630 REVIEWS AND SHORT NOTICES

© 2006 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2006 The Historical Association and Blackwell Publishing.

degree prospered. Like the policy of establishing the republic’s strength at sea,this alternative strategy for achieving prosperity and security could not be separ-ated from the internal divisions within the republic, notably the clash betweenso-called old and new nobles. This is an interesting and important book, notleast because it rescues from near oblivion (for the English-language reader)an important Italian and Mediterranean state whose experience in the earlymodern era merits greater attention than it has so far received.University of Dundee CHRISTOPHER STORRS

The Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century. By Maarten Prak. CambridgeUniversity Press. 2005. xii + 317pp. £14.99.

There is no shortage of books on the Dutch republic in the seventeenth cen-tury and currently the market for them seems inexhaustible. Each author exploresthe phenomenon of the Dutch golden age from his or her own particular view-point, and it is the very richness of opportunity for different approaches thatmakes every new publication welcome. It is particularly satisfying to see anincreasing number of studies by Dutch scholars reaching a wider readershipthrough translations of the quality of Diane Webb’s work on Maarten Prak’s latestcontribution. This study looks at the phenomenon that was the Dutch republicin the seventeenth century, trying both to explain the emergence of a state so dif-ferent from the rest of contemporary Europe, and to challenge the reader tounderstand its influence on the nature of the modern Netherlands and Europe.

Prak has looked at the successes and failures of the Dutch republic from itsbirth to its decline, which he adroitly avoids dating but says was undeniable by1715, through four themed sections on war, the Golden Age, politics andgovernance, and urbanization. The republic operated as part of the wider Euro-pean dynamics of the seventeenth century and its responses to those externalsdetermined first its development and later its decline. But Prak also argues thatpolitical, cultural and economic fragmentation within the republic gave rise totensions and discord which, when faced with increasing competition from otherEuropean states, only accelerated the decline.

Students will appreciate this work’s comprehensive brevity, academics itscrisp engagement with some of the major arguments, and anyone interested inthe Dutch in the seventeenth century will enjoy the elegance of the informedwriting about a wide range of topics. The majority of the chapters begin with ascene-setting narrative bringing political figures, merchants, intellectuals and theordinary people to life for the reader. For example, in the 1660s Coenraad vanBeuningen had to choose between his diplomatic duties and his post as pension-ary of Amsterdam; Evert Willemszoon found hell in Fort Nassau on the westAfrican coast; Anthonie van Leeuwenhoek didn’t change his socks for twoweeks in order to examine the life growing between his toes; and in 1696 un-employed sailors joined women and children in the almshouse in Amsterdam toprotest about changes in the burial laws. It is only in the first chapter that thetopic proves too large for the allotted space. The background to the establish-ment of the Dutch republic is so complex that an attempt to convey in onlyeighteen pages all the detail with the clarity which Jonathan Israel in The DutchRepublic: Its Rise, Greatness and Fall 1477–1806 (1996) achieved in one hundredand fifty, was bound to make assumptions of background knowledge which

EARLY MODERN 631

© 2006 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2006 The Historical Association and Blackwell Publishing.

might not necessarily exist. Nevertheless the conclusion to the chapter succinctlysummarizes the whole very effectively.

Prak has attempted to provide a comprehensive, introductory overview of theseventeenth-century Netherlands through a judicious, and fully acknowledged,use of previous works, supplemented by some new research. He has achievedsomething much more.University of Kent ELIZABETH EDWARDS

Ruling Ireland, 1685–1742: Politics, Politicians and Parties. By D. W. Hayton.Boydell. 2004. xiii + 304pp. £55.00.

When considering the debates in the Irish parliament, in 1717, one Englishobserver was forced to conclude that: ‘We are apt to think that feuds and divi-sions in England run very high . . . but alas, when compared with Ireland theyare like little skirmishes or brangles. To preserve any temper or moderation [onthe floor of the House] is an intolerable crime’. It was not just Thomas Weedon,but whole generations of English administrators, who found the governance ofIreland to be, by turns, a baffling, frustrating, and frequently ruinous business.In examining, in forensic terms, the nature and functioning of the administra-tion in Dublin Castle, over the half-century following the treaty of Limerick,Professor Hayton illuminates a much-neglected period of Irish political history,which is often dismissed, simply, as the ‘Age of Molyneux and Swift’.

The reasons for this neglect are not hard to discern. The completeness of thevictory achieved by the Williamites in 1691–2, the resulting economic and reli-gious subjugation of the native population, and the crippling lack of interestshown by the exiled Jacobite court in fostering a resistance movement, haveeffectively denuded the period of dramatic incident, irreconcilable ideologies andthe sense of romanticism that clings so stubbornly to defeated, rather than suc-cessful, causes. Moreover, the popular or cultural historian wishing to capturethe ambience of the viceregal court, the patterns of Roman Catholic survival, orthe narratives of both the Ulster artisan and the dispossessed Gael, could wellbe left disappointed by the appearance of this volume. Yet, this would be a mis-take, for the author’s meticulous approach towards, and mastery of, primarysources, coupled with his empiricism and ability to draw compelling conclusionsfrom a wealth of detail, combine to create an account of high politics and theAnglo-Irish elite that is unlikely to be either equalled or seriously challenged forthe foreseeable future. At a time when it is fashionable to examine only thecauses of disaster, defeat and decay in political systems and ideologies; it is bothprovocative and refreshing to be presented with an account of the achievementof an unparalleled period of political stability in Ireland, at the outset of theProtestant ascendancy. In charting every swing of the political pendulum inboth church and state, the author reveals the ‘nuts and bolts’ of an administra-tion, which enabled a small and utterly unrepresentative elite not only to main-tain its hold on power, but also to meet the competing demands of its ownsupporters and the English government at Whitehall, over a protracted periodand with a considerable degree of success.

The fierce explosion of party politics between 1704 and 1715, the successioncrisis of 1713–15, and the creation and destruction of the Irish Tory Party, areshown by Hayton to be not solely the dull echoes of conflicts at Westminster but