New Books in Early Modern History

Empire and Frontier: Colonel Peter Schuyler and the Valiant Iroquois in King William's War: 1689-1701
(Pegasus Books, 2026) by Samuel Marquis presents a
powerful episode of early American history, revealing the very human
story of friendship and alliance between Colonel Peter Schuyler and the
Iroquois during King William’s War (1689–1701). Like Philbrick’s Mayflower and Gwynne’s Empire of the Summer Moon, this new book reveals how fragile alliances and cross-cultural diplomacy changed the course of empires in North America.

At the heart of the book is Peter Schuyler, a Dutch-American
mayor of Albany, Indian Affairs commissioner, and militia colonel who
earned deep trust among the Iroquois. Decades ahead of his time in his
respect for Native diplomacy and sovereignty, Schuyler helped forge and
sustain a fragile alliance between English colonists and the
Haudenosaunee (Five Nations of the Iroquois) during a decade of brutal
warfare. That alliance, known as The Covenant Chain, not only blocked
French ambitions in the region, but also shaped the political and
military landscape of the American frontier for the next one hundred
years.

Told
through multiple perspectives, the book also follows two unforgettable
Indigenous figures during the conflict. Lawrence, a Mohawk war captain,
serves as Schuyler’s compatriot on the battlefield, working for and
navigating the survival of his people. Hilletie van Olinda, a biracial
Mohawk-Dutch woman, becomes a key translator and diplomatic go-between,
using her language skills and cultural fluency to mediate between the
Iroquois and English.

Across
a decade of war, espionage, and political intrigue—from the 1689
Leisler’s Rebellion and 1690 Schenectady Massacre to the climactic Grand
Settlement of 1701—these intertwined stories reveal the human cost and
political complexity behind one of early America’s most consequential
alliances.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book
focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty
negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative
analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find
Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. 
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In Beyond the Ocean: France and the Atlantic World from the Crusades to the Age of Revolutions (Oxford University Press,
2026), Christopher Hodson and Brett Rushforth reveal the vast and
complex world of France's Atlantic enterprises in the premodern era.
Drawing upon years of archival work, Hodson and Rushforth demonstrate
how France's overseas activities created its empire, intentionally or
not, and how these distant places built the French state and used it for
their own ends. Beyond the Ocean covers an impressive sweep of
history, from the late eleventh century through the early nineteenth,
and yet the authors manage to retain a human element. Their judicious
inclusion of micro-histories and primary-source quotation, as well as
their lively prose, helps the reader enter into what it may have felt
like to live through these developments, to participate in the era when
"France became France, and the Atlantic became a world."
Crucially, their attention to the non-European actors in this story and
women's worlds and work makes the book a helpful corrective to top-down
approaches to imperial histories. Beyond the Ocean is a must-read for Atlantic world scholars, but has value for anyone interested in early modern Europe or cultural exchange.

Elspeth Currie
is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at Boston College where
she studies women’s intellectual history in early modern Europe.
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In 1644 four norcini
or pork butchers were accused of killing not pigs, but seven of their
fellow citizens, stripping the meat from the bones, then combining it
with pig to make sausages, which were then sold to Romans from their
shop behind the Pantheon. In the multiple pamphlets describing this
supposed crime, the authors of this accusation blamed residents of Rome
themselves, who had become so obsessed with meat that they turned a
blind eye to
such horrendous acts. This fabricated story points to an underlying
reality—that in the early seventeenth century, a series of popes
dramatically increased the amount of food and wine consumed by Romans,
culminating in a per capita consumption of over a pound of meat per day
during the reign of Pope Urban VIII (d. 1644).

The Barberini Butchers: Meat, Murder, and Warfare in Early Modern Italy (University
of Pennsylvania Press, 2026) traces the efforts and
activities of a range of actors who strove to bring meat to the Roman
table. Dr. Bradford A. Bouley shows how Rome’s preoccupation with food
was the result of papal policy in the aftermath of the Reformation;
food, and especially meat, served as religious and political propaganda,
symbolizing the correctness of the Catholic faith and demonstrating the
extent of papal power. Dr. Bouley details the dramatic reorganization
of Roman foodways needed to satisfy this demand for meat, as large herds
of animals had to be funneled from the countryside to the city. This
consumption was ultimately not sustainable, triggering a crisis that
fueled sensational rumors
of murder and cannibalism and eventually, Dr. Bouley contends, sparked
the outbreak of civil war, as vassals rebelled against papal oversight. The Barberini Butchers
recovers this significant episode in food, environmental, and cultural
history, one that brings early modern politics and history into
conversation with concerns over human use of natural resources and
consumption of animal products that continue to resonate clearly today.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book
focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty
negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative
analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find
Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. 
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Paper
was a precious commodity in the eighteenth century: every sheet was
made by hand. There was therefore a significant market in recycling
substandard paper from paper mills and discarded proofs and sheets from
printers and booksellers for secondary use, alongside a black market in
which stealing and receiving stolen paper took place on a vast scale. A
single piece of paper could be termed ‘waste’ and yet sold for cash
three times in succession, on each occasion performing a useful
function. The end user would keep the newly purchased
‘waste’ or paper wrapping in a special drawer from which it would be
taken for a myriad household purposes, including cooking, needlework, decoration
and hygiene. Popular satirical prints depicted explicit paper uses,
while creators of flamboyant papier mâché ceilings concealed the
material by gilding it.

With over 100 illustrations, and
drawing on letters from a range of people from farmers to notable
authors and members of the aristocracy, together with meticulous
archival research, Too Good to Waste: Recycling Paper in the Eighteenth Century
(Bodleian Library, 2026) by Dr. Amélie Junqua and Dr. Geoffrey Day
traces the extraordinary history of ingenious paper recycling in
eighteenth century England.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book
focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty
negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative
analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find
Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. 
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Contested Continent: The Struggle for America, c.1000-1680 (Oxford University Press, 2026), the newest installment of the acclaimed Oxford History of the United States series, Peter C. Mancall
recounts how North America was forged from the experiences of millions
of Indigenous women and men as well as Europeans and Africans. This
history spans the continent from the North Atlantic to the West Indies
and includes the entire Atlantic basin, telling a new story about the
origins of major aspects of American culture. He illuminates the rise of
a booming trans-Atlantic economy based on the extraction of abundant
American natural resources; the central role that European migrants and
their descendants played in the enslavement of Africans and the
displacement of Indigenous peoples; and the spread of self-governing
polities where many enjoyed religious freedom. None of these
developments was inevitable. Conflicts broke out frequently as different
peoples battled over precious resources. Europeans' appetites for
material gain and expanding Christendom brought horrific consequences
for those brutalized, enslaved, and vulnerable to infectious
diseases. This is a sweeping history of developments crucial to the
eventual founding of the United States. Contested Continent underscores
the titanic struggles between the peoples who had populated the
Americas for centuries and the migrants from the Old World who initiated
changes that created a New World that offered boundless opportunities
for some and crushed the aspirations of others.
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