Remembering The English Civil Wars

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.

Following the execution of Charles I in January 1649, England's fledgling republic was faced with a dilemma: which parts of the nation's bloody recent past should be remembered, and how, and which were best consigned to oblivion? Across the country, the state's opponents, local communities, and individual citizens were grappling with many of the same questions, as calls for remembrance vied with the competing goals of reconciliation, security, and the peaceful settlement of the state. Recollection in the Republics provides the first comprehensive study of the ways Britain's Civil Wars were remembered in the decade between the regicide and the restoration. Drawing on a wide-ranging and innovative source base, it places the national authorities' attempts to shape the meaning of the recent past alongside evidence of what the English people - lords and labourers, men and women, veterans and civilians - actually were remembering. Recollection in the Replublics demonstrates that memories of the domestic conflicts were central to the politics and society of England's republican interval, inflecting national and local discourses, complicating and transforming inter-personal relationships, and infusing and forging individual and collective identities. In so doing, it enhances our understanding of the nature of early modern memory and the experience of post-civil war states more broadly. Memory was a multifaceted, dynamic resource, and this book emphasises its fecundity, the manifold meanings it possessed, and the creativity of those who deployed it. Further, by situating 1650s England in relation to other post-conflict societies, both within and beyond early modernity, it points to a consistency in some of the challenges that have confronted post-civil war states across time and space.

Drawing upon the interdisciplinary field of social memory studies, this book opens up new vistas on the historical and political culture of early modern England. This book examines the conflicting ways in which the civil wars and Interregnum were remembered, constructed and represented in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England. It argues that during the late Stuart period, public remembering of the English civil wars and Interregnum was not concerned with re-fighting the old struggle but rather with commending and justifying, or contesting and attacking, the Restoration settlements. After the return of King Charles II the political nation had to address the question of remembering and forgetting the recent conflict. The answer was to construct a polity grounded on remembering and scapegoating puritan politics and piety. The proscription of the puritan impulse enacted by the Restoration settlements was supported by a public memory of the 1640s and 1650s which was used to show that Dissenters could not, and should not, be trusted with power. Drawing upon the interdisciplinary field of social memory studies, this book offers a new perspective on the historical and political cultures of early modern England, and will be of significant interest to social, cultural and political historians aswell as scholars working in memory studies. Matthew Neufeld is Lecturer in early modern British history at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada.

Following the execution of Charles I in January 1649, England's fledgling republic was faced with a dilemma: which parts of the nation's bloody recent past should be remembered, and how, and which were best consigned to oblivion? Across the country, the state's opponents, local communities, and individual citizens were grappling with many of the same questions, as calls for remembrance vied with the competing goals of reconciliation, security, and the peaceful settlement of the state. This book provides a comprehensive study of the ways Britain's Civil Wars were remembered in the decade between the regicide and the restoration. Drawing on a wide-ranging and innovative source base, it places the national authorities' attempts to shape the meaning of the recent past alongside evidence of what the English people - lords and labourers, men and women, veterans and civilians - actually were remembering.

A brilliant appraisal of the Civil War and its long-term consequences, by an acclaimed historian. The political upheaval of the mid-seventeenth century has no parallel in English history. Other events have changed the occupancy and the powers of the throne, but the conflict of 1640-60 was more dramatic: the monarchy and the House of Lords were abolished, to be replaced by a republic and military rule. In this wonderfully readable account, Blair Worden explores the events of this period and their origins - the war between King and Parliament, the execution of Charles I, Cromwell's rule and the Restoration - while aiming to reveal something more elusive: the motivations of contemporaries on both sides and the concerns of later generations.

Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation

Remembering the Jagiellonians is the first study of international memories of the Jagiellonians (1386–1596), one of the most powerful but lesser known royal dynasties of Renaissance Europe. It explores how the Jagiellonian dynasty has been remembered since the early modern period and assesses its role in the development of competing modern national identities across Central, Eastern and Northern Europe. Offering a wide-ranging panoramic analysis of Jagiellonian memory over five hundred years, this book includes coverage of numerous present-day European countries, ranging from Bavaria to Kiev, and from Stockholm to the Adriatic. In doing so, it allows for a large, multi-way comparison of how one shared phenomenon has been, and still is, remembered in over a dozen neighbouring countries. Specialists in the history of Europe are brought together to apply the latest questions from memory theory and to combine them with debates from social science, medieval and early modern European history to engage in an international and interdisciplinary exploration into the relationship between memory and dynasty through time. The first book to present the Jagiellonians' supranational history in English, Remembering the Jagiellonians opens key discussions about the regional memory of Europe and considers the ongoing role of the Jagiellonians in modern-day culture and politics. It is essential reading for students of early modern and late medieval Europe, ninteenth-century nationalism and the history of memory.

This stimulating volume explores how the memory of the Reformation has been remembered, forgotten, contested, and reinvented between the sixteenth and twenty-first centuries. Remembering the Reformation traces how a complex, protracted, and unpredictable process came to be perceived, recorded, and commemorated as a transformative event. Exploring both local and global patterns of memory, the contributors examine the ways in which the Reformation embedded itself in the historical imagination and analyse the enduring, unstable, and divided legacies that it engendered. The book also underlines how modern scholarship is indebted to processes of memory-making initiated in the early modern period and challenges the conventional models of periodisation that the Reformation itself helped to create. This collection of essays offers an expansive examination and theoretically engaged discussion of concepts and practices of memory and Reformation. This volume is ideal for upper level undergraduates and postgraduates studying the Reformation, Early Modern Religious History, Early Modern European History, and Early Modern Literature.