In Praise of Ordinary People: Early Modern Britain and the Dutch Republic

Front Matter....Pages i-ix
Introduction....Pages 1-16
Front Matter....Pages 17-17
The “Simple Burgher” of D. V. Coornhert (1522–1590): A Dutch Freethinker Opens the Door to a New Age....Pages 19-46
Common People as Individuals: Hobbes’s Normative Approach to the Ordinary Mind....Pages 47-63
News as a Path to Independence: Merchant Correspondence and the Exchange of News during the Dutch Revolt....Pages 65-92
Front Matter....Pages 93-93
“Ordinary” People and Philosophers in the Laboratories and Workshops of the Early Industrial Revolution....Pages 95-122
Accounting and Accountability in Dutch Civic Life....Pages 123-138
Front Matter....Pages 139-139
The People in Politics: Early Modern England and the Dutch Republic Compared....Pages 141-161
The Populist Voice of the Early Enlightenment....Pages 163-180
“This Fleshlike Isle”: The Voluptuous Body of the People in Dutch Pamphlets, Novels, and Plays, 1660–1730....Pages 181-202
Ordinary People in the New World: The City of Amsterdam, Colonial Policy, and Initiatives from Below, 1656–1664....Pages 203-235
Front Matter....Pages 237-237
Depression and Evangelicalism in the Family of Esther Tuke....Pages 239-256
Self-Discipline and the Struggle for the Middle in Eighteenth-Century Britain....Pages 257-273
Back Matter....Pages 275-290