On the island of Duiveland (Devil’s Land) located in the Scheldt delta in the Dutch province of Zeeland lies the city of Zierikzee. Its uniquely well-kept civic archives prompted Katie Heyning to make this lesser-known Dutch city the case study of her book Turbulente tijden: Zorg en materiële cultuur in Zierikzee in de zestiende eeuw (Turbulent times: Care and material culture in Zierikzee during the sixteenth century). Combining research from social history, urban history, and material culture, she shows how closely intertwined these areas of sixteenth-century daily life were.

Heyning, a cultural historian and curator at the Royal Zeeland Scientific Society who has published several articles and books on Zeeland’s cultural history, uses her study to reveal the important and often-overlooked role of Zeeland and Zierikzee during the early modern period. Zierikzee—praised in 1567 by the Italian writer Lodovico Guicciardini (1521–89) as a place of extraordinary merchants—was very well connected with the merchant and artistic centers of Flanders and played a key role in the exchange of “ideas, art, and luxury goods” (11) between the southern and northern provinces. Heyning’s study reinforces recent scholarship on entangled and connected histories, like the Dutch project Artistic Exchanges and Cultural Transmission in the Low Countries, 1572–1672 (2009–14), led by Karolien De Clippel, Eric Jan Sluijter, and Filip Vermeylen, and the Swiss project Sites of Mediation: Entangled Histories of Europe, 1350–1650 (2012–16), led by Susanna Burghartz, Lucas Burkart, and Christine Göttler.

Heyning focuses in the book’s four parts on four diverse case studies. This variety of topics—orphans, confessional politics, clothing, and artworks—enables her to give comprehensive insight into Zierikzee during the early modern period and makes this study a stimulating read for scholars of early modern cultural history. The first, and most detailed, part, “Weduwen, weduwnaars en wezen” (Widows, widowers, and orphans), focuses on the care and provision provided by the civic “weeskamer,” the “orphan chamber,” whose overseers played a major role as, among other things, they were in charge of handling the orphans’ inheritances. Heyning’s close reading of archival material in combination with museum objects enables her to highlight the chamber’s significant role in the civic community; frustratingly, however, the excellent illustrations are not always cross-referred to in the text. The shorter second part, “Alles anders” (All different), looks at the religious and social changes that occurred in Zierikzee during the sixteenth century with the Reformation and the Dutch Revolt at its center. In part 3, “Gepast vertoon, kleding in de zestiende eeuw” (Appropriate appearance, clothing in the sixteenth century), Heyning presents data about clothing that she has gathered from probate inventories. She gives a thorough analysis of the luxury items of clothing and jewelry owned by the Zierikzee elite, a social group that closely followed fashion trends from Antwerp and aimed to present themselves as cosmopolitan. In the final part, “Venster op de wereld, een open samenleving” (Window to the world, an open society), Heyning moves on to investigate the “intellectual horizons” (16) of the people of Zierikzee. Focusing on various kinds of artworks—paintings, prints, sculptures, maps, glassware, silverwork, earthenware, and exotic pieces like coconut cups—found in the inventories of the Zierikzee elite, she is able to show how well connected the city was to Flemish artistic and intellectual centers. Antwerp is presented as the main point of reference and Heyning stresses that during the “turbulent times” of the sixteenth century—a reference to epidemics and natural disasters as well as to the social and religious changes—the focus of the elite of Zierikzee was not in fact the cities of Holland (i.e., Delft, Leiden, or Amsterdam), but of Flanders.

Heyning masterfully demonstrates that the complex history of the Netherlands cannot be told only through large cities like Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges, Brussels, and Middelburg, but that smaller and more remote places like Zierikzee should also be considered. The inclusion of Turbulente tijden on the long list for the 2017 Zeeuwse Boekenprijs (Zeeland Book Price) is an indication of its importance.