The Journal of Early Modern History is currently seeking article submissions on a variety of early modern topics for publication consideration. Please see the Journal’s prospectus below and visit our web site for recently-published works and more information. Essays may be submitted electronically or in hard copy.

Between roughly 1300 and 1800 – from the aftermath of Mongol conquest in the east to the onset of industrialization in the west – European expansion set the framework for a quantum leap in the level of global interaction. "Early modern" is a convenient label both for this period of time and for the give-and-take that characterized contacts between Europeans and others prior to the domination of the world by the industrialized west. One legacy of this era is a rich store of sources for the mutual illumination, by comparison and contrast, of separate historical trajectories. If the notion of modernity, even an early modernity, suggests that the rhythms of European history can be replicated in other parts of the world, this implication is best taken not as a given, but as an issue for debate.

There is a case to be made that comparative treatment is the best way of bringing disparate phenomena into relation with one another, while respecting their individuality, particularly for a period of world history that seems uniquely suited to comparative discussion. This is the special brief of the Journal of Early Modern History: Contacts, Comparisons, Contrasts.

JEMH is particularly interested in the comparison of quite different cultures on a given theme, whether in essays that are explicitly comparative or by a grouping of studies, for special issues or for review articles. One of the elements juxtaposed in this way will often be European, but not always. What gives the comparative method its strength is that setting individual phenomena side by side is the historian's way of moving from the particular towards the general. We aim not so much for programmatic statements that claim to set research agenda, but for specialized research that bears explicitly on larger issues.