New Books In European Studies

Michael Green joins Jana Byars to talk about his volume with co-editor Ineke Huysman, Private Life and Privacy in the Early Modern Low Countries (Brepols, 2023). This volume investigates the origins of one of the most important notions of the contemporary society: privacy. Based on case studies from the early modern Low Countries, privacy is tackled from various historical perspectives: social and cultural history, and the history of art and architecture.00The Dutch Republic is well-known for its financial success, which went hand in hand with the development of a distinguished bourgeois culture and religious toleration. The accumulation of wealth among the urban population led to changes in various spheres, from daily life to art. Privacy, as a concept, start to develop in this period. Indeed, new ideas about housing with the invention of corridors, separate rooms that could be locked, and the separation of the "common" and the "private" space, all illustrate the growing importance of privacy in this geogra