John Stoye – författare

What were the experiences of English travelers who toured Western Europe in the seventeenth century? What influence did Continental travel have on English society and politics? This delightful book by John Stoye allows us to accompany the seventeenth-century British traveler on his journeys into France, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands. It is a travel book for historians and a piece of history for travellers.Using a vast range of contemporary sources, Stoye describes the journeys of both famous figures and of more obscure travelers, relating common itineraries and the conditions of travel. He evokes the different types of travelers and their motives and interests—young men on the Grand Tour with their tutors in tow, diplomats, soldiers, religious refugees, and merchants. Stoye considers what the travellers brought home with them, from actual books and pictures to impressions of architecture and music to new ways of looking at the world. He traces through letters and diaries how travel affected the taste, education, and politics of the upper classes of society.This book, first published in 1952, is widely considered a classic. This new edition makes it available in paperback for the first time, with a new preface and illustrations, a fully revised text, and updated notes and bibliography.

Count Luigi Marsigli (1658-1730) was a nobleman, Habsburg general, emissary of popes, scientist, and patron of the arts and letters. His fascinating life and activities—recounted for the first time by the eminent historian John Stoye—illuminate the many worlds of European civilization during this important period.Born in Bologna, Marsigli traveled throughout Europe from Istanbul to London, but spent much of his time in the Balkan countries and the lands south of the Danube. Stoye follows the count as he moved through the Habsburg Empire, mapping the terrain, determining boundary lines, and participating in a train of events with a crucial impact on Bosnia and Croatia today. He shows how Marsigli pursued his varied interests, classifying mushrooms, finding geological specimens, describing Roman ruins, studying marine biology, and making his place in the increasingly scientific community of the early Enlightenment.Stoye tells how Marsigli, founder of an observatory and museum in Bologna, was welcomed by academics and scientific societies throughout Europe, revealing that the interest in science and antiquity transcended national boundaries during this period. Through the activities of Marsigli, Stoye sheds light on the complexities of European social, political, and military life and the contrast between conditions of war and peace in the phases of European history. Brilliantly narrated by one of the best-known authorities on the era, this account of Marsigli's life is an engrossing and highly entertaining story.

The revised edition of this classic text covers both the turbulence of war which raged throughout this period, and explores how, alongside such turbulence, it was possible for some countries to both flourish and produce spectacular advances in art, science and thinking.