Analyses the different ways in which historians over the last three centuries have tried to explain the causes, course and consequences of the English Revolution
This book is the first in-depth study of the way in which historians have dealt with the coming of the American Revolution and the formation of the US Constitution. The approach is thematic, examining how historians in different periods interpreted these events and their causes and, more contentiously, their meaning. Making accessible to modern readers the work of often-neglected early historians, this book examines how the emergence of history as a professional discipline led to new and competing versions of the history of the Revolution. It spans the entire period from the first generation of writers, whose ideas about history were shaped by the Enlightenment, to those of the twenty-first century who drew on the rich legacy provided by black studies, gender and women’s studies, cultural studies and ethnohistory. This book will be an invaluable resource for all students and scholars of the American Revolution.
Dr Richardson explains why the English Revolution remains so controversial and examines how and why historians have approached the subject over the past centuries.
In a series of debates with Oliver Cromwell in Civil War England of 1647, the Levellers argued for democracy for the first time in British history. Evolving from Oliver Cromwell's New Model army in Parliament's struggle against King Charles I, the Levellers pushed for the removal of corruption in parliament, universal voting rights and religious toleration. This came to a head with the famous debates between the Levellers and Cromwell at St Mary's church in Putney, London. Renowned human-rights lawyer and author Geoffrey Robertson argues for the relevance of the Levellers' stand today, showing how they were the first Western radical democrats.
This book deals with the various types of revolutionary history and the numerous schools of historical thought concerned with the French Revolution. By the time of the Bicentenary celebrations in 1989, the historiographical field had been opened up so much that it was impossible to speak with certainty about any kind of new 'orthodoxy' at all. The fact that the decade and a half following the Bicentenary offered up its own hotchpotch of theorising merely confirmed this. The survey of writings presents a cross-section of historians of the Revolution from the early nineteenth century right up to the present day. From liberals to conservatives and from Marxists to revisionists, it focuses on those individuals who are generally perceived to be the 'major' or 'pre-eminent' figures within revolutionary historiography. A ‘history of the histories’, this book will be an ideal starting point for those students seeking to better-understand the French Revolution and its history.
This Handbook brings together leading historians of the events surrounding the English revolution, exploring how the events of the revolution grew out of, and resonated, in the politics and interactions of the each of the Three Kingdoms--England, Scotland, and Ireland. It captures a shared British and Irish history, comparing the significance of events and outcomes across the Three Kingdoms. In doing so, the Handbook offers a broader context for the history of the Scottish Covenanters, the Irish Rising of 1641, and the government of Confederate Ireland, as well as the British and Irish perspective on the English civil wars, the English revolution, the Regicide, and Cromwellian period. The Oxford Handbook of the English Revolution explores the significance of these events on a much broader front than conventional studies. The events are approached not simply as political, economic, and social crises, but as challenges to the predominant forms of religious and political thought, social relations, and standard forms of cultural expression. The contributors provide up-to-date analysis of the political happenings, considering the structures of social and political life that shaped and were re-shaped by the crisis. The Handbook goes on to explore the long-term legacies of the crisis in the Three Kingdoms and their impact in a wider European context.
From the most important feminist scholar of early modern Britain in the UK, this is a fascinating and unique examination of how the experience of the civil wars in England changed both role and conception of women and men in politics, society and culture.
John Morrill has been at the forefront of modern attempts to explain the origins, nature and consequences of the English Revolution. These twenty essays -- seven either specially written or reproduced from generally inaccessible sources -- illustrate the main scholarly debates to which he has so richly contributed: the tension between national and provincial politics; the idea of the English Revolution as "the last of the European Wars of Religion''; its British dimension; and its political sociology. Taken together, they offer a remarkably coherent account of the period as a whole.