1688 : a global history

Description

John E. Wills's masterful history ushers us into the worlds of 1688, from the suicidal exaltation of Russian Old Believers to the ravishing voice of the haiku poet Basho. Witness the splendor of the Chinese imperial court as the Kangxi emperor publicly mourns the death of his grandmother and shrewdly consolidates his power. Join the great caravans of Muslims on their annual pilgrimage from Damascus and Cairo to Mecca. Walk the pungent streets of Amsterdam and enter the Rasp House, where vagrants, beggars, and petty criminals labored to produce powdered brazilwood for the dyeworks.Through these stories and many others, Wills paints a detailed picture of how the global connections of power, money, and belief were beginning to lend the world its modern form Content: pt. 1. A world of wooden ships -- [ch.] 1. The empire of silver -- [ch.] 2. Many Africas -- [ch.] 3. Slaves, ships, and frontiers -- [ch.] 4. Dampier and the aborigines -- pt. 2. The world of the great company -- [ch.] 5. The Cape of Good Hope -- [ch.] 6. The island world -- [ch.] 7. Phaulkon -- pt. 3. Three worlds apart : Russia, China, Japan -- [ch.] 8. Tsar Peter's Russia -- [ch.] 9. Survivors and visionaries -- [ch.] 10. At the court of Kangxi -- [ch.] 11. The Jesuits and China -- [ch.] 12. Kanazawa, Edo, Nagasaki -- [ch.] 13. Saikaku and Bashô -- pt. 4. Versailles, London, Amsterdam -- [ch.] 14. The Sun King and the ladies -- [ch.] 15. A family quarrel and a glorious revolution -- [ch.] 16. Echoes across the oceans -- [ch.] 17. A hundred years of freedom -- pt. 5. Worlds of words: styles and thought in Europe -- [ch.] 18. In the republic of letters -- [ch.] 19. Aphra Behn -- [ch.] 20. Newton, Locke, and Leibniz -- pt. 6. Islam and its others -- [ch.] 21. The worlds of the Great Sultan -- [ch.] 22. Mecca -- [ch.] 23. Hindus and Muslims -- [ch.] 24. Englishmen, Indians, and others -- pt. 7. Exile, hope, and family -- [ch.] 25. Next year in Jerusalem -- [ch.] 26. O well is thee.