Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction: experience other than our own
- 1 The shape of the seventeenth century
- Part I England's troubles 1618–89: Political instability
- 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
- Sources cited
- Index
13 - Radical renaissance (1): after monarchy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction: experience other than our own
- 1 The shape of the seventeenth century
- Part I England's troubles 1618–89: Political instability
- 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
- Sources cited
- Index
Summary
Hobbes indeed doth scurrilously deride Cicero, Plato and Aristotle, caeterosque Romanae & Graecae anarchiae fautores. But' tis strange that this anarchy … that can have no strength and regular action, should overthrow all the monarchies that came within their reach … I desire it may be considered whether it were an easy work to conquer Switzerland: Whether the Hollanders are of greater strength since the recovery of their liberty, or when they groaned under the yoke of Spain: And lastly, whether the entire conquest of Scotland and Ireland, the victories obtained against the Hollanders when they were in the height of their power, and the reputation to which England did rise in less than five years after 1648, be good marks of the instability, disorder and weakness of free nations?
Algernon Sidney, Discourses Concerning GovernmentINTRODUCTION
Much modern historical discussion of the English revolution has been governed by attempts to appropriate it. As revolutions are considered the harbingers of modernity, no revolutionary entrails have been inspected more fastidiously than the English. One consequence is the elision of a historical ‘other’ into an anticipation of ourselves. The other is sectarianisation: the intrusion of the modern need to categorise and subdivide.
To this generalisation the historiography of English republicanism, despite its quality, is no exception. Over the last generation the concepts of republicanism in general, and classical republicanism in particular, have enjoyed a spectacular rise to prominence. Informing this has been a specific debate about ‘the ideological origins of the American revolution’. A recent article assures us that ‘a wide variety of pamphleteers in the 1650s understood that it was possible to be modern’.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- England's TroublesSeventeenth-Century English Political Instability in European Context, pp. 290 - 316Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000