This book examines the development of the English state during the long seventeenth century, emphasising the impersonal forces which shape the uses of political power, rather than the purposeful actions of individuals or groups. It is a study of state formation rather than of state building. The author's approach does not however rule out the possibility of discerning patterns in the development of the state, and a coherent account emerges which offers some alternative answers to relatively well-established questions. In particular, it is argued that the development of the state in this period was shaped in important ways by social interests - particularly those of class, gender and age. It is also argued that this period saw significant changes in the form and functioning of the state which were, in some sense, modernising. The book therefore offers a narrative of the development of the state in the aftermath of revisionism.

No abstract

Recent work in social history has given great emphasis both to the variety of forms of hierarchy in early modern society and to the ways in which the experience of hierarchy and subordination was negotiated. At the same time historians, in¯uenced perhaps by the linguistic turn, have become more sensitive to the fact that order was culturally constructed and that life chances were affected not just by material issues but also by the ways in which the social world was imagined and described. We are now confronted by a picture of the early modern world in which there existed a variety of hierarchies ± class, status (variously determined), gender and age ± justi®ed with reference to a variety of languages which were all, to some degree, unstable and contested. Recognition of the polyphony that this has created has important consequences for a broader understanding of how the social order was represented and constructed. The underlying picture of how power operated and was experienced in the early modern period is, accordingly, more complex. The chapters in this volume offer an alternative reading of the political relationships between dominant and subordinate groups in the construction of social order. By examining this process across a variety of arenas, the essays challenge the appropriateness of a series of binary models (of which the elite/popular dyad is only the most familiar) for capturing the multiplicity of exchanges by which domination was achieved and subordination negotiated. By turning to micro-sociologies of power and of social roles, they seek to develop an account of early modern social order which is sensitive both to the variety of forms of hierarchy and to the possibilities available to the relatively weak for limiting its effects on their lives. The disadvantaged in early modern society navigated their way in a world which afforded many sources of in¯uence to their more powerful contemporaries. But in negotiating

No abstract

The history of the state was once at the core of academic history and university curricula. In English history, the revolution of 1649 was said to be of epochal significance and influential analyses of its causes sought to tie together disparate fields of study in a single explanation. Over the last thirty years, however, such accounts have been heavily criticised and, partly as a consequence, the historiography of Stuart England became much more fragmented. Recent histories of ‘state formation’ however, promise to overcome some of the effects of that fragmentation. They explore the organisation, institutionalisation, representation and expression of political power rather than the more or less conscious efforts of particular individuals or groups to transform the state. This emphasis on the broader social and cultural processes which shaped the state reconnects important elements of recent social, economic, cultural, intellectual and political histories. Moreover, it may help to forge connections between medieval, early modern and later modern histories, and the integration of English experience into wider comparative histories.