New empires, deep divisions, contested trade routes: cultural historian Marina Münkler portrays the 16th century.
Everything is fermenting, starting to move. The rhetoric of hate is bubbling up, borders are being shifted, empires are forming, divisions are deepening, trade routes are being contested and expanded. There are massacres in precious metals. In her new book, Marina Münkler presents the 16th century as “a thoroughly dramatic era.” The mild light that labels such as “late Renaissance” spread by triggering associations with great art and brilliant transformations of antiquity does not exist with her.