602
Samuel de Champlain
The world of the late sixteenth century unfolds through the eyes of a young, observant traveler mapping the riches and brutality of the Spanish-controlled Americas. This foundational account documents a shifting geopolitical landscape, capturing both the wonder of new lands and the stark realities of colonial conquest.
Knights of Malta, 1523-1798
Reuben Cohen
The Knights of Malta offers a sober, scholarly examination of the rise and fall of the Order of St. John, tracing its trajectory from a displaced monastic brotherhood to a sovereign Mediterranean power and, finally, to its ignominious dissolution.
The interpretation of dreams and moles, with other curious matters, relating to love and courtship
Anonymous
A glimpse into a past where the flight of a bird or the shape of a mole could dictate the course of a life, revealing the anxieties and hopes of an era.
A Journey Made in the Summer of 1794, through Holland and the Western Frontier of Germany, with a Return Down the Rhine, Vol. 2 (of 2): To Which Are Added Observations during a Tour to the Lakes of Lancashire, Westmoreland, and Cumberland
Ann Ward Radcliffe
A landscape painter's eye meets a novelist's sharp observer of human politics in this grand sweep across war-torn eighteenth-century Europe and England's quiet, dramatic northern mountains.
A Brief History of Printing. Part II: The Economic History of Printing
Frederick W. (Frederick William) Hamilton
This historical survey examines the economic evolution of the printing industry from 1450 to 1789, detailing the struggle between institutional control, emerging markets, and the labor force.
A Very Pleasaunt & Fruitful Diologe Called the Epicure
Desiderius Erasmus
True happiness is not found in fleeting worldly delights, but in the quiet, steady contentment of a mind aligned with the divine. This dialogue bridges the gap between ancient philosophy and Christian faith to redefine what it truly means to live well.
Libraries in the Medieval and Renaissance Periods: The Rede Lecture Delivered June 13, 1894
John Willis Clark
The physical evolution of the library, from the humble, chain-bound lecterns of monastic cloisters to the grand, wall-lined repositories of the Renaissance, reveals how humanity has long sought to preserve its most precious intellectual treasures.
Lille Before and During the War
Pneu Michelin (Firm)
This historical guidebook serves as a stark, on-the-ground record of a French city’s transformation from a cultural hub to a zone of occupation, bombardment, and systematic destruction during the First World War.
Il nipotismo di Roma, or, The History of the Popes Nephews: from the time of Sixtus IV. to the death of the last Pope, Alexander VII
Gregorio Leti
When a new Pope mounts the Roman throne, his family inherits the wealth of the Catholic world, turning spiritual authority into an engine of private fortune.
Travels in Turkey and back to England
Edmund Chishull
Ancient ruins, dusty high roads, and diplomatic pomp meet in a scholar's precise observation of the Levant and Western Europe.
Portuguese portraits
Aubrey F. G. (Aubrey Fitz Gerald) Bell
The annals of a seafaring nation are built from the bones of its explorers, a collection of lives defined by iron will, maritime mastery, and an unyielding devotion to the state. These biographies trace the trajectory of an empire rising from the foam of perilous seas.
A Journey in Russia in 1858
Robert Heywood
A Victorian traveler offers a sharp-eyed, candid account of his excursion to St. Petersburg and Moscow in 1858, capturing a Russia caught between imperial grandeur and the looming shadow of social change.
Malplaquet
Hilaire Belloc
The Battle of Malplaquet stands as a grim lesson in how a tactical victory can serve as a strategic failure. This account dissects the bloody 1709 clash, revealing why the cost of winning often outweighs the prize.
The reformation in Poland
Paul Fox
A shift in religious thought and political power swept sixteenth-century Europe, but its course in Poland followed a unique path shaped by social and economic realities.
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 19, No. 532, February 4, 1832
Various
An eclectic weekly miscellany from early nineteenth-century London offers readers a vibrant, fast-moving cross-section of popular culture, theatrical gossip, historical lore, literary commentary, and practical scientific curiosity.
Notes and Queries, Number 31, June 1, 1850
Various
This collection of mid-nineteenth-century correspondence serves as a vibrant, communal archive, bridging the gap between scholarly curiosity and the intimate, often superstitious, habits of the Victorian public.
History of the United Netherlands, 1588d
John Lothrop Motley
A sweeping chronicle of the Eighty Years' War, this narrative captures the existential clash between the nascent Dutch Republic and the overwhelming might of the Spanish Empire.
Sir Francis Drake: His Voyage, 1595: Together with the Spanish account of Drake's attack on Puerto Rico
Maynarde, Thomas, active 1595
A English fleet sails west in search of Spanish treasure, only to end in total collapse and the deaths of its celebrated leaders.
The Reign of the Manuscript
Perry Wayland Sinks
Before modern presses democratized reading, written culture survived through centuries of painstaking hand-labor, shifting physical substrates, and isolated institutions that protected fragile manuscripts from total loss.
The Academy Keeper: Or Variety of useful Directions Concerning the Management of an Academy, The Terms, Diet, Lodging, Recreation, Discipline, and Instruction of Young Gentlemen. With the Proper Methods of addressing Parents and Guardians of all Ranks and Conditions
Anonymous
Prosperity in the schoolroom requires more cunning than curriculum, as a seasoned headmaster reveals the secrets to turning a failing academy into a lucrative enterprise.
Elizabethan Drama and Its Mad Folk: The Harness Prize Essay for 1913
E. Allison (Edgar Allison) Peers
Elizabethan drama often treated mental instability as a theatrical commodity. This critical study examines how playwrights from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries depicted madness, moving from superficial comic spectacle to complex psychological portraiture.
A Briefe Introduction to Geography
William Pemble
The Earth stands as a stationary, spherical center of the universe, a physical reality defined by immutable mathematical laws. This technical manual provides a foundational understanding of the globe’s structure and the methods used to measure it.
Travels into Turkey: Containing the most accurate account of the Turks, and neighbouring nations, their manners, customs, religion, superstition, policy, riches, coins, &c
Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq
A Renaissance ambassador enters the Ottoman Empire at the height of its power, recording the court of Solyman the Great with an eye for administrative merit, political violence, and daily life.
The suppressed Gospels and Epistles of the original New Testament of Jesus the Christ, Volume 4, Nicodemus
William Wake
A dramatic ancient retelling of the trial, execution, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, this apocryphal text expands the biblical narrative with vivid courtroom dialogue, eyewitness testimonies, and a sensational descent into the underworld.