Jerusalem Reformed: Rethinking Early Modern Pilgrimage

Pre-Modern and Early Modern Persian Literature: Written while Travelling?

In literary histories written in both Iran and the West it has generally be assumed that early modern Persian literary works are (technically inferior) copies of Western literary works. This has been and is still a claim. Almost no academically and scientifically sound works has substantiated this claim. While there is no point in denying a European influence on early modern Persian literature,...

How Politics Shaped Modern Banking in Early Modern England: Rethinking the Nature of Representative Democracy, Public Debt, and Modern Banking

The recent sovereign debt crisis raises a debate on whether the cancelation of sovereign debt is compatible with democracy. Scholars opposed to the cancelation of sovereign debt refer to the Glorious Revolution of 1688, in which the British government began to make the people as a whole liable for the obligations incurred by their government. These scholars argue that this commitment formed the...

Rethinking early Earth phosphorus geochemistry.

Phosphorus is a key biologic element, and a prebiotic pathway leading to its incorporation into biomolecules has been difficult to ascertain. Most potentially prebiotic phosphorylation reactions have relied on orthophosphate as the source of phosphorus. It is suggested here that the geochemistry of phosphorus on the early Earth was instead controlled by reduced oxidation state phosphorus compou...

Suicide in Early Modern and Modern Europe

Suicide in Early Modern and Modern Europe

an act and a subject of discourse, in the early and late modern periods. It argues that, while publications on the theme have increased considerably in the past two decades, the problematic character of the evidence for suicide has led to afocus on attitudes to suicide at the expense of empirical investigations. The latter have largely confirmed the link between social isolation and suicide, po...