Hidden intellectual worlds: Russian historians and England in the late-sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

I have long been fascinated by obscure, sometimes hidden groups at work on the British Isles in the early modern period in which I am most interested. Who would have thought that there were such groups of historians in South America? Who has read their works or those of historians studying the events of the same period in eastern Europe? I have spent a lot of time in recent years following the attempts in the U.K. to rehabilitate the works of Christopher Hill and Brian Manning and now hope that I have a better understanding of the people involved. It is no surprise, nonetheless, to discover that these two figures are much more prominent in the historiographical works produced since c.1990 in the countries formerly dominated by the Soviet Union. A few days ago, I came across the 2005 thesis of Sergey Fedorov on the Early Stuart Nobility and read its abstract with some interest. It led me to other Russian works - e.g. that by Ilya Grigorievich on the Order of the Garter in the same late-Tudor and early Stuart periods: Elena Ilyinchina's thesis on the ideological and political foundations of the Stuart monarchy; and O.V.Dimitrieva's study of the English nobility in that same time frame. There are many others as well. They draw quite extensively on secondary works, on articles in academic journals and published books, to advance their arguments. With this procedure I have no quarrel. I am, however, surprised by the lack of contact shown with historians in this country, in the U.S.A, Canada and elsewhere and about the need to consult a much wider range of manuscript sources held in the Bodleian and British Libraries, in the National Archives and in county record offices throughout the British Isles. Perhaps, it was not possible to come here to the U.K. or to Eire. Quite how far our collective understanding of the period has developed since c.1970 when Hill or Manning were fully active is not adequately reflected in these studies. That is a pity since these observers from afar are clearly intelligent people but, perhaps, held by the more distant historiographical past than they might otherwise have been.