David Onnekink and Gijs Rommelse have produced an excellent introduction to Dutch history which builds on their earlier collaborative work Ideology and Foreign Policy in Early Modern Europe (2016). The present book, unsurprisingly, develops their contribution to what has been described as ‘new diplomatic history’, which seeks to place international relations and diplomacy in a broader social and cultural context than hitherto. The authors’ intention is not to provide a complete overview of Dutch history from 1572 …

As Europe moved from a 'preindustrial' and predominantly rural stage towards an urban-industrial society, improvements in agricultural productivity and more intensive patterns of land use produced upward pressures on rent. However the slow emergence of market relations and the persistence of ancient tenures underlay wide regional and local variations. In fact surprisingly little is known about rent movements over long periods of time, and even less about the growing divergence between rural and urban rents in the …