When reference is made to Audran's accomplishments, especially the reason for his long career, his success is attributed to the use of motifs drawn from popular culture. The catalyst for this generic hybridization began in 1699 when Louis XIV commissioned the renovation of a small chateau on the grounds of the Ménagerie at Versailles. In this chapter, a discussion of the significance of La Fontaine's Fables, as well as other elements from popular culture, as they were first used by Audran in his arabesque designs, is followed by an analysis of Audran's 1732 commission, for which he drew from the Fables to illustrate painted panels at the Château de Réveillon. This commission represents the only known example of Audran's reuse of a theme and how its significance had changed. By comparison, these two commissions serve to inform us about the significance assigned to these elements in Audran's arabesque designs. They also can be seen as metaphorical bookends of Audran's career: the early commission at the Ménagerie and the commission at Réveillon, one of his last.

At the time of Audran's first commission, in 1699, Louis XIV's absolute monarchy had been established for almost forty years. During that time, the fine arts and decorative arts had been organized and were flourishing under the administration of Jean-Baptiste Colbert (continuing even after his death in 1683).

While Claude III Audran's arabesques took some cues from grotesques found on the walls of the Domus Aurea, they often departed sharply from the ancient model. His continued success stemmed from his expertise and ability to bring fresh ideas to the delight of his patrons. Rather than seek historic revival of ancient designs, Audran's patrons followed the trends in the arabesque that were developed for royal residences. The nouveaux riches among them hoped to affirm their own wealth and taste by adopting forms favored by those who were more firmly established.

Satisfying the refined taste of patrons such as the duc de Vendôme, the Dauphin and especially Louis XIV imparted an elite status to Audran's work because these patrons belonged to the hereditary nobility that boasted lineage dating from the fifth century. Their pedigree assured their high social status and assumed the cultivation of inherent virtue and the continuation of notable achievements as a birthright. Special privileges accorded to the nobility and their possession of wealth fostered a high degree of prestige and independent power, which threatened the young Louis XIV during the Fronde uprising. As a consequence, the King assiduously sought to exclude the hereditary nobility from the government in order to wrest political power from them, thus decreasing their ability to challenge the monarchy.

Jacob van Heemskerck

SHIPS WITH THE NAME JACOB VAN HEEMSKERCK

The first ship with this name was the yacht on which Abel Tasman sailed when he discovered the island which he called Van Diemensland which later became Tasmania.

During this voyage he also discovered New Zealand in December 1642, the Fiji Islands and the Friendship Islands in 1643. This Heemskerck is considered to be a merchant vessel and therefore not

included in the number of navy ships named after Admiral J. van Heemskerck.

The second Heemskerck was a schooner built in 1803 which served as flagship for admiral VerHuell and operated against Dunkirk. It was broken up in 1821.

The third Heemskerck was a heavily armed coastal defence ship launched in 1906. In 1908 she took part in operations against Venezuela. At the start of the First World War she remained in the Caribbean because of the presence of the German cruiser Karlsruhe. At the outbreak of the Second World War she served as ‘battery ship’ in the harbour of IJmuiden and was scuttled by her crew. She was raised after the war.

Six Holland-class “pantserdekschepen” (protected cruisers) were built in two groups of three ships. They succeeded the ship-rigged unprotected cruisers of the Atjeh-class also classified as “steam frigates”. Being faster but without sails they had a large endurance capable to negotiate the considerable distances in the East Indies Archipelago.

ARMOURED CRUISERS

From the late 1850s navies began to substitute their wooden ships-of-the-line by ironclad warships. However, the frigates and sloops which carried out scouting, raiding, and merchant ship protection remained unarmoured. For several decades it proved difficult to design a ship with any substantial amount of protective armour and capable of the speed and range required of a ‘cruising warship’. The first attempt to design armoured cruisers like the British HMS Shannon, proved to be unsatisfactory. Generally these ships were too slow for their cruiser role. HMS Shannon was the last Royal Navy ironclad to be built with a propeller that could be hoisted to reduce drag when she was under sail and the first ship to have an armoured deck. During the 1870s the increasing firepower of armour-piercing guns made armouring the hull of a ship more difficult as heavier armour plates were required. Even if the weight of armour dominated the design of the ship it was likely that the next generation of guns would be able to pierce it. The alternative was to leave the sides of the ship vulnerable but to armour a deck just below the waterline. Since this deck would only be struck very obliquely by shells it could be less thick than belt armour.

DUTCH EAST INDIES TILL 1890

It can be maintained with some exaggeration that until the end of the First World War the Dutch East Indies existed by grace of the Royal Netherlands Navy. The East Indies meant trade competition but they were no longer a geopolitical threat to the British interests in Asia. Great Britain had an interest in maintaining the existing colonial political relations. This to avoid that another European power would settle itself in the East Indies Archipelago. The British however were during a long time the only ones who could pose a threat to the Dutch Indies.

A complex woman whose controversial life inspired novels and essays, Hortense Mancini (1646–1699) eloquently exemplifies the difficulties that early modern women endured in their lives and their agency in resolving them. Her marriage to an abusive man with whom she had little in common led her to flee beyond his control across numerous European countries. Although she resided only six weeks in Milan, then part of the Spanish Monarchy, the journeys she undertook evince how, and in what conditions, noblewomen fled their place of origin, often at great risk not only to their physical health, but to their social standing. Accused of infidelity by her husband, Armand-Charles de La Porte de La Meilleraye (1632–1713), governor of Alsace and lieutenant general of Brittany, she endeavored to justify her transgressive behavior in her Mémoires, which she published in 1675. Despite her reputation, she gained the personal protection and financial support of the kings of France and England, as well as of the duke of Savoy. After her initial flight from Paris and constant travels throughout Europe, impelled by her desire to lead her own life, her last years were spent in London, where she was publicly active and presided over a literary salon that enriched the English court through its dissemination of French and Italian culture.

The vast polycentric territories known as the Spanish Monarchy, expanded through the dynastic policies of the Habsburgs and stretched across the European continent and overseas, gave its diverse subjects, bound by religion and a distant government apparatus, possibilities of movement that allowed for imminent personal and social changes, whether in pursuit of what they thought could lead to their well-being or as an escape from that which they perceived caused them harm. The geopolitical expansion of the early modern period, intrinsically linked to both the emergent humanist understanding of past cultures and the external world, in turn fomenting self-knowledge and interiority, opened increasing opportunities for men and women of all ranks to attain an unprecedented sense of intellectual and physical freedom. While most who traveled did so on account of concrete human needs, the awareness of new worlds so recently within reach nevertheless awakened many to the realization of their potential advancement and transformation.

One of the corollaries of increased mobilization was the consolidation of the Spanish Monarchy under the Habsburg emperor Charles V. With the European counterparts of Flanders and the Aragonese kingdoms of Sardinia, Sicily, and Naples already under his rule, the recently colonized territories further extended the empire's global reach. Yet the human consequences of these migratory movements would weigh heavily on history, as they incited indigenous resistance, material exploitation, and the imposition of slavery, all the while spreading Christianity and promoting cultural transference.

New research and archival discoveries have recently confirmed that throughout Europe and throughout the transnational territory of the Spanish Monarchy, women in the early modern era conducted business both in commerce and in production (Martín Romera 2009). Cassandra Grimaldo is a good example of a businesswoman who took advantage of the close relations between the Spanish Monarchy and Genoese commercial interests. She built a career for herself, traveling from her birthplace to the Iberian Peninsula to live. Her experience illustrates the options for women like her who left their home kingdoms to advance themselves economically through their own efforts.

Cassandra was born in Genoa sometime in the 1540s and died in Madrid in 1618. Her mother, Julia Cybo, and her father, the businessman Nicolao Grimaldo, had three sons and seven daughters. The family did not have a noble title, though they may have aspired to one. Nicolao Grimaldo made a fortune as a financier for the Spanish Monarchy during the second half of the sixteenth century. He and his colleagues transferred and exchanged currencies and accepted deposits that they then loaned to their monarchs. They also conducted international commercial transactions (Álvarez Nogal 2022, 27–53). Theirs was an itinerant profession, and throughout the early modern era it was increasingly common for wives and children to travel with them (Mazzei 2009, 60).

The Andean territory of Peru, conquered and pacified by the Spanish Monarchy during the sixteenth century, constituted an open frontier that not only made possible but also encouraged colonial women's robust participation in almost exclusively male spheres of action, such as in the military and in politics, and advanced the prospect of vertiginous social ascent to even the lowest socio-economic class. Not a few Spanish women seized the opportunities afforded them in this new world by risking the perilous journey across the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific coast. Yet these women's histories have remained little known despite their importance, and we have scant knowledge of the difficulties they had to face upon arrival, the contributions they made, or how they strategized to position themselves in the nascent colonial society.

This chapter investigates the extraordinary role played by one of the first Spanish women who emigrated to Peru in the sixteenth century, Inés Muñoz de Ribera (c. 1510–1594). Despite her lower-class origins, she became a settler and an encomendera. In 1573, she founded and endowed one of Lima's most important monasteries, the Monastery of La Concepción, where, twice widowed, she professed as a nun and became its abbess (Vargas Ugarte 1960; Cobo 1956a).

In 1940 it was decided to order a number of Tribal class destroyers for the Canadian navy from British yards. These ships were ordered from Vickers- Armstrongs (Tyne) in Great Britain.

The reason was that Canada did not have sufficient skilled workers to build these ships and it was virtually impossible to get sufficient professional support from Britain. Contrary to the Australian government which had ships built on their own yards. The order for the first two ships was placed at the beginning of 1940 followed for the next two by the end of that year. In June 1941 another two vessels were ordered but this time from the Halifax Shipyard. The engines were supplied by J.Inglis & Co. A final two were ordered from the same yard in 1943. The last four ships were finished after the end of WWII and therefore not see active duty in this period.

Tribal destroyer

Because the first ships were not ordered until 1940 use could be made of the hard lessons that had already been learned during wartime by the British ships as well as what should be demanded from a destroyer. ‘Improved technology could be implemented in the Canadian ships as they were built. For instance the air defence systems were too weak and this could be modified in the design.

The later hulls were strengthened during building as pounding at high speed in rough seas had weakened the earlier hulls, wich had to be stiffened during refits.