About: Benjamin J. Kaplan

Benjamin Jacob Kaplan (born 31 January 1960) is a historian and professor of Dutch history at University College London and the University of Amsterdam. He taught at University of Iowa.He is a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow. According to The New York Times, in his 2007 book Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe, Kaplan "maintains that religious toleration declined from around 1550 to 1750," and that Europeans responded by devising "intricate boundaries allowing them to live more or less peaceably with neighbors whose rival beliefs were anathema."