Religion Revolution And English Radicalism

This book examines the social and political activities of the English Dissenters in the age of the American Revolution. By comparing sermons, political pamphlets, and election ephemera to poll books, city directories, and baptismal registers, this book offers an integrated approach to the study of ideology and behavior.

The essays in this collection explore a number of significant questions regarding the terms 'radical' and 'radicalism' in early modern English contexts. They investigate whether we can speak of a radical tradition, and whether radicalism was a local, national or transnational phenomenon. In so doing this volume examines the exchange of ideas and texts in the history of supposedly radical events, ideologies and movements (or moments). Once at the cutting edge of academic debate radicalism had, until very recently, fallen prey to historiographical trends as scholars increasingly turned their attention to more mainstream experiences or reactionary forces. While acknowledging the importance of those perspectives, Varieties of seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century English radicalism in context offers a reconsideration of the place of radicalism within the early modern period. It sets out to examine the subject in original and exciting ways by adopting distinctively new and broader perspectives. Among the crucial issues addressed are problems of definition and how meanings can evolve; context; print culture; language and interpretative techniques; literary forms and rhetorical strategies that conveyed, or deliberately disguised, subversive meanings; and the existence of a single, continuous English radical tradition. Taken together the essays in this collection offer a timely reassessment of the subject, reflecting the latest research on the theme of seventeenth-century English radicalism as well as offering some indications of the phenomenon's transnational contexts. Indeed, there is a sense here of the complexity and variety of the subject although much work still remains to be done on radicals and radicalism - both in early modern England and especially beyond.

A study of three centuries of radical ideas and activity in English political and social history.

Questions of religion lay at the center of the 'glorious flux' of politics and society in the English Revolution. In particular, the radicalism of the period stemmed directly from religious dissent. These eight essays offer a fresh survey of the popular religious movements and ideas between 1640 and 1660 which were the driving force behind the radical politics of the Revolution. Focusing on the Quakers, Levellers, Baptists, and other groups that existed outside the ruling Stuart society, the contributors highlight the social, political, and economic significance of many of these groups in 17th-century England.

Papers from a conference held in New York, N.Y., Nov.1980, under the auspicies of the Institute for Research in History.