Memory before Modernity is a work of reflective historiography that avoids conflating premodern mnemonic theory with detectable memory practices in early modern European societies; neither does it rely for its evidence on grand narratives about the coming of modernity, such as the discovery of the self, rise of print media, impact of capitalism, or emergence of the nation state. By investigating whether and the extent to which early modern memory culture differs fundamentally from its modern counterpart, this volume broadens and enriches the well-established field of memory studies. These essays are united by the steady attention paid to who is managing memories, by what mechanisms, and how distinctively early modern these forms of mediation in fact are.

While each contribution demonstrates an awareness of the specific social, political, and religious frameworks affecting the cultures of memory in the area under investigation, the overriding conclusion is that the practice of memory in early modern Europe “was already a multimedia affair,” affecting people at all levels of society (21). And, regarding mediality, the difference between premodern and modern memory is one of scale, such that many premodern memory practices discussed in the case studies persist up to the present day, especially in postnational memory cultures. Hybridity and diversity always have characterized memory, and this volume provides an alternative way to think about the history of memory as a cumulative and fluid process “in which new ways of engaging with the past constantly emerge” (22). This book effectively takes the wind out of the sails of those who would look for and pinpoint a modern turn.

The first part on memory politics and memory wars — never just a matter for princes and churches — covers, among other topics, the Glorious Revolution, resulting in England’s distinct party identities; civic and confessional memory in conflict in sixteenth-century Augsburg; a 1514 peasant revolt in Hungary; and the French Wars of Religion, spanning from 1562 to the 1598 Edict of Nantes, with its agreements to forget the past and other experiments with formal acts of oblivion. As regards what counts as valid documentary evidence in reconstructing early modern memory communities, Jasper van der Steen’s caveat (in his treatment of the Twelve Years’ Truce, 1609–21) offers a sensible heuristic principle: “Reliable or not, Carleton was an astute observer of Dutch politics and his accounts tend to be accurate reflections of Counter-Remonstrant sentiments” (50).

The ensuing parts, which likewise concern traces of countermemories and rebel memories, bring out the limits of rulers — whether of cities, factions, or nations — to control memories. Indeed, the second part, on the range of media, objects, and spaces used as carriers of memory, shows just how fluid memorials can be, susceptible as they are to being coopted and transvalued. Most notable is the peat-barge “Trojan horse” of Breda that developed into a dominant memory of the Dutch Revolt (131); and Sarah Covington’s compelling account of key episodes in the long social memory of Ireland’s struggle against English control, which, despite Cromwell’s dislocation of much of the population, yielded “a new archeological layer of narrative that was inscribed onto the landscape, as rocks, wells, and ruins become new ‘places of memory,’ even if those places were now testimonials to the violence and dispossession that he and his soldiers inflicted” (153).

In the third part, on personal memory, Johannes Müller — writing on southern Netherlandish exiles during the Dutch Revolt against Spain — contributes to migration studies by investigating how exile identities and memories of flight and persecution translate into other national contexts; and Katherine Hodgkin teases out the complex role women played as custodians of family memory. An effective closure is brought to the volume with Brecht Deseure and Judith Pollmann’s sustained critique of memory theorists who insist that the age of revolutions was the period when “experiences of crisis and change create the perception of a gap between the past and the present,” pointing out a sixteenth-century “pre-modern memory crisis” with the same sort of melancholic nostalgia linked to the Reformation and the Civil War in England (316). Notwithstanding the pull toward an alternative, more fluid historiography, this essay — like the volume overall — acknowledges that there are important differences between how early modern and modern Europeans remembered the past. Memory beyond Modernity discusses with precision some of those key differences and, as a result, scholars in the humanities and social sciences will reap the benefits for years to come.