EMH EarlyModernHistory

 Talking about the intellectual biography of Christopher Hill, who probably needs no real introduction from me, but perhaps I can say: eminent historian of 17th-century England, Marxist, former master of Balliol, and extremely prolific writer and communicator. He won't like me to put it quite like this, but he's written and edited, or edited, at least 17 books, written notes and articles—over 110 at the last count—and reviews, adding in this morning's as the latest contribution, over 450, probably nearer 500. An enormous output, which would indicate a sustained interest in communication. But before we get on to that side of things, perhaps we should start out with your early career, Christopher, as a Yorkshireman. I'm sure you'd like to declare your earliest interest in terms of playing cricket.  Yes, my highest ambition was to play cricket for the country for which I have a birth qualification. And in those days, playing cricket for Yorkshire was a much higher ambi...

 David Appleby's interesting account of this expedition can be read  here  .

My review of this book has just appeared in the Transactions of The Essex Society for Archaeology and History (4th Series, Volume 15 (2024), Pp.154-155. 

  What was revolutionary about the English revolution?  Tuesday, 20 and Wednesday, 21 July 2027 Institute of Historical Research  Opening keynote Professor David Como (Stanford) Closing address Professor Emerita Ann Hughes (Keele) Speakers Sophie Aldred (Jesus College, Oxford); Sam Fullerton (North Texas) Will White (Birmingham Newman); Waseem Ahmed (UCL) Alex Beeton (History of Parliament); Ellen Paterson (Keele) Michael Bennett (Sheffield); Elizabeth Hines (Johns Hopkins) Courtney MacPhee (Stanford) Commentators   Kate Peters (Murray Edwards, Cambridge); John Walter (Essex)   Generously supported by:  The Elizabeth and Conrad Russell Fund Anglo-California/Stansky Fund for British Studies (Department of History, Stanford University)  The causes and consequences of the civil wars of the 1640s are amongst the most heavily contested and intensively studied periods in the history of these islands...

 Kathryn Marshalek's important thesis on this subject can now be seen and read on the webpage of Vanderbilt University's Library. It is in her copyright but can be downloaded  here  . It really is an important piece of work.

  Early Modern Britain Seminar, Michaelmas Term 2026 Thursdays at 5 pm, Oakeshott Room, Lincoln College; online on Teams (please email ian.archer@history.ox.ac.uk) 15 October Prof. Lucy Wooding (Lincoln College) ‘“Sinceritie in these daies was sure borne to be sad”: Religion, Dissimulation and Elizabethan Drama’ Jeffrey Knapp, ‘Preachers and Players in Shakespeare’s England’, Representations 44 (1993), 29-59; Kilian Schindler, Religious Dissimulation and Early Modern Drama: The Limits of Toleration (2023), Introduction 22 October Rev Dr Brian Mac Cuarta (Campion Hall) ‘Irish wheat for London’s food crisis, 1630-1631’ Paul Slack, ‘Books of Orders: the making of English social policy 1577-1631’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , 5th ser. 30 (1980), 1-22; Norman Gras, The evolution of the English corn market from the twelfth to the eighteenth century (Cambridge MA, 1915), 77-86; Raymond Gillespie, ‘Harvest crises in early seventeenth-century Ireland...

My historiographical report today is going to be rather short. I haven't found anything very interesting on the internet today, but I did come across a couple of photographs of Peter Lake and Richard Cust on Sandy Solomon's Facebook page. She's the wife of Peter Lake, and apparently they've had Richard Cust to stay a few days ago with them in Suffolk as their guest, and there are a couple of photographs of Richard and Peter walking Sandy Solomon and Peter Lake's dog, really quite attractive, actually, in the way.      The other thing I've been thinking about is really how to treat the teleology in Conrad Russell's work, The Fall of the British Monarchies. Russell set himself up, certainly from the mid-1970s, as the apostle of criticism, as far as Whig and Marxist history was concerned. But, if you look at these accounts, say, of the short Parliament of April and May 1640, you can see there are all sorts of pointers to the future outcome of allegiance during ...

Waseem Ahmed is a postgraduate student at University College, London and has discussed this topic  here  on The World turned upside down website. If interested, his political stance has been criticised by Keith Livesey on his blog, A Trumpet of Sedition, on 7th October.

 Details of this work (in French) can be found  here  .

 The programme for this seminar can be found  here  . It has some highly interesting papers to be heard.

 The programme of this seminar running from this autumn to next spring can be found  here  . It has some important papers to offer. Well worth examining.

  How the Interregnum Parliament boosted the slave trade - an untold story? While terms such as “slavery” and “liberty”, frequently occur in parliamentarian rhetoric, particularly when damning their enemies, ever-increasing numbers of West African people were actually being transported across the ocean to colonies in the Caribbean. According to distinguished parliamentary historian, Dr Stephen Roberts, it was during the   Interregnum   that the foundations of Britain’s leading role in the slave trade were established. Dr Roberts emphasizes that there was early and sustained parliamentary involvement in the development of slavery in the Atlantic World in the seventeenth century. Caribbean colonies were engines of trade, and in terms of the labour market, large-scale white labour rested on the principle of indentured servitude. But neither the scale of white immigrant labour, nor the principles on which it rested, were enough to service the new and profitable boom industry ...

  BRITISH AGRICULTURAL HISTORY SOCIETY Annual Conference 2027, Lancaster, 16-18 April 2027 The Society’s Annual Conference will be held at the University of Lancaster on 16-18 April 2027. This conference celebrates the 75th anniversary of the foundation of the Society in 1952. We therefore see it as a special occasion, looking both backwards over the over the achievements of the discipline since 1952 with its expansion into new areas and changes of emphasis, and towards the future. We intend that the conference will illustrate the range and diversity of agricultural and rural history. We therefore invite proposals for papers addressing all aspects of agricultural and rural history, including, but not limited to, the following themes Animal History — Diet, Food, Processing and Retailing — Environmental History  Leisure and Recreation — Perceptions of the Countryside — Power and Conflict Progress and Innovation — Work and Workers Whilst the primary focus will be on Britain and I...

 

  Worldly Women at the Court of Charles II: Exile, Excess, and the Expanding World 22nd October, 17:00, River Room, King's Building On Thursday 22 October, join Dr Kerry Apps (Sheffield) and Dr Annalisa Nicholson (KCL), in conversation with Dr Hannah Dawson (KCL) and Catharine MacLeod (National Portrait Gallery), for a discussion on women’s transnational activities at the court of Charles II. Within that Francophilic and cosmopolitan court, many women embraced trends and opportunities from continental travel and global consumerism to libertinism. How did court women respond to libertine ideologies? How did this libertinism lend itself to links with Europe and the expanding world? And how did court women signal their supposed worldliness by fashioning themselves and their homes with global and colonial objects? The panel will focus on figures at the centre of recent research, including the French exile Hortense Mancini, the Italian queen consort Maria of Modena, and the Anglo-Scotti...