Can the ancestry of freemasonry really be traced back to the Knights Templar? Is the image of the eye in a triangle on the back of the dollar bill one of its cryptic signs? Is there a conspiracy that stretches through centuries and generations to align this shadow organization and its secret rituals to world governments and religions? Myths persist and abound about the freemasons, Margaret C. Jacob notes. But what are their origins? How has an early modern organization of bricklayers and stonemasons aroused so much public interest? In The Origins of Freemasonry, Jacob throws back the veil from a secret society that turns out not to have been very secret at all. What factors contributed to the extraordinarily rapid spread of freemasonry over the course of the eighteenth century, and why were so many of the era's most influential figures drawn to it? Using material from the archives of leading masonic libraries in Europe, Jacob examines masonic almanacs and pocket diaries to get closer to what living as a freemason might have meant on a daily basis. She explores the persistent connections between masons and nascent democratic movements, as each lodge set up a polity where an individual's standing was meant to be based on merit, rather than on birth or wealth, and she demonstrates, beyond any doubt, how active a role women played in the masonic movement.
This book offers a social history of Newtonian natural philosophy from its inception after the 1688 revolution in England until the 1720's. Ms. Jacob shows that the Newtonian world view was adopted by the Anglican church to support its own version of liberal Protestantism and its vision of a social and economic order that would be both Christian and capitalist. It was with Newton's consent, she asserts, that Newtonianism took on an ideological significance in the early Enlightenment. Using an interdisciplinary approach to subjects traditionally reserved for the history of science, church history, and intellectual history, she formulates a convincing new explanation for the triumph of Newtonianism.
Long recognized as more than the writings of a dozen or so philosophes, the Enlightenment created a new secular culture populated by the literate and the affluent. Enamoured of British institutions, Continental Europeans turned to the imported masonic lodges and found in them a new forum that was constitutionally constructed and logically egalitarian. Originating in the Middle Ages, when stone-masons joined together to preserve their professional secrets and to protect their wages, the English and Scottish lodges had by the eighteenth century discarded their guild origins and become an international phenomenon that gave men and eventually some women a place to vote, speak, discuss and debate. Margaret Jacob argues that the hundreds of masonic lodges founded in eighteenth-century Europe were among the most important enclaves in which modern civil society was formed. In France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Britain men and women freemasons sought to create a moral and social order based upon reason and virtue, and dedicated to the principles of liberty and equality. A forum where philosophers met with men of commerce, government, and the professions, the masonic lodge created new forms of self-government in microcosm, complete with constitutions and laws, elections, and representatives. This is the first comprehensive history of Enlightenment freemasonry, from the roots of the society's political philosophy and evolution in seventeenth-century England and Scotland to the French Revolution. Based on never-before-used archival sources, it will appeal to anyone interested in the birth of modernity in Europe or in the cultural milieu of the European Enlightenment.
In an unusually diverse collection, Margaret Jacob presents the eighteenth-century movement known as the Enlightenment that forever changed the political, religious, and educational landscape of the day. Selections by some of the period's most important thinkers include pieces by Locke, Rousseau, Mary Wortley Montagu, and Denis Diderot. New additions to the document collection include excerpts from Peter Bayle's Historical and Critical Dictionary as well as The Indiscreet Jewels, Diderot's novel set in the Congo but clearly aimed at the French court. Jacob covers the movement's lengthy evolution in a comprehensive introduction, which establishes the issues central to understanding the documents and provides important background on the political and social debates of the period. All documents are preceded by headnotes, and the volume includes a chronology, map, illustrations, and an updated bibliography and index. A list of Questions for Consideration has also been added for this edition.
Seeking to understand the cultural origins of the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth century, this text first looks at the scientific culture of the seventeenth century, focusing not only on England but following through with a study of the history of science and technology in France, the Netherlands, and Germany. Comparative in structure, this text explains why England was so much more successful at this transition than its continental counterparts. It also integrates science with worldly concerns, focusing mainly on the entrepreneurs and engineers who possessed scientific insight and who were eager to profit from its advantages, demonstrating that during the mid-seventeenth century, British science was presented within an ideological framework that encouraged material prosperity.
A fascinating historiographical essay. . . . An unusually lucid and inclusive explication of what it ultimately at stake in the culture wars over the nature, goals, and efficacy of history as a discipline."--Booklist
Provides a panoramic account of the radical ways that life began to change for ordinary people in the age of Locke, Voltaire, and Rousseau. In this book, familiar Enlightenment figures share places with voices that have remained largely unheard until now, from freethinkers and freemasons to French materialists, anticlerical Catholics, pantheists, pornographers, readers, and travelers. Jacob reveals how this newly secular outlook was not a wholesale rejection of Christianity but rather a new mental space in which to encounter the world on its own terms. She takes readers from London and Amsterdam to Berlin, Vienna, Turin, and Naples, drawing on rare archival materials to show how ideas central to the emergence of secular democracy touched all facets of daily life. Jacob demonstrates how secular values and pursuits took hold of eighteenth-century Europe, spilled into the American colonies, and left their lasting imprint on the Western world for generations to come. --Adapted from publisher description.
Jacob (history, New School for Social Research) proposes that the science of the 17th and 18th centuries was eventually accepted because it was made compatible with larger political and economic interests. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.
The mingling of aristocrats and commoners in a southern French city, the jostling of foreigners in stock markets across northern and western Europe, the club gatherings in Paris and London of genteel naturalists busily distilling plants or making air pumps, the ritual fraternizing of "brothers" in privacy and even secrecy—Margaret Jacob invokes all these examples in Strangers Nowhere in the World to provide glimpses of the cosmopolitan ethos that gradually emerged over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Jacob investigates what it was to be cosmopolitan in Europe during the early modern period. Then—as now—being cosmopolitan meant the ability to experience people of different nations, creeds, and colors with pleasure, curiosity, and interest. Yet such a definition did not come about automatically, nor could it always be practiced easily by those who embraced its principles. Cosmopolites had to strike a delicate balance between the transgressive and the subversive, the radical and the dangerous, the open-minded and the libertine. Jacob traces the history of this precarious balancing act to illustrate how ideals about cosmopolitanism were eventually transformed into lived experiences and practices. From the representatives of the Inquisition who found the mixing of Catholics and Protestants and other types of "border crossing" disruptive to their authority, to the struggles within urbane masonic lodges to open membership to Jews, Jacob also charts the moments when the cosmopolitan impulse faltered. Jacob pays particular attention to the impact of science and merchant life on the emergence of the cosmopolitan ideal. In the decades after 1650, modern scientific practices coalesced and science became an open enterprise. Experiments were witnessed in social settings of natural inquiry, congenial for the inculcation of cosmopolitan mores. Similarly, the public venues of the stock exchanges brought strangers and foreigners together in ways encouraging them to be cosmopolites. The amount of international and global commerce increased greatly after 1700, and luxury tastes developed that valorized foreign patterns and designs. Drawing upon sources as various as Inquisition records and spy reports, minutes of scientific societies and the writings of political revolutionaries, Strangers Nowhere in the World reveals a moment in European history when an ideal of cultural openness came to seem strong enough to counter centuries of chauvinism and xenophobia. Perhaps at no time since, Jacob cautions, has that cosmopolitan ideal seemed more fragile and elusive than it is today.
This revised edition of The Scientific Revolution highlights the difficulty of engaging, discarding, or assimilating religious paradigms in the course of scientific development. Jacob's introduction outlines the trajectory of the Scientific Revolution and argues that the revival of ancient texts in the Renaissance and the upheaval of the Protestant Reformation paved the way for science. The collected documents include writings of well-known scientists and philosophers, such as Nicolaus Copernicus, Francis Bacon, Galileo Galilei, René Descartes, and Isaac Newton, as well as primary sources documenting discoveries in medicine, innovations in engineering, and advances in scientific investigation. New to this edition are the writings of John Toland and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who both attempt to redefine the role of God in an age of science, and an excerpt from Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems that provides context to the popular understanding of Galileo's conflict with the Catholic Church. Document headnotes, questions for consideration, a chronology, and a selected bibliography support students' study of the Scientific Revolution.
Ever since the Industrial Revolution debate has raged about the sources of the new, sustained western prosperity. Margaret Jacob here argues persuasively for the critical importance of knowledge in Europe's economic transformation during the period from 1750 to 1850, first in Britain and then in selected parts of northern and western Europe. This is a new history of economic development in which minds, books, lectures and education become central. She shows how, armed with knowledge and know-how and inspired by the desire to get rich, entrepreneurs emerged within an industrial culture wedded to scientific knowledge and technology. She charts how, across a series of industries and nations, innovative engineers and entrepreneurs sought to make sense and a profit out of the world around them. Skilled hands matched minds steeped in the knowledge systems new to the eighteenth century to transform the economic destiny of western Europe.
Margaret Jacob and Larry Stewart examine the profound transformation that began in 1687. From the year when Newton published his Principia to the Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851, science gradually became central to Western thought and economic development. The book aims at a general audience and examines how, despite powerful opposition on the Continent, a Newtonian understanding gained acceptance and practical application. By the mid-eighteenth century the new science had achieved ascendancy, and the race was on to apply Newtonian mechanics to industry and manufacturing. They end the story with the temple to scientific and technological progress that was the Crystal Palace exhibition. Choosing their examples carefully, Jacob and Stewart show that there was nothing preordained or inevitable about the centrality awarded to science. "It is easy to forget that science might have been stillborn, or remained the esoteric knowledge of court elites. Instead, for better and for worse, science became a centerpiece of Western culture.
Two French Protestant refugees in eighteenth-century Amsterdam gave the world an extraordinary work that intrigued and outraged readers across Europe. In this captivating account, Lynn Hunt, Margaret Jacob, and Wijnand Mijnhardt take us to the vibrant Dutch Republic and its flourishing book trade to explore the work that sowed the radical idea that religions could be considered on equal terms. Famed engraver Bernard Picart and author and publisher Jean Frederic Bernard produced The Religious Ceremonies and Customs of All the Peoples of the World, which appeared in the first of seven folio volumes in 1723. They put religion in comparative perspective, offering images and analysis of Jews, Catholics, Muslims, the peoples of the Orient and the Americas, Protestants, deists, freemasons, and assorted sects. Despite condemnation by the Catholic Church, the work was a resounding success. For the next century it was copied or adapted, but without the context of its original radicalism and its debt to clandestine literature, English deists, and the philosophy of Spinoza. Ceremonies and Customs prepared the ground for religious toleration amid seemingly unending religious conflict, and demonstrated the impact of the global on Western consciousness. In this beautifully illustrated book, Hunt, Jacob, and Mijnhardt cast new light on the profound insight found in one book as it shaped the development of a modern, secular understanding of religion.
“A highly ambitious and provocative survey of the cultural history of science and industry” from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries (Journal of Modern History). In 1687, the publication of Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica sparked a profound transformation in the world. From that event in the late-seventeenth century to the Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851, science gradually moved to the center Western thought and economic development. In Practical Matter, Margaret Jacob and Larry Stewart chronicle this dramatic, epochal shift. Despite powerful opposition on the Continent, a Newtonian understanding gained broad-based acceptance and practical application. By the mid-eighteenth century, the race was on to apply Newtonian mechanics to industry and manufacturing. The ascendancy of the new science culminated in the creating of the Crystal Palace Exhibition, London’s temple to scientific and technological progress. With fascinating insight into the changing culture of industry and higher learning, Jacob and Stewart show that there was nothing inevitable about the Scientific Revolution. “It is easy to forget that science might have been stillborn, or remained the esoteric knowledge of court elites. Instead, for better and for worse, science became a centerpiece of Western culture.”
This book chronicles those beginning events in Europe which gave Freemasons a proud heritage of freedom and fighting for it." --Jim Tresner, Ph.D., book review editor, "The Scottish Rite Journal.
This survey text presents the Western intellectual tradition within a chronology of political history. Known for its accessible writing style, Western Civilization appeals to students and instructors alike for its brevity, clarity, and careful selection of content. New technology resources, including Houghton Mifflin's Eduspace course management system, make learning more engaging and instruction more efficient.In the Eighth Edition, several new pedagogical features support students throughout the term. Chapter-opening focus questions direct students to important themes, while a glossary reinforces key terms and concepts. New icons in the text direct students to online resources such as maps, primary sources, and practice test questions. In addition, the new edition retains many popular features, including comparative timelines, full-color maps with physical geography essays, and primary source excerpts.
The setting is the Midwest of the United States during World War II and deals with the problems and joys of basically four rural families. A heart wrenching story of four families and the devastation they face as their boys are killed or wounded in battle. Their dedication to providing food and supplies for the troops and the nation. Their tolerance of shortages and rationing and then finding substitutes for them. Their indomitable patriotism. All come alive in this book.
A collection of essays by leading historians of early modern Europe and the U.S., this books explores how merchants, entrepreneurs, and other early modern capitalists viewed themselves.
“This useful work will appeal to a wide audience, from military buffs to historically minded tourists (and their guides), to students and scholars.” —Choice Greece was the scene of some of the most evocative and decisive battles in the ancient world. This volume brings together the ancient evidence and modern scholarship on twenty battlefields throughout Greece. It is a handy resource for visitors of every level of experience, from the member of a guided tour to the veteran military historian. The introductory chapter outlines some of the most pressing and interesting issues in the study of Ancient Greek battles and battlefields and offers a crash course on ancient warfare. Twenty lively chapters explore battlefields selected for both their historical importance and their inspiring sites. In addition to accessible overviews of each battle, this book provides all the information needed for an intellectually and aesthetically rewarding visit, including transport and travel details, museum overviews, and further reading.
[This book] examines the Western tradition - those unique patterns of thought and systems of values that constitute the Western heritage. While focusing on key ideas and broad themes, the text also provides a balanced treatment of economic, political, and social history for students in Western civilization courses. The text is written with the conviction that history is not a meaningless tale. Without a knowledge of history, men and women cannot fully know themselves, for all human beings have been shaped by institutions and values inherited from the past. -Pref.
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