Remembering Early Modern Revolutions

Remembering Early Modern Revolutions is the first study of memory in relation to the major revolutions of the early modern period. Beginning with the English revolutions of the seventeenth century (1642–60 and 1688–9), this book also explores the American, French and Haitian revolutions. Through addressing these events collectively, this volume demonstrates the interconnectedness of these revolutions in the contemporary mind and highlights the importance of invoking the memory of prior revolutions in order both to warn of the dangers of revolution and to legitimate radical political change. It also unpicks the different ways in which these events were presented and their memory utilised, uncovering the importance of geographical and temporal contexts to the processes of remembering and forgetting. Examining both personal and collective remembrance and exploring both private recollection and public commemoration, Remembering Early Modern Revolutions uncovers the rich and powerful memory of revolution in the Atlantic world and is ideal for students and teachers of memory in the early modern period.

Understanding why revolutions take place when they do, and as they do, is important in itself. Understanding how they are rooted in the societies they upend – and the ways in which those societies share crucial similarities – is arguably even more so. The enduring influence of Jack Goldstone's Revolution and Rebellion lies as much in the challenge that it issues to the long-dominant model of ‘western exceptionalism’ (the idea that it was early modern Europe's distinctive history that launched it on the path to world domination) as it does in the book's persuasive account of revolutions rooted in a four stage process that advances from fiscal crisis, through inter-elite conflict and mass-mobilization potential, to the breakdown and re-making of culture and ideology. It can be argued that this unexpected outcome – one that the author himself did not anticipate – is the product of an acute problem-solving ability, one that made Goldstone particularly receptive to alternative possibilities. His insistence that early modern and modern European and Asian peoples have vastly more in common than was generally recognised, and followed a similar path of advanced organic development that left Qing China as vulnerable to revolution as the France of the Ancien Régime, has not only become a central contention of early 21st century sociology; it has also underpinned the creation of multiple theoretical models that have nothing to do with revolution. None of this would have been possible had not Goldstone challenged himself by asking questions that other scholars had supposed had mundane answers.

What can the great crises of the past teach us about contemporary revolutions? Arguing from an exciting and original perspective, Goldstone suggests that great revolutions were the product of 'ecological crises' that occurred when inflexible political, economic, and social institutions were overwhelmed by the cumulative pressure of population growth on limited available resources. Moreover, he contends that the causes of the great revolutions of Europe—the English and French revolutions—were similar to those of the great rebellions of Asia, which shattered dynasties in Ottoman Turkey, China, and Japan. The author observes that revolutions and rebellions have more often produced a crushing state orthodoxy than liberal institutions, leading to the conclusion that perhaps it is vain to expect revolution to bring democracy and economic progress. Instead, contends Goldstone, the path to these goals must begin with respect for individual liberty rather than authoritarian movements of 'national liberation.' Arguing that the threat of revolution is still with us, Goldstone urges us to heed the lessons of the past. He sees in the United States a repetition of the behavior patterns that have led to internal decay and international decline in the past, a situation calling for new leadership and careful attention to the balance between our consumption and our resources. Meticulously researched, forcefully argued, and strikingly original, Revolutions and Rebellions in the Early Modern World is a tour de force by a brilliant young scholar. It is a book that will surely engender much discussion and debate.

This volume examines the practice of memory in early modern Europe, showing that this was already a multimedia affair with many political uses, and affecting people at all levels of society; many pre-modern memory practices persist until today.

This book examines 'seditious memories' in the Restoration period. It reveals the social depth of opposition to the Stuarts and the Church of England, and asks why people were prepared to take the risk of voicing their resistance in public.

Remembering the English Civil Wars is the first collection of essays to explore how the bloody struggle which took place between the supporters of king and parliament during the 1640s was viewed in retrospect. The English Civil Wars were perhaps the most calamitous series of conflicts in the country’s recorded history. Over the past twenty years there has been a surge of interest in the way that the Civil Wars were remembered by the men, women and children who were unfortunate enough to live through them. The essays brought together in this book not only provide a clear and accessible introduction to this fast-developing field of study but also bring together the voices of a diverse group of scholars who are working at its cutting edge. Through the investigation of a broad, but closely interrelated, range of topics – including elite, popular, urban and local memories of the wars, as well as the relationships between civil war memory and ceremony, material culture and concepts of space and place – the essays contained in this volume demonstrate, with exceptional vividness and clarity, how the people of England and Wales continued to be haunted by the ghosts of the mid-century conflict throughout the decades which followed. The book will be essential reading for all students of the English Civil Wars, Stuart Britain and the history of memory.

This work chronicles the ways in which the Irish revolution was remembered in the first two decades of independence by significant nationalist intellectuals: Eimar O'Duffy, P.S. O'Hegarty, George Russell, and Desmond Ryan. It provides a lively account of their controversial critiques of the revolution, and an intimate portrait of their lives and times.

This book considers the English Civil Wars and the civil wars in Scotland and Ireland through the lens of historical fiction—primarily fiction for the young. The text argues that the English Civil War lies at the heart of English and Irish political identities and considers how these identities have been shaped over the past three centuries in part by the children’s literature that has influenced the popular memory of the English Civil War. Examining nearly two hundred works of historical fiction, Farah Mendlesohn reveals the delicate interplay between fiction and history.