https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2846481.html

I've been digging into the detail of sixteenth-century Irish history so much that I thought it was time to take a step back and think about the wider European context. This is an Open University textbook (probably written to accompany a course) which does what it says on the tin, looking mainly at Western Europe. There is half a chapter on the Ottomans, Russia and the Americas; if Ireland is mentioned, I did not spot it. There are a lot of good set-pieces - Charles V, Henry VIII, the Dutch Revolt, Florence, Luther, Calvin; it was an exciting time in Europe.

I took three main things from it. The first is that the religious situation in the rest of Europe was confused and unsettled for much of the century, so the English flip-flopping between religious regimes in the 1550s and the uncertainty of the Elizabethan settlement has a wider context of which all policy-makers and most international merchants would have been aware. The second is just how marginal Ireland was; the authors go a great deal into the developed economics of the cities, the surrounding countryside and the wider realms, but I suspect that Ireland had never really recovered from the Black Death two centuries before and was only loosely connected to the wider European economy. And the third is that this was an amazing period in the arts and sciences - the authors make the claim that in the sixteenth century, "more of the finest paintings and fresoes of Europe were painted, and in a greater and more contrasting variety of styles, than in any other similar period." I just had a quick look at Wikipedia; it lists over a thousand Italian painters from the sixteenth century. Europe would never look at itself the same way again. ( )

A comprehensive textbook on Europe in the 1500s. whilst not taking a chronological approach to the various topics of governments, politics, religion, society and culture, it is well structured, with each chapter broken into smaller sections/topics.
At the back of the book there is a large collection of maps and family tress, as well as a list of key events in each of the years of the 16th century. ( )

Tra resistenze del Medioevo e incursioni della modernità, l’Europa si affaccia sul mondo proprio mentre comincia un lungo processo di trasformazione.
Un volume di ampia sintesi, che affronta il XVI secolo da molti punti di vista.
L’economia: il contributo della spinta demografica; l’importazione di oro e argento dall’America e la loro influenza sul processo inflazionistico; le conseguenze sociali dell’aumento dei prezzi, la campagna e la città, il rapporto tra banchieri e sovrani. La società: la famiglia e la sessualità; la diffusione del libro a stampa e la Riforma e il ruolo che ebbero nel processo di alfabetizzazione.
La religione: il rapporto tra cristianesimo e Umanesimo, la Riforma luterana, con i suoi sviluppi, e quella cattolica. La politica: Carlo V e Francesco I; l’impero ottomano e quello russo; l’Inghilterra di Enrico VIII, la Spagna di Filippo II e la Francia di Caterina de’ Medici; le guerre di religione; gli assetti politici dopo la pace di Cateau-Cambrésis (1559). Ma anche letteratura, arte, musica e scienza tra Rinascimento e Barocco.
Tra grandi protagonisti della politica e del pensiero, imperi su cui il sole non sembrava poter tramontare, nuove monarchie che si affermavano e Stati regionali prigionieri di uno scacchiere politico sempre più universale, questo volume offre il ritratto puntuale del Vecchio Continente che andava affermando la sua leadership mondiale. ( )