The Rise of the Dutch Republic — Volume 05: 1559-60

Motley, John Lothrop, 1814-1877Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.2
Word count
82K words
Chapters
9

Tags

English Originals World History Historical ReappraisalSocial ObservationRise and FallPower GameAcademic Study

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Rise of the Dutch Republic — Volume 05: 1559-60 by John Lothrop MotleyAuthor: Motley, John Lothrop, 1814-1877,Language: English, Class: DH: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, Release Date: Jan 1, 2004

Editor's review

This is Volume 5 of The Rise of the Dutch Republic, covering 1559–1560. Immediately following the previous volume, it deals with the changes in the political situation after Philip II's departure from the Netherlands and the tensions provoked by religious policy. Motley continues his dramatic narrative, presenting with clear layers the struggle among court politics, local privileges, and Reformation forces, with particular attention to how friction in policy implementation accumulated into later conflict. As one of the representative works of nineteenth-century English-language historiography, its strength lies in readability and overall historical vision rather than updated empirical detail. For readers, this volume is relatively concentrated in scope and well suited to observing the临界 state on the eve of the Dutch Revolt. The Project Gutenberg edition allows full-text searching and is suitable as a text for training in reading English historical sources. It is best read together with Volume 4 and supplemented with background on the religious distribution and urban self-government of the Netherlands so as to identify the author's stance and omissions.

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Reading tips

  1. Read together with Volume 4 and organize events and relationships along the 1555–1560 timeline.
  2. Mark the author's judgments on religious policy and local privileges, distinguishing factual statements from evaluative language.
  3. Use maps of Netherlandish cities and religious distribution to understand differing local responses to policy.
  4. After finishing, write a one-page summary of the volume's core conflicts and the author's stance for comparison with later volumes.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9

FAQ

Does this volume overlap with Volume 4? The two volumes cover adjacent but non-overlapping periods: Volume 4 is 1555–1559, and this volume is 1559–1560. This volume continues the situation at the end of Volume 4, focusing on policy implementation and religious tension after Philip II's departure; reading them in order is recommended.
Is this book difficult for readers with only average English? Motley's English is nineteenth-century narrative prose, with long sentences and much rhetoric, which poses some difficulty for non-native readers. It is advisable to read an introduction or relevant chapters of a general history first to establish background, then proceed chapter by chapter, using the electronic edition's search function to look up figures and places.
Is this book suitable for citation in a paper? It can be cited as an example of nineteenth-century historiographical narrative, but it is not suitable as the sole source for contemporary historical fact. When citing, state the author's era and stance and check specific events and dates against modern scholarship, avoiding treating the author's judgments as neutral fact.

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About the author

Motley, John Lothrop, 1814-1877 Author

John Lothrop Motley (1814–1877) was an American historian and diplomat, known for his historical works on Dutch independence and the Dutch Revolt. His major work, The Rise of the Dutch Republic, narrates in detail how the Dutch provinces threw off Spanish rule and established a republican government, combining rigorous scholarship with a strong narrative drive. His History of the United Netherlands continues the account of political and military developments from the death of William the Silent to the end of the sixteenth century. The collection here contains 103 of his works, mostly different volumes and editions of these general histories. Public information is limited, so biographical details are omitted; his works show a respect for primary sources and a talent for portraying major historical turning points, and they have had a lasting influence on the study of Dutch history in the English-speaking world.