Encyclopedia of Early Modern History Online

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Executive editor of the English version: Andrew Colin Gow

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The Encyclopedia of Early Modern History is the English edition of the German-language Enzyklopädie der Neuzeit. This 15-volume reference work, published in print between 2005 and 2012 and here available online, offers a multi-faceted view on the decisive era in European history stretching from ca. 1450 to ca. 1850 ce. in over 4,000 entries.
The perspective of this work is European. This is not to say that the rest of the World is ignored – on the contrary, the interaction between European and other cultures receives extensive attention.

New articles will be added on a regular basis during the period of translation, for the complete German version see Enzyklopädie der Neuzeit Online.

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Toasting

(1,169 words)

Author(s): Tlusty, B. Ann | Graser, Helmut
1. Characteristics In the 16th century, a large percentage of the extensive literature directed against the consumption of wine (less often beer) and a multitude of regulations dealt with toasting, the mutual offering of toasts to someone’s health. Generosity and reciprocity, both social values, required not only that a participant raise his glass to his counterpart, but also that the glass be emptied. The Swiss theologian Johann Wilhelm Stucki was even able to call this obligation an “…
Date: 2022-11-07

Tobacco

(2,829 words)

Author(s): Menninger, Annerose
1. Production and global economy 1.1. Production and consumption in pre-Columbian AmericaThe discovery and development of smoking tobacco, snuff, and chewing tobacco go back to pre-Columbian America. Before the Conquista, a millennia-old tobacco culture had developed in the Americas, which were also the original homeland of the wild plant. This culture benefited from the climatic tolerance of the annual crop and the simple production of raw tobacco, for which the leaves needed only to be harvested and drie…
Date: 2022-11-07

Token coinage

(806 words)

Author(s): Schneider, Konrad
The phrase token coinage refers to coins of slight value and limited validity as media of exchange, whose metal value is less than their face value (see Value, monetary). The term contrasts with  currency coinage, that is, coins that by law have unlimited status as legal tender, consisting of the metal that provides the standard for the currency of the country in question and whose face value and metal value should be as close together as possible. The German term Scheidemünze (from scheiden, “separate”) itself suggests that it should enable buyers and sellers to comp…
Date: 2022-11-07

Toleration

(3,829 words)

Author(s): Eckert, Georg
1. OverviewToleration at its root means sufferance. It goes hand in hand with freedom to think, act, and live differently, and as such has always been controversial – as a conception in philosophical theory, as praxis in everyday social life, and as an argument in political debate. In each of these contexts, the early modern period experienced a gradual (though not linear) expansion of the limits of toleration, which appeared in numerous manifestations with many justifications, by no means limite…
Date: 2022-11-07

Toleration, edict of

(1,272 words)

Author(s): Niggemann, Ulrich
1. Definition In scholarly usage, the term  edict of toleration denotes a series of early modern decrees regarding religious policy issued by a particular government (Sovereign power) to regulate the toleration of religious minorities and their status within a body politic. Examples include the Edict of Nantes (1598; Huguenots), the letters of majesty of Emperor Rudolf II for Bohemia and Silesia (1609), the edict on religion of Tsarina Catherine the Great of Russia (1773), the Patent of Tolerance of Empe…
Date: 2022-11-07

Toll

(4 words)

See Customs duties
Date: 2022-11-07

Tomato

(6 words)

See Crop plant | Vegetable
Date: 2022-11-07

Tomb

(2,672 words)

Author(s): Zitzlsperger, Philipp
1. Function and pretensions 1.1. MemorialThe tomb as a memorial (Memory) and the associated burial rites are among the earliest marks of human civilization. The tomb always marked the burial place of the deceased with some kind of structure, which can range from a simple headstone or inscription tablet to an elaborate funerary monument. In the early modern period, furthermore, it was not unusual to set up several tombs for an individual in various places; frequently these merely housed individual bod…
Date: 2022-11-07

Tonal systems

(1,223 words)

Author(s): Moßburger, Hubert
1. Definition A tonal system is a certain selection, arrangement, and interrelationship of relative musical pitches. Such systems are limited in historical and geographical extent, and offer a focus for the comparison of different musical cultures (Music). These are abstract and schematized constellations that are thought out in theory in advance, before being employed as real tonal relationships in musical settings. Tonal systems establish a norm that is largely confirmed under the con…
Date: 2022-11-07

Tool

(1,334 words)

Author(s): Reith, Reinhold
1. Terminology and researchThe German term meaning “tool,”  Werkzeug, first appeared in the 12th century; initially it was synonymous with  Zeug and  Gezeug [1], while in mining, tools like the hammer and chisel were called  Gezähe (Mining technology).  Werkzeug was and is used as a collective term, but it also refers to individual instruments. English  tool is related to Old English  tol (before the 12th century), from Proto-Germanic * tōwalan “implement,” from a verb stem represented by Old English tawian, “prepar,e with the instrumental suffix  -el.Tools function con…
Date: 2022-11-07

Topography

(1,212 words)

Author(s): Knoll, Martin
1. DefinitionKrünitz’s  Oekonomisch-technologische Encyklopädie defined topography in 1845 as “the description of individual localities, regions, or territories on the basis of their size, population, etc.” [3]. While cosmography as a description of the world and geography as a description of the earth represent a universal perspective, and  geography generally denotes the discipline that generates knowledge about the surface of the earth,  topography stands for a particular perspective, focused primarily on individual countries, regions, or localitie…
Date: 2022-11-07

Topology

(4 words)

See Analysis situs
Date: 2022-11-07

Topos

(852 words)

Author(s): Kocher, Ursula
For Aristotle, topics was an argument pattern with which, working from a given fixed position (Greek  tópos), one can determine its preconditions or premises. At the same time, in rhetoric, a topos serves as part of the procedure for finding the arguments to deploy in making one’s case (Latin  inventio) [3]. Both meanings – topics as a method of argumentation in the narrower sense and as part of rhetorical theory – continued in use in the early modern period, though the purely argumentative topics was fading into the background. Thus topos (Latin  locus) increasingly became a t…
Date: 2022-11-07

Topsy-Turvy World

(3,234 words)

Author(s): Weikl, Katharina
1. Introduction The topsy-turvy world, or the “world turned upside down” (Latin  mundus inversus, Italian  mondo alla riversa or  mondo alla rovescia, French  le monde renversé or  le monde bestorné, German  die verkehrte Welt, Dutch  de verkeerde wereld) was a popular metaphorical type in the early modern period and the source of a broad repertoire of artistic topics and cultural actions, all of which invariably made implicit reference to a putative world that was the “right” way up. Most involved an inversion of the social or…
Date: 2022-11-07

Torah

(923 words)

Author(s): Talabardon, Susanne
1. Terminology The term Torah (Hebrew “instruction”, “way”) underwent several changes in the course of Jewish intellectual history. In the narrower sense, it denotes the first section of the Hebrew Bible, the Pentateuch or Five Books of Moses. In the course of the evolution of rabbinic theology, it was extended to refer to the entire revelation to Moses at Sinai, comprising both the written Torah (the Bible) and the so-called oral Torah. The Hebrew Bible is considered Holy Scripture and the heart of…
Date: 2022-11-07

Tordesillas, Treaty of

(945 words)

Author(s): König, Hans-Joachim
Tordesillas, a small Spanish town on the Duero in the Castilian Meseta, gave its name in 1494 to one of the most important early modern treaties in the context of European imperialist expansionism and the emergence of the Atlantic world.In 1493, immediately after Christopher Columbus returned from his first voyage, on which he believed he had reached the Indies beyond the Atlantic Ocean (America, discovery of), the Spanish monarchs Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon had taken steps to exclude their rival Portugal and ot…
Date: 2022-11-07

Tories

(941 words)

Author(s): Lottes, Günther
1. The 17th centuryThe Tories were members of a parliamentary party in early modern England. The term originated during the Stuart Restoration (1660–1689) as a derisive nickname and epithet for the group of representatives who proclaimed their unconditional loyalty to the monarchy [2]; [6]. The etymology is probably lost forever.The occasion for the formation of the party was the so-called Exclusion Crisis (1678–1681), which involved the exclusion of James II, the Duke of York and heir to the throne, from succession to the throne (Throne,…
Date: 2022-11-07

Torture

(2,388 words)

Author(s): Zagolla, Robert
1. Introduction Torture, in the sense defined by the UN anti-torture declaration of 1975 as “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted by or at the instigation of a public official on a person for such purposes as obtaining [...] information or confession, punish[ment ...], or intimidat[ion],” is a universal phenomenon [2]; [9]. As “torturous interrogation” (German  peinliche Befragung), however, it had a specific role in the process of establishing proof in early modern criminal proceedings [3]; [6]; [10]. Here, it …
Date: 2022-11-07

Tourism

(2,906 words)

Author(s): Beyrer, Klaus
1. Concept and researchThe word “tourism,” derived from “tour” and “tourist” (French  tour, tourisme), has since the 1950s denoted all manifestations of a broad, leisure-related mobility, and represents “travel as an industry” [1. 321]. The stem of the word, “tour-,” has had the sense of a turned circle, originally in dance, since the 17th century. The Grand Tour in the European Age of Enlightenment was a tour undertaken for personal edification. In his 1785 letters from Switzerland, the Göttingen history professor Christoph…
Date: 2022-11-07

Tournament

(1,012 words)

Author(s): Mallinckrodt, Rebekka von
1. Training for battleTournaments (from Latin  torno, “turn,” “round off”) appeared in northern France toward the end of the 11th century in response to a changed combat technique: now horsemen in battle attacked at a full gallop with lances couched. This new technique required training; the line was still fuzzy between battles and tournaments, which not uncommonly were held during sieges or lulls in the fighting. In the 12th and 13th centuries, the bohort, a kind of informal mêlée, was the most popular form of tournament; it differed from a battle only in having rudimentary rules [1. 2…
Date: 2022-11-07
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