Understanding Popular Violence in the English Revolution
Understanding Popular Violence in the English Revolution
$156.00
USDThis is a critical re-evaluation of one of the best known episodes of crowd action in the English Revolution, in which crowds in their thousands invaded and plundered the houses of the landed classes. The so-called Stour Valley riots have become accepted as the paradigm of class hostility, determining plebeian behaviour within the Revolution. An excercise in micro-history, the book questions this dominant reading by trying to understand the inter-related contexts of local responses to the political and religious counter-revolution of the 1630s and the confessional politics of the early 1640s. It explains both the outbreak of popular 'violence' and its ultimate containment in terms of a popular (and parliamentary) political culture that legitimised attacks on the political, but not the social, order. The book also advances a series of general arguments for reading crowd actions, and questions how the history of the English Revolution has been written.
- Offers a penetrating re-evaluation and critique of one of the most celebrated events of the period before the Civil War in England
- Makes an original argument for the existence of popular political - and parliamentarian - culture
- Proposes a new model for analysing crowd action which emphasises context, rather than abstraction, and which helps us understand what 'action' really means
Reviews & endorsements
"Based on a wealth of local and national sources, fully documented, and eminently readable, Understanding Popular Violence in the English Revolution should become a classic and find a place on the shelves of professional historians and university libraries." Elizabeth Lane Furdell, History
"...an unusually successful exercise in micro-history." Journal of Interdisciplinary History
"This book makes a major contribution to our understanding of the role of the people in the English Revolution through an exercise in microhistory...This is a model study which deserves a wide readership." American Historical Review
"John Walter's splendid new book captures the reader's attention from the very first line...This is a marvelous book by a scholar at the very height of his powers: all serious students of eary modern England should read it." Albion
Product details
June 1999Hardback
9780521651868
374 pages
236 × 160 × 29 mm
0.67kg
1 map
Available
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Part I. The Event:
- 1. An event and its history
- 2. The attacks
- Part II. Contextualising the Crowd:
- 3. Contextualising crowd actions I: the micro-politics of the attack on Sir John Lucas
- 4. Contextualising crowd actions II: the high politics of the attack on Sir John Lucas
- 5. The confessional crowd I: the attack on ministers
- 6. The confessional crowd II: the attack on Catholics
- Part III. Reading the Crowd:
- 7. Reading the crowds I: cloth and class
- 8. Reading the crowds II: anti-popery and popular parliamentarianism
- 9. Conclusion.
