CEMS recently hosted Professor Nicholas Terpstra (University of Toronto) on behalf of ICCEMS for a public lecture at the National Library of Australia, “Moving Targets: Finding Young People in the Early Modern World.”

Professor Terpstra explored where we find young people in the early modern world and what is distinctive about youth during this period. Through an examination of the diverse experiences of Glückel of Hameln, the Tenshō embassy, al-Hasan Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fasi, Marie-Joseph Angélique and Ayuba Suleiman Diallo, Terpstra invokes a global history of early modern youth.

According to Terpstra, if there was anything characteristic of the youth experience in the early modern period, it was mobility. Furthermore, the majority of youths who travelled globally were under duress. The slave economy was built on youths, who not only made up the majority of those enslaved into the Americas (17 being the average age), but were also often the organisers of enslavement. Professional European youths travelled extensively, for education and as journeymen. Non-European youths also travelled to Europe for similar reasons, as with the Tenshō embassy in 1582 or the young nobles sent to Europe by Afonso I of Kongo earlier that century for priestly training.

Youths were also the main movers and shakers in the transformation and dissemination of Christianity. The Reformation, Terpstra points out, was a youth movement, triggered by men in their twenties. It was also youths who were sent out as missionaries.

This fascinating lecture revealed that, when we consider the early modern period, we should remember that youths were the most active agents and victims.