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This microhistory reconstructs and analyses a protracted legal dispute over a small parcel of land called Warrens Court in Nibley, Gloucestershire, which was contested between successive generations of two families from the mid-sixteenth century to the early eighteenth century. Employing a rich cache of archival material, Jason Peacey traces legal contestation over time and through a range of different courts, as well as in Parliament and the public domain, and contends that a microhistorical approach makes it possible to shed valuable light upon the legal and political culture of early modern England, not least by comprehending how certain disputes became protracted and increasingly bitter,...
This book assesses how print culture transformed the political nation, at the level of everyday political practices, habits and thought.
This collection offers a timely reappraisal of the origins and nature of the first British empire, in response to the ‘cultural turn’ in historical scholarship and the ‘new imperial history’. It addresses topics that have been neglected in recent literature, providing a series of political and institutional perspective; at the same time it recognises the importance of developments across the empire, not least in terms of how they affected imperial ‘policy’ and its implementation. It analyses a range of contemporary debates and ideas – political and intellectual as well as religious and administrative – relating to political economy, legal geography and sovereignty, as well as the messy realities of the imperial project, including the costs and losses of empire, collectively and individually.
The English civil wars radically altered many aspects of mid-seventeenth century life, simultaneously creating a period of intense uncertainty and unheralded opportunity. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the printing and publishing industry, which between 1640 and 1660 produced a vast number of tracts and pamphlets on a bewildering variety of subjects. Many of these where of a highly political nature, the publication of which would have been unthinkable just a few years before. Whilst scholars have long recognised the importance of these publications, and have studied in depth what was written in them, much less work has been done on why they were produced. In this book Dr Peacey first...
This collection examines political communication in early modern Britain. Leading historians of the period scrutinise relations between centre and locality and how the state interacted with its citizens. They place communication at the heart of both political and social history to provide an impetus for further scholarship.
The events surrounding the trial of Charles I have been remarkably understudied by historians, despite a wealth of information regarding both the proceedings and personalities involved, and contemporary responses and reactions. These essays submit one of the most momentous events in English history to rigorous scholarship, contextualise it in the light of recent historiography, not least regarding relations between the three kingdoms of Britain.
Cheap print moved across Europe in surprising ways, crossing unusual distances by unusual routes and by unusual means. Pedlars, news, and cheap print defy the conventional categories and models of distribution: we need to think about their extraordinary diversity, and about the means by which their unstable cultural images inflect distribution. Books were not dead things, and the examination of Italy, the Netherlands and Britain, three regions that contain instructive parallels and contrasts, reveals their unpredictable liveliness. This collection of essays, which emerges from transnational dialogues about pedlars and commerce and communication, examines the various means by which cheap print moved across Europe, and the cultural and material and economic premises of the European landscape of print. Contributors include: Alberto Milano; Jason Peacey; Jeroen Salman; Jo Thijssen; Joad Raymond; Joop Koopmans; Karen Bowen; Kate Peters; Melissa Calaresu; Roeland Harms; Rosa Salzberg; Sean Shesgreen.
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 innova...
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