On Tuesday in class we finished discussing the Wrightson book on the British path towards creating a national economy and looked at some documents such as Mandeville's Fable of the Bees, Defoe's The Complete English Tradesman, Hume's of Refinement in the Arts, Millar's on the Origin and Distinction of Ranks, and some Adam Smith.
On Wednesday we walked around the beautiful city that I am residing in. Leiden was founded around 1000 CE and the name probably came from the Roman period from a Roman military stronghold called Lugdunum Batavorum. In the early medieval period the name Leithon was used for the district where present-day Leiden is located. The city was surrounded by a medieval wall and contained two branches of the river Rhine. The city's coat of arms highlights the keys of Saint Peter, the patron saint of the city. The lion with the upraised sword refers to the early years of the Dutch Revolt and the important role that Leiden played for all of what would become known as The Netherlands.
This is a 1574 map of the city.
And here is a map of Leiden today. My dorm is at the corner of Galgewater and Prinsessekade near the number 7.
As we walked we saw Town Hall, the Lakenhal (Cloth makers Hall), and Saint Peter's Church. We visited the city's museum in the Lakenhal. Their collection is impressive and I definitely need to get back there. In the afternoon we walked around Leiden University and the botanical garden there. We also got registered at the university library and met with the chief archivist who met with us for some time and showed us some of the great treasures of their collection. The book that I spent most of my time with was Jan Huygen's itineraries, published in 1597. I'll be using images from this book in the paper that I write for this seminar so I'll tell more about it later.
On Thursday we discussed various readings on the Low Countries, specifically centering on the Burgundian period, in preparation for our three day, three city trip to Brussels.
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