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SUMMARY:Age of iron\, age of gold: the Thirty Years War\, the German refor
 med diaspora\, and the golden age of the Dutch universities - Howard Hotso
 n (University of Oxford)
DTSTART:20141120T163000Z
DTEND:20141120T180000Z
UID:TALK54695@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Richard Staley
DESCRIPTION:The 17th century is characterised by two enormous ruptures. On
 e is military: the overlapping series of protracted wars which range from 
 the Baltic via central Europe and the Low Countries to the British Isles. 
 The other is intellectual: the interconnected movements once confidently k
 nown as the scientific revolution and the birth of modern philosophy. Alth
 ough each has attracted a vast historical literature\, these two phenomena
  – one brutally concrete\, the other seemingly disembodied – appear at
  first sight incommensurable\, attract very different kinds of historians\
 , and are rarely studied together. One point at which these two parallel h
 istoriographies intersect\, however\, is the university\, an enduring inst
 itution which grounds the history of ideas firmly in time and space. This 
 paper argues that the most celebrated chapter in the 17th-century history 
 of European universities is unintelligible without reference to the endemi
 c warfare of the period. Sketching the evidence in support of this stateme
 nt serves to broach a larger thesis about the relationship between the mil
 itary and intellectual histories of the 17th century\, and to prompt some 
 methodological reflections on the value of geography to intellectual histo
 rians.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 2\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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