Abstract This article explores the production of written culture in a remote region of Iberian colonial domains: the Jesuit-Guaraní missions in Paraguay in the eighteenth century. Through an examination of manuscripts, printed books, and chronicles produced in the missions, it seeks to shift the focus of early modern literacy studies by emphasizing the autonomy of written culture and the agency of Indigenous elites. We argue that written production in missionary borderlands was not merely a top-down imposition of European traditions and technologies in the periphery, but rather a form of Indigenous strategic appropriation oriented toward the development of sui generis forms of spirituality, cosmopolitan visions of Christianity, and political strategies with regional and global impact. Indigenous actors did not simply resist or subvert colonial tools: instead, they reconfigured them from within.
This article examines the emotional dimensions of the Bohemian Brethren's exile in 1548 and the organization of their refuge in the Duchy of Prussia. It places compas-sion at the center of the dialogue between Bohemian refugees seeking refuge and their host authorities. While the refugees employed this feeling in narratives aimed at eliciting protection, Prussian authorities framed it within their discourse of Christian duty to aid suffering neighbors. By linking the history of emotions with the history of migration, the article challenges narratives locating humanitarian discourse in the Enlightenment, demonstrating its presence in sixteenth-century Central-Eastern Europe. However, it argues that assistance for Bohemian refugees in Ducal Prussia was neither altruistic nor grounded in concerns about universal human rights. Instead, it was embedded in confessional rivalry and shaped by pragmatic motives. Moving beyond the discursive framework, the article shows how compassion also became a means of regulating newcomers' worship practices, enforcing their conformity to Lutheran doctrine, and ultimately controlling their place within Prussian society.
Abstract This article investigates Dutch elements of English state financing under the early Stuart kings. It reveals Anglo-Dutch financial connections that contributed not only to the growth of the English state, but also to the political and charitable development of the Thirty Years’ War in Europe. The article argues that King Charles I of England changed diplomatic alliances in the 1630s in large part because of his dependence on financiers with connections to the Dutch Republic. Englishmen who lent money to Charles I in this period obtained significant funding from Dutch merchants. It was Dutch money that helped Charles build his state and allowed him to continue to rule without the English parliament throughout the 1630s. The origins of the system of Anglo-Dutch financing of the Stuart family exemplifies how early modern rulers relied on the distribution of privileges to access loans. The article shows the importance of such cross-border financial connections to early modern state-building.
The earliest sustained use of the concept of "early modernity" by academic historians anywhere in the world occurred in the first decades of the twentieth century in Japan. This was a time when China and Japan were still under significant Western imperial pressure and Japan was engaging in its own imperial adventures in China and Korea. Early modernity was conceived partly in reaction to how the contemporaneous academic periodization of Ancient-Medieval-Modern was used to justify imperialism. Inserting a new period between the medieval and modern challenged European and Japanese historical narratives, which claimed that modern nation-state sovereignty was an outcome of medieval development. Early modernity instead introduced a new, alternative trajectory towards nationhood and sovereignty, one not dependent on a stage of feudal militarism. It expanded the possibilities of modernity into more culturally and historically pluralist terrains, offering a vision of modernity not necessarily bound to modern imperialism. This in turn created space for critical reflections on the nature of global modernity, reflections that continue to be seen in early modern history writing today.
