Perspectives on English Revolutionary Republicanism


Book Description

Perspectives on English Revolutionary Republicanism takes stock of developments in the scholarship of seventeenth-century English republicanism by looking at the movements and schools of thought that have shaped the field over the decades: the linguistic turn, the cultural turn and the religious turn. While scholars of seventeenth-century republicanism share their enthusiasm for their field, they have approached their subject in diverse ways. The contributors to the present volume have taken the opportunity to bring these approaches together in a number of case studies covering republican language, republican literary and political culture, and republican religion, to paint a lively picture of the state of the art in republican scholarship. The volume begins with three chapters influenced by the theory and methodology of the linguistic turn, before moving on to address cultural history approaches to English republicanism, including both literary culture and (practical) political culture. The final section of the volume looks at how religion intersected with ideas of republican thought. Taken together the essays demonstrate the vitality and diversity of what was once regarded as a narrow topic of political research.







The Green and the Red


Book Description

After 1848 political revolution disappears in England and grows in Ireland. Like countries in southern and eastern Europe, Ireland was not developing its population, technology, wealth, or its middle class as was England. Celtic Ireland was at the edge of extinction. How did the Irish turn this around? There were three kinds of response to this challenge: One acquiescence, supporting the Act of Union with ‘Great Britain’ (1800); Two, compromise, partial administrative repeal of the Act of Union, ‘Home Rule’; Three, fight for an independent Irish republic by revolutionary means, like George Washington in 1776. Our analysis focuses on the third response, the Fenians, but the others are always in the picture. How do the Fenians expect to make a revolution successfully? English monarchs, Tory politicians, and English governments spared no military cost to prevent any George Washington allied with France or Germany at their back-door. To discover the revolutionary answers to our question the author goes to the general history and to a detailed analysis of the Fenian social organization, leadership, value perspectives during four time periods. What is the movement’s desired future, republican (‘green’) or socialist (‘red’)? What are the consequences for Ireland, its classes, castes, and groups?




Women Writing the English Republic, 1625–1681


Book Description

Scholars have fiercely debated the causes of the English Civil Wars and the rise of anti-monarchical and republican thought a century before the American Revolution. This ambitious and highly original book is the first to argue that women played a significant role in formulating and enacting English republican precepts. Even as feminists contend that republicanism's division of the private from the public sphere excluded women from political power, Gillespie demonstrates how seventeenth-century Englishwomen articulated republicanism's key insight: meaningful action, political or otherwise, does and should take place outside the purview of government, in spheres that not only include women, but that women helped construct. Drawing on the works of six women writers of the period, the book examines their writings and explores the key themes and concepts that they build upon.




European Contexts for English Republicanism


Book Description

European Contexts for English Republicanism offers new perspectives on early modern English republicanism through its focus on the Continental reception of and engagement with seventeenth-century English thinkers and political events. Looking both at political ideas and at the people that shaped them, the collection examines English republican thought in its wider European context during the later seventeenth and eighteenth century. In a number of case studies, the contributors assess the different ways in which English republican ideas were not only shaped by the thought of the ancients, but also by contemporary authors from all over Europe, such as Hugo Grotius or Christoph Besold. They demonstrate that English republican thinkers did not only act in dialogue with Continental authors and scholars, their ideas in turn also left a long-lasting legacy in Europe as they were received, transformed and put to new uses by thinkers in France, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and Poland. Far from being an exclusively transatlantic affair, as much of the established scholarship suggests, English republican thought also left its legacy on the European Continent, finding its way into wider debates about the rights and wrongs of the English Civil War and the nature of government, while later translations of English republican works also influenced the key thinkers of the French Revolution and the liberals of the nineteenth century. Bringing together a range of fresh and original essays by British and European scholars in the field of early modern intellectual history and English studies, this collection of essays revises a one-sided approach to English republicanism and widens the scope of study beyond linguistic and national boundaries by looking at English republicans and their continental networks and legacy.




A Companion to the Political Culture of the Roman Republic


Book Description

An insightful and original exploration of Roman Republic politics In A Companion to the Political Culture of the Roman Republic, editors Valentina Arena and Jonathan Prag deliver an incisive and original collection of forty contributions from leading academics representing various intellectual and academic traditions. The collected works represent some of the best scholarship in recent decades and adopt a variety of approaches, each of which confronts major problems in the field and contributes to ongoing research. The book represents a new, updated, and comprehensive view of the political world of Republican Rome and some of the included essays are available in English for the first time. Divided into six parts, the discussions consider the institutionalized loci, political actors, and values, rituals, and discourse that characterized Republican Rome. The Companion also offers several case studies and sections on the history of the interpretation of political life in the Roman Republic. Key features include: A thorough introduction to the Roman political world as seen through the wider lenses of Roman political culture Comprehensive explorations of the fundamental components of Roman political culture, including ideas and values, civic and religious rituals, myths, and communicative strategies Practical discussions of Roman Republic institutions, both with reference to their formal rules and prescriptions, and as patterns of social organization In depth examinations of the 'afterlife' of the Roman Republic, both in ancient authors and in early modern and modern times Perfect for students of all levels of the ancient world, A Companion to the Political Culture of the Roman Republic will also earn a place in the libraries of scholars and students of politics, political history, and the history of ideas.




The English Republican Exiles in Europe during the Restoration


Book Description

Offers a transnational perspective on 17th-century English republicanism, focusing on the lived experiences of English republican exiles.







Regicide and Republicanism


Book Description

This study of seventeenth-century monarchy suggests that the arguments which were used to attack the potentially absolutist monarchy of Charles I were not all that different from those used against the constitutional monarchy of today. The seventeenth-century arguments were based on the fiction that the person who fulfilled the office could be distinguished from the office itself. Personal morality and behaviour were vital factors in assessing the value of government. From 1646 onwards there developed two parallel strands of thought. Those who believed in government by laws developed a republican response to the crisis of the 1640s. Those who believed that people made laws attacked Charles I rather than the monarchy itself, supported the regicide and subsequently approved of the rule of Cromwell.




Pan-Protestant Heroism in Early Modern Europe


Book Description

This book offers the first full study of the challenges posed to an emerging English nationalism that stemmed from the powerful appeal exerted by the leaders of the international Protestant cause. By considering a range of texts, including poetry, plays, pamphlets, and religious writing, the study reads this heroic tradition as a 'connected literary history,' a project shared by Protestants throughout Northern Europe, which opened up both collaboration among writers from these different regions and new possibilities for communal identification. The work’s central claim is that a pan-Protestant literary field existed in the period, which was multilingual, transnational, and ideologically charged. Celebrated leaders such as William of Orange posed a series of questions, especially for English Protestants, over the relationship between English and Protestant identity. In formulating their role as co-religionists, writers often undercut notions of alterity, rendering early modern conceptions of foreignness especially fluid and erasing national borders.