historical and political thought in the seventeenth - RePub - Erasmus ...

This book offers the fi rst comprehensive study of the historical and political
thought of the Dutch scholar Marcus Zuerius Boxhorn (1612-1653). It
shows that Boxhorn, who was one of the most prolifi c scholars of his age
and whose works were translated into Dutch, French and English, and
published in England and the Holy Roman Empire, can best be regarded as
an important transitional fi gure between the age of late humanism and the
age of the Early Enlightenment. Thanks to a careful analysis that takes into
account both long-term intellectual developments within early modern
Europe and the Dutch Republic and local events, Boxhorn’s historical and
political ideas appear to have common ground with both the Aristotelianhumanist
tradition in which he was brought up and with the modern ideas
of famous philosophers like Thomas Hobbes and Samuel Pufendorf. The
book’s broad approach and the different subjects it discusses – history,
politics, philosophy, economics, linguistics – make this book an interesting
case study in early modern historical and political thought.
Cover illustration: detail from the copperplate of Marcus Zuerius Boxhorn
by Jonas Suyderhoef (engraver) and Pieter Dubordieu (illustrator), c.1640.
VU University Library Amsterdam, PORTRET 1 BOX 001.