Guide to the Study of Early Modern European History For Students ...

Oberman and James Tracy (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994-95). This is a comprehensive collection
of scholarly essays by recognized authorities in their respective fields. It is now more than
fifteen years old, but it is still remarkably up-to-date. It is systematically subdivided according
to subject matter, time, and geography. Each essay is accompanied by succinct
bibliographies. As always, there are some significant omissions, not to mention that these
volumes reflect the interests of their editors in the history of the Reformation quite directly.
But the high quality of the essays and the bibliographies more than make up for the
deficiencies. The piece by Jan de Vries on early modern European population, for example,
is one of the best short introductions to historical demography I know, and the essays by
Philip Benedict on the French Reformation and Robert Kingdon on International Calvinism
are superb. At the moment, this is probably the best available summary of current
scholarship on early modern Europe in English.
There are many other handbooks that follow the same basic model: essays by experts
in their respective specialized fields, compiled by an editor in order to give reliable and
comprehensive information about the field as a whole (see section 5.7.5 below). John Jeffries
Martin, ed., The Renaissance World (New York - London: Routledge, 2007) and Andrew
Pettegree, ed., The Reformation World (London - New York: Routledge, 2002) are good recent
examples. The same is true of the "companions" to the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the
Reformation, and various aspects of medieval and early modern history that have recently
been published by Cambridge and Blackwell.
The disadvantage of such volumes is always the same: they don't offer a coherent
narrative. Individual essays may be outstanding. But reading the whole volume cover-tocover
can be painful. Since the essays are written by different scholars with different or even
contradictory views, you will find yourself jerked around each time you start reading a new
one. Merely recognizing the differences between individual authors is a complicated task in
its own right. Such books are therefore not good for someone trying to make their first
approach to the field as a whole. But they are very good for those who want to fill in the
gaps in a body of knowledge that is already well developed. That is how I would advise you
to use them. If you have already read Koenigsberger's Europe in the Sixteenth Century and
already have some sense of the factors that may explain the growth in early modern
population, but would like to know more, de Vries' essay on population in the Handbook of
European History, 1400-1600: Late Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation edited by Brady,
Oberman, and Tracy is perfect for you. But I wouldn't read it first.
Finally there are standard multi-volume handbooks of European history like the
Cambridge Modern History, the New Cambridge Modern History (in which the Reformation volume
is one of the few that have been published in thoroughly revised editions) and the later
volumes of the Cambridge Medieval History and the New Cambridge Medieval History. These are
not for the faint of heart. Their advantage is that they are massive, detailed, and aim at the
most authoritative and comprehensive presentation of historical knowledge possible, often
with comprehensive bibliographical references to both primary and secondary literature. In
that regard they are generally better than the more recent collections of essays. Their
disadvantage is that they are dated and that attempts to replace them with more current
versions cannot always be called successful. That makes them perfect foils for anyone
wishing to ascertain deeply entrenched views of the past. But it also makes them hard
reading.
I might add, for those who read foreign languages, that there are similar handbooks
of European history in German, Italian, French, and other European languages.
Reading a general history written by a German, French, or Italian historian is highly
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