Introduction: The Persistence of the "Crisis"

The context for this special issue of the JIH is the persistence in scholarship and teaching of the Crisis as a way of organizing seventeenth-century history. Five historians, specialists in different fields, bring an interdisciplinary perspective to bear as they indicate how fundamental change took place in mid-seventeenth-century economies, demography, politics, art, and popular belief. The realms of warfare, international relations, science, attitudes toward knowledge, and religion also saw profound transformations during this period.