Introduction

This book is about the rich and varied history of women in early-modern Europe between the years 1450 and 1750. It aims to be comprehensive in coverage without making any claims to being exhaustive. It is a book of women’s history rather than gender history. The chapters all acknowledge gender, but do not linger over explaining patriarchy, relations between the sexes, or the many social constructions of femininity. ¹ Instead, they reveal what women could and did do in early-modern Europe. Women were not just passive players in historical processes and new historiographies are making apparent their agency. They did not ‘have roles’ as if they were given certain things to do while they were alive, while not shaping their society, politics and moments of change. Therefore, the central thread running through the book is that it is necessary to think differently about the intersections of historical causation and female agency in longue durée patterns of continuity and change.