Early Modern European Revolutions Newton Key Required texts available from Textbook Services: Furet, The French Revolution, 1770-1814 [TRS 11.465] Gaunt, The English Civil War [13.325] Hill, World Turned Upside Down [11.242] Pincus, England’s Glorious Revolution, 1688–1689: A Brief History with Documents [12.590] All others handouts or online reserve
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 Charles I, executed in front of the Banquetting House, Whitehall, Jan. 1649 |
week 1. Riot, rebellion, revolution
27 Aug. Introduction
I don’t know if people value the thought of revolution any more.... I think it would be an enormously patriotic movement to invest I the possibility of revolution. Sean Penn, “Penn slams Hollywood films, praises protests” Times-Courier (25 Aug. 2001), 22
week 2. Searching for definition
3 Sept. Engels, “The Bourgeois Revolution”
Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto, parts I and IV
Zagorin, "The concept of revolution and the comparative history of revolution in early modern
Europe"
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Alexis de Tocqueville on the French Revolution
`The English Revolution' ought to be entombed. It is a term made out of our own social and political discourse.... It gets in the way of enquiry and understanding, if only because it requires that change of all these different types goes forwards at the same pace, the political pace.... There never was such a set of events as the English Revolution.–Peter Laslett, The World We Have Lost, 3rd ed. (1983), 206-9
week 3. The emic and the etic of early modern Revolution
10 Sept. Tilly, "Conflict, Revolt and Revolution," and "Transformations of Europe"
Parker, “Meanings of Revolution”
Rachum, “Meaning of ‘Revolution’ in the English Revolution (1648-1660)”
Response essay due
Hogarth's Skimmington and Charivaris in the English Revolution
It is the total absence of this highly charged idea of revolution born in France and elevated to a theoretical principle by Marx that we have to notice as we look back across the abyss of time to the 1640s. `Revolution' had then another, mainly non-political meaning. If the contemporaries of Charles I’s deposition used the word in a political context at all, they did so without any of the dynamic connotations it later acquired.... Not until after the assimilation of post-1789 French experience, it seems, was historical thought able to grasp the revolt against Charles I’s government as an authentic revolution.–Perez Zagorin, The Court and the Country: The Beginning of the English Revolution (1969), 13
week 4. Envisioning Revolution
17 Sept. Danton (the movie)
Darnton, “Film: Danton and the Double Entendre”
Hampson, “The French Revolution and its Historians”
Response essay due
Politics is a world of unintended effects, and our own century is littered with instances of counter-effective revolutions, so to speak: seizures of power designed to be popular entrenching the privileges of a ruling caste....
The sober truth is that modern theories of revolution by now fail to account for many or most of the instances. Our theory of revolution is a fantasy of revolution. Perhaps all that helps to explain the waning fashion of the word itself.–George Watson, “How Radical is Revolution?,” History Today 38, 11 (1988): 43
week 5. Peasant revolts and popular politics in France and England
24 Sept. Te Brake, “The Political Crisis of the Seventeenth Century”
Richard Bonney, “Popular Rebellion” (chapter and any 8 linked documents)
Hill, World Turned Upside Down, intro. & chs. 1-3
Response essay due
Trevor-Roper's "The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century," in The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century: Religion, the Reformation and Social Change (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1968, 2001).
Sometimes deliberately, but more often unconsciously, the crown drove a series of additional wedges between its potential opponents, through its manipulation of the machinery of privilege and exemption. This operated as between different towns and provinces, and between social groups. The ultimate result was a society full of anomalies and injustices. These, rather than the absolute burden of taxation, were the prime causes of revolt--yet they were also the reason why it could never succeed on a large scale. For all the tremendous bitterness and hostility royal policies aroused, their opponents mistrusted one another as much as they did the government. They also disabled themselves in advance, by using the convenient fictions of the king led astray by evil ministers and robbed by dishonest officials, which left them with no defence against direct assertions of the royal will.”
–Robin Briggs, “Popular revolt in its social context,” Communities of Belief: Cultural and Social Tensions in Early Modern France (1989), 175
week 6. Does the Model apply to the English Civil Wars?
1 Oct. Cressy, “Revolutionary England 1640-1642"
Bucholz and Key, “Civil War, Revolution, and the Search for Stability, 1642-60"
Gaunt, English Civil War, nos. 1-2, 10-1 (Morrill, Manning, Underdown, Fulbrook, Osborne, Roy)
Hill, World Turned Upside Down, chs. 4-5
week 7. England is revolting?: The incipient and the vestigial in the English Civil Wars
8 Oct. Hill, World Turned Upside Down, chs. 6-16
MacLachlan, “Levelling out the Revolution”
By 1647...[the] demolition of the skyscrapers that had dominated the English skyline and th[e] blueprint for a brave new world appeared to presage the creation of a new, libertarian (and in the aspirations of some, egalitarian) political, social and religious order. Although it was not to be, these mighty events have seemed to many historians to parallel the slaughter of kings, the abolition of monarchy, the assault on inherited wealth and prescriptive privilege, and the challenge to organized religion, that constitute the essence of the other great turmoils of Western Civilization which are unhesitatingly accorded the accolade of Revolutions.–John Morrill, in The Impact of the English Civil War, ed. Morrill (1991), 8-10
week 8. From Civil War to Revolution?
15 Oct. Gaunt, English Civil War, part IV, nos. 12-14 (Davis, Crawford, Hill)
Hill, World Turned Upside Down, chs. 17-18
Key and Bucholz, “Civil War and Revolution”
Response essay due
Revisionists also encourage us to discern not so much radicalism and progressivism - the urge for change and innovation - as traditionalism, moderation and conservatism alongside neutralism, inertia, even apathy as the enduring characteristics of the political nation and of the broad mass of the English people alike. Ideology is played down in extent and profundity. Real radicals are few and even their radicalism is mostly mild and backward-looking, seeking a return to a Golden Age usually deemed to have existed before a Norman Yoke descended upon free-born Anglo-Saxons (the English) and their time-honoured institutions. Any latent dissident forces released from within the ranks of the middling and meaner sorts of people by the civil wars–those unexpected, inadvertent, even unnecessary rifts among the elite (a fashionable term)–should be seen not as movements making for novelty but rather resisting it for the maintenance of continuity in a traditional order. Fair enough. Such attitudes will readily be found if sought. But so perhaps can others. There is evidence throughout the Interregnum of discontents, sometimes bursting into violence more than verbal, which called for betterment, not just the preservation intact of old standards. (Ivan Roots, “Preface to the 1986 Edition,” Puritanism and Liberty, 1938, 1974, 1986)
week 9. Glorious Revolution as an archetypal revolution
22 Oct. Pincus, England’s Glorious Revolution, intro. and docs. 1-29
Dillon, The Last Revolution, chs. 22-27
revolution assignment three due
week 10. Glorious Revolution: a constitutionalist, an idealist, a materialist, or a revisionist explanation?
week 11. The French Revolution I
5 Nov. Furet, The French Revolution, chs. 1-2
Blanning, “Two Executions and Two Assassinations” and ”The French Revolution–People,
Nation, State"
Make-up Response essay due
revolution assignment five due
Eighteenth-century historians had arrived at a picture of the past as a succession of economic eras, each marked by one leading `mode of subsistence.' Marx elaborated this into a series of `modes of production,' and identified a specific ruling class as the chief beneficiary of each in turn, until overthrown by a successor.... The latest system to appear was capitalism, still in Marx's lifetime struggling to extend its sway over Europe, by dint of `bourgeois revolutions.' It seemed to him, and it has seemed to many historians until lately, not Marxists only, that the perfect model for these had been provided by the French Revolution of 1789. It replaced the dominance of one class and its mode of self-enrichment with another; a landowning nobility was supplanted by a rival capitalist class.
Although this thesis came to be known as Marxist, it originated in fact with liberal writers of the post-1815 generation in France, when the country had undergone immense changes since 1789. Many years of detailed research have failed to validate it; this became clear during the bicentenary debates of 1989. There is too little evidence of a revolutionary bourgeoisie coming forward to seize power. Rather, it may in rough terms be said that in 1789 France was having to grapple (as Britain ought to be doing now) with altered conditions, and recognise that all its institutions were out of date. The lead was taken by reforming intellectuals, pushed to the front by mass unrest and agitation....
It might be more true to say that the Revolution created the French bourgeoisie, than the bourgeoisie the Revolution.–Victor Kiernan, "Marxism and Revolution," History Today (July 1991): 39-40
week 12. The French Revolution II: the revolution is over?
12 Nov. Steel, Vive la Revolution, chs. 11-12
Furet, The French Revolution, chs. 3-4
Research introductory paragraph, bibliography, and outline due
week 13. So was there an English Revolution? Really?
19 Nov.Walter, “The English People and the English Revolution Revisited”
Burgess, “Radicalism and the English Revolution”
week 14. Final reports from the front
3 Dec. Critique of colleague's introduction, outline, and bibliography due
week 15. Conclusion
10 Dec . TWELVE-MINUTE REPORTS (with five-minute critique from seminar)
Research paper due
This seminar seeks to develop and test multiple theories about the nature of early modern European revolutions. It is comparative, seeking to study different approaches to the history of peasant revolts, urban revolts, the English Civil Wars and Interregnum (by some called a revolution), the Glorious Revolution (by some denied the term revolution), and the French Revolution. It asks you to master theories, narratives, and, perhaps the most difficult, the mode of comparative history.
Grading is based on participation (20%), five response essays (25%, see below), a critique of peer's hypothesis and outline (5%), and a original source research paper (50%). All essays are to be typed and double-spaced. Research paper will use pamphlets from Early English Books Online to analyze the documents of one particular aspect of the English Revolutions, 1640-89 and compare it with a similar aspect of the French Revolution or any other revolution, in order to evaluate the use of (a) the theories of revolution (from Marx, to Tilly, to Parker), (b) the historical approaches to revolution (from Hill to Furet) in revolutionary moments. In other words, it asks for both a historiographical and a comparative perspective.
This seminar expects full participation from each graduate. (Reading is somewhat extensive and very intensive; Take notes.) For Response essays (typed double-spaced; 550 words maximum) respond to the quote for that week (thinking about the readings and subject for that week) and bring your response to class for discussion. Each essay should: (1) discuss and position at least one historian; (2) discuss and quote at least one primary source; (3) express a point of view (that is position yourself), and use at least one piece of evidence to back that position; (4) suggest the type of evidence that might be investigated to substantiate your position further. You may focus on one aspect of the quote (but should not try to misread the author’s main point/s).
SOURCES FOR READINGS (Copies “c.” and photocopies “photoc.” are available in Booth Library, Reserve Desk “B.”; or in Coleman Hall 2726, Graduate Reserve “G.” Note: copies of journal articles are left in bound volumes in Periodicals of Booth, not Reserve Desk ) |
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