Early Modern Europe

The fields of Early Modern and Modern Europe at IAS have an old and distinguished pedigree. Already in 1934, Edward Mead Earle, a specialist in the role of the military in foreign relations, was appointed to the faculty of the School of Economics and Politics and later to that of the School of Historical Studies for the first five years of its existence (1949-54). Felix Gilbert, a refugee from Nazi Germany and a leading scholar of the Italian Renaissance, spent the years 1939-43 as a member of the Institute, where he returned to join the faculty of the School of Historical Studies from 1962 to 1975. John H. Elliott, an authority on the history of early modern Spain and its empire, was appointed to the faculty in 1973 and in 1990, left to take up the post of Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford University. Elliott’s term at IAS overlapped for a few years with that of Peter Paret, a wide-ranging military historian, who from 1986 to 1997 was professor of Modern Europe. That position was held most recently, from 2001 to 2016, by Jonathan Israel, a renowned historian of the European Enlightenment, the Dutch Republic, and Sephardic Jewry.

The current professor, Francesca Trivellato, took up her post in 2018. She convenes a seminar with Members in Early Modern Europe and adjacent fields. For information about the seminar, please contact Brett Savage (bsavage@ias.edu).

Between 2016 and 2024, the School of Historical Studies, with the support of the Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica, granted the John Elliott Membership to four scholars pursuing research in the history and culture of Early Modern Spain.