Crossing swords with David Underdown in November & December 2007
David Underdown's account of the historiography of the English
Revolution over the past thirty years is too misleading to pass
unchallenged. The difficulties created by attempts by R.H.Tawney,
Lawrence Stone and others to account for the conflicts of the 1640s
in terms of an antecedent rise of the gentry and decline of the
peerage were evident well before 1970. Such problems led Conrad
Russell to argue in 1973 that this "social change explanation of the
English Civil War" had broken down, although the long-term weakening
of the financial positions of the Crown and Church remained an
"undoubted part" of its causes. He envisaged that any new social
change explanation would have to be based on the rising power of
artificers and tradesmen and to account for the political and
religious divisions amongst the gentry and peers that made such a
conflict possible. His subsequent work on the financial problems of
the Crown, on its quarrels with Stuart Parliaments over religion and
taxation and the problems successive Kings faced in ruling Ireland and
Scotland as well as England and Wales showed a serious and enduring
concern with explaining the events of 1640-1642 with which David
Cressy's book dealt.
No one - certainly not Russell nor, indeed, John Adamson - has ever
supposed that these conflicts were "an old-fashioned baronial revolt,
a recapitulation of the Wars of the Roses ... in which nobody below
the level of the nobility mattered very much." Stone's assumption that
the political history of the period from the accession of Queen
Elizabeth to the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 had already been
satisfactorily explored and that economic and social factors explained
its course proved unfounded. The research of Valerie Pearl and of
Underdown himself in the 1960s and early-1970s, and of Professor
Adamson since the mid-1980s has demonstrated the continuing importance
of the peers on the Long Parliament's side throughout the 1640s.
Whenever the 'English Revolution' occurred, the economic and social
importance of the landed elite remained: that is partly why the
post-1649 regimes, which rested ultimately on military force, were
fragile and, because they lacked consent, were unlikely to endure.
I am unable to think of any scholar who has attempted to rule out or
downplay the investigation of long-term cultural or economic or social
developments in the period before the 1640s or who has denied that
King Charles, his Privy Councils and governments faced very serious
problems in ruling England and his other kingdoms by that date.
Professor Underdown may not like the historiographical developments of
the last thirty years but debates between historians are bound to
cover changing agendas. That is something I welcome as, indeed, I do
the changes to come in the decades ahead. Old style quasi-determinist
economic and social history of the kind practised in the 1940s and
1950s should not be revived nor should there be any hagiographical
worship of the victors in the conflicts of the 1640s.
Christopher Thompson
David Underdown wrote the following response and has asked me to post
it to the list.
It seems odd to be responding to a comment which deals with a mere
three sentences of my review of David Cressy's book--a comment which
indeed barely mentions the book. I wish we could be having a proper
discussion of _England On Edge_, as it rightfully deserves. However,
I don't know what Christopher Thompson has been reading since the
1970s. He obviously hasn't been reading _Revel, Riot, and Rebellion_,
_Fire From Heaven_, or _A Freeborn People_. But that's OK, I am not
offended--it's always hard to keep up with everything.
But if Thompson had read those books, he could scarcely believe that I
do not like "the historiographical developments of the last thirty
years." I can tell him that I am fully aware that this period has
seen the appearance of exciting new approaches to the history of early
seventeenth-century Britain, many of which have influenced my work,
and which I still find challenging in what I am doing today. I need
only mention the authors of a few obvious examples: Alastair Bellany,
Mark Stoyle, Andy Wood, or from a slightly earlier cohort, Tom
Cogswell, Richard Cust, Cynthia Herrup, Ann Hughes. Instead I am
being asked to rehash yet again some earlier debates, and I don't
think this is particularly worthwhile--I had thought that those
disputes about rising/declining gentry, the surviving strength of the
aristocracy, etc, had exhausted themselves long ago. If Thompson
wants to remain enmeshed in those issues, I can only hope that he
finds them inspiring--as I do the more recent ones connected with
matters like gender, popular (and elite!) culture, region and
community. Those, I like to hope, are the ones that are
reinvigorating the study of early modern Britain, along with those of
the "British" and "Atlantic" dimensions.
David Underdown
david.underdown@yale.edu
|
I can assure Professor Underdown that I have read his three books and
those of David Cressy and the other historians he mentions in his
response with interest and pleasure. It is noticeable, however, that
he does not attempt to defend his remarks in his review on the
contributions of Conrad Russell and John Adamson at all. If he thinks
they can be justified, perhaps he will set out the grounds upon which
he considered such comments to be sound. Fortunately, the focus of
historical research and debates on the 'English Revolution' or the
'Wars of the Three Kingdoms' has moved on since 1970.
Christopher Thompson
Comments
Post a Comment