EMH EarlyModernHistory

 The details of this post and the closing date for applications are advertised here:  https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DSK768/lecturer-in-early-modern-british-history

  The website of the World Turned Upside Down has an interesting talk by David Appleby on the siege of Colchester by the Long Parliament's army in 1648. It can be heard or seen in transcript here:  https://www.worldturnedupsidedown.co.uk/transcripts/colchester-1648-eleven-weeks-of-brutal-and-bloody-siege/

 I have just seen the RHS's notice of this conference to be held in conjunction with the Institute of Historical Research. The e-mail I reproduce below was sent by me to Jane Whittle (University of Exeter) in June, 1621 and is still relevant in my view.   Christopher Thompson 8th June 2021 at 17:28 I think that there is a need for academic historians and its practitioners to be more ambitious in opening up the discipline to the large number of former staff, postgraduates and well-informed graduates still committed to its study but without university posts. I set out some ideas on how to begin this process some years ago starting with a website offering: News Access to academic journals Books (e.g. from the Internet Archive or from Google) Book reviews (e.g. from H-Albion or the IHR) Documents Audio and Video recordings Comments and Debates between historians Weblogs Jobs Forthcoming publications Conferences Seminars Details ...

This topic has been one of enduring interest to me ever since I first came across the documentary material relating to the foundation of the Virginia colony in 1607 and the spectacular quarrels that led to the breakdown and dissolution of the Virginia Company of London in 1624. The voluminous material available to me  as a postgraduate in the works of Susan Kingsbury, Wesley Frank Craven and others has since then been supplemented by the publication of the Ferrar Papers held in Magdalene College, Cambridge's library and the discovery of a large number of smaller archive deposits in the United Kingdom. The protagonists in these quarrels - Sir Edwin Sandys, the Ferrar brothers and their supporters on one side and the 2nd Earl of Warwick, Sir Nathaniel Rich and their allies on the other - produced completely cóntradictory accounts of the issues at stake. But one feature of the historiography has been a highly puzzling feature to me, namely the belief amongst almost all colonial histor...

        This was my response to a review by Clare Hawkins in a preceding A 205 course newsletter. I am not entirely sure who Clare Hawkins was or is: she may be the writer of historical fiction books based in Wivenhoe, Essex. 

 

CfP: Moving People by Force. Comparing the Claims and Constraints of Deportation and Transportation in the Early Modern World Social and Labour History News 1 week 1 day ago Organizer: Eva Seemann (GHI Paris); Florian Kühnel (IEG Mayence); Eva Marie Lehner (Univ. Bonn); Falk Bretschneider (EHESS) Venue: German Historical Institute Paris ZIP: 75003 Location: Paris Country: France Takes place: In Attendance From - Until: 12.05.2027 - 14.05.2027 Deadline: 12.07.2026 Website:  https://www.dhi-paris.fr/de/aktuelles/detailseite/call-for-papers-moving-people-by-force-comparing-the-claims-and-constraints-of-deportation-and-transportation-in-the-early-modern-world.html   Forced mobility constituted a significant share of global mobility in the Early Modern period (1500–1800). This category includes not only the mass trafficking associated with the Transatlantic slave trade and displacement in...

  I have read this comment on Jonathan Healey’s book, The Blazing World, with some interest. The authors – Pip and Mara – put forward what they consider to be the failings of Healey’s analysis well written though they rightly agree that the work was. Their case is that Healey’s narrative account of the events of the early-1640s was incomplete because it did not identify the underlying structural causes; there was no class analysis of the kind Marxists consider essential to explain the rise of the bourgeoisie over the preceding century. Feudal and absolutist rule had blocked the development of capitalist social relations and had to be overthrown. Healey offered colour without explanation and subscribed to the ‘revisionist’ project of Conrad Russell and John Morrill in denying the existence of a rising bourgeoisie and, by implication, that of a bourgeois revolution. Mid-seventeenth century politics appeared to be merely instrumental, the revolution as unjustified and Healey’s presen...

 Photo by Sandy Solomon on her Facebook page.

 I began reading Robert Ashton's book again last evening after a gap of many years. I had forgotten the high quality of his writing in his later years at the UEA and his acute appreciation of the contours of Court and Country culture in the early Stuart period. Interestingly, he had some sharp points to make about the excessive attention given to the Levellers and Diggers in the historiography of the 1640s, attention inspired in part, he suggested, by modern political apprehensions. There is something in this observation in my view but I should be interested to learn what others think on thi s issue.

 

 

 

  Speech, stereotypes and the making of political division in England, 1641-42 Date 14 May 2026, 17:30 to 14 May 2026, 19:00 Venue Hybrid | Online & IHR Pollard Seminar Room, N301, Third Floor, IHR, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU

 Melissa Glass's forthcoming seminar paper at the Institute of Historical Research on 30th April, 2026 'Major George Strangways versus John Fussell, Attorney at Law: A Tale of Sequestration, Litigation, and Murder in Interregnum England Date 30 Apr 2026, 17:30 to 30 Apr 2026, 19:00 Venue Hybrid | Online & IHR Seminar Room N304, Third Floor, IHR, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU   

 I was more than suprised to see an article by this journalist in The Sunday Telegraph yesterday. It argued that Dr Chris Laoutaris and Dr Yasmin Arshad had identified the sitter as Lady Penelope Rich the wife of the 3rd Lord Rich and sister of the 2nd Earl of Essex, using the clues in the portrait's emblems, including its cartouche with its reference to Penelope, the wife of Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey. I found this claim hard to understand since the case for this attribution was made as long ago as 26th October, 2013 in a seminar at the University of Sheffield. Let me quote a report made by one of those attending this seminar: "  Whilst all of the papers demonstrated a high quality of new research and were each fascinating, the final paper of the day was, for me, the icing on a very rich cake. Chris Laoutaris (Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham) and Yasmin Arshad University College London) presented their theory surrounding Marcus Gheeraerts’ portrait of a P...

  Peter Lake will probably be there.

 A couple of posts are currently being advertised: (a) a Stipendiary Lectureship at St Hughes College, University of Oxford and (b) an Associate Professorship in Early Modern British History at the University of Warwick. The details can be found via the jobs.ac.uk site.

 I have been contemplating writing an essay on the Short Parliament of 1640 for a considerable period of time. My interest was first aroused when Esther Cope was kind enough to show me the draft copy of the edition of the sources she later edited for the Camden Society, sources which have been amplimented by the later work of Judith Maltby on the Aston Diary. In the process, I have read the analyses of John Adamson, Mark Kishlansky, Kevin Sharpe and Conrad Russell, the last three of whom have passed away. John Adamson's piece in his book, The Noble Revolt, seems the most lucid of these while I was surprised to note that Kishlanky's defence of King Charles I's handling of the Parliament failed to mention his contemporaneous negotiations with the Spanish Habsburgs: contemporaries would, I suspect, not have regarded these overtures as contingency-planning but as duplicitous. The one I had real trouble with was that by Conrad Russell, much of which was a precis of the surviving...

  2025/26 Programme Event date: 30 Apr 26 'Major George Strangways versus John Fussell, Attorney at Law: A Tale of Sequestration, Litigation, and Murder in Interregnum England Institute of Historical Research Event date: 30 Apr 26 ...