England's Troubles
England's Troubles
In this path-breaking study, first published in 2000, Jonathan Scott argues that seventeenth-century English history was shaped by three processes. The first was destructive: that experience of political instability which contemporaries called 'our troubles'. The second was creative: its spectacular intellectual consequence in the English revolution. The third was reconstructive: the long restoration voyage toward safe haven from these terrifying storms. Driving the troubles were fears and passions animated by European religious and political developments. The result registered the impact upon fragile institutions of powerful beliefs. One feature of this analysis is its relationship of the history of events to that of ideas. Another is its consideration of these processes across the century as a whole. The most important is its restoration of this extraordinary English experience to its European context.
- A wholly original, pioneering study of the broad canvas of English seventeenth-century history, bursting with new ideas and interpretations
- A study unique in the literature on seventeenth-century England by placing English history in its European context
- Likely to become essential reading for all students of the period, by offering a rounded, contextualised analysis of the 'century of conflict'
Reviews & endorsements
"Breathtaking in its scope, magisterial in its thesis...The work is magnificent and will spark widespread discussion for a very long time." Richard L. Greaves, Florida State University
"Shot through with brilliance and an extraordinarily powerful historical intelligence...I have been excited, challenged and awed by much that I have read." John Morrill, University of Cambridge
"We have had no interpretative synthesis as original or as comprehensive since Hill's Century of Revolution...The elegance and sweep of Scott's approach really deserves to make the book a focus of discussion for all early modernists." Glenn Burgess, University of Hull
"A work of unsurpassed imagination, unrelenting originality and unabashed boldness...It is brimming with originality and stuffed with insights that make it the most stimulating book on seventeenth-century history to have appeared in years, if not decades." Times Literary Supplement
"...this volume willprove a seminal study in reconceiving Stuart political history." American Historical Review
Product details
June 2000Hardback
9780521411929
560 pages
229 × 152 × 35 mm
0.99kg
Available
Table of Contents
- Preface
- Introduction: experience other than our own
- 1. The shape of the seventeenth century
- Part I. England's Troubles, 1618–89: Political Instability:
- 2. Taking contemporary belief seriously
- 3. The unreformed polity
- 4. Reformation politics (1) 1618–41
- 5. Counter-reformation England
- 6. Reformation politics (2) 1637–6
- 7. Restoration memory
- 8. Restoration crisis 1678–83
- 9. Invasion 1688–9
- Part II. The English Revolution 1640–89: Radical Imagination:
- 10. The shape of the English Revolution
- 11. Radical reformation (1): the power of love
- 12. Radical reformation (2): outward bondage
- 13. Radical renaissance (1): after monarchy
- 14. Radical renaissance (2): republican moral philosophy and the politics of settlement
- 15. Radical restoration (1): the subjected plaine
- 16. Radical restoration (2): the old cause
- Part III. Restoration 1660–1702: Reconstruction and Statebuilding:
- 17. Restoration process
- 18. First restoration 1660–78
- 19. 'Second Restauration' 1679–85
- 20. Third restoration 1688–94
- 21. Anglo-Dutch statebuilding.
