Introduction

Abstract

Herbert Rowen has always insisted that historians don’t need biographers. Outside “a small circle of family, friends and students,” what matters most is not the individual but his or her work.¹ Thus the main purpose of the present volume is to highlight Professor Rowen’s contributions to the political history of early modern Europe. Part I includes assessment of his work by others, while Parts II-V contain examples of his best articles, papers, and reviews, some published here for the first time, most previously hard-to-get. These essays not only add substantively to our understanding of early modern politics, but treat both implicitly and explicitly the historian’s task per se. Hence, this is not biography, much less “innocuous laudation” or hagiography, which Herb would not forgive. Yet it is only fitting that someone who lays so much stress on the human side of History should by way of introduction have something said about his person as well as his work.