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The Lion, the Witch, and the King: Thomas Stapleton’s Apologia pro Rege Catholico Philippo II (1592)

Februar 10, 2014, 5:56 p.m., Machielsen, J., Allgemein.

Historians have rarely acknowledged the restraint shown by Catholic exile writers in their portrayals of Queen Elizabeth. As a general rule, exiles took care to restrict their often stringent criticism to the queen’s government or advisers. This restraint has been obscured, in part, by the Apologia pro Rege Catholico Philippo II (1592) written by Thomas Stapleton (1535–1598), Regius Professor of Scriptures at the University of Leuven (Louvain). The Apologia represents the queen as a malignant genius and witch responsible for much of the world’s evils. This article shows that the Apologia, hitherto read as transparently the work of an English Catholic exile, was written for a largely Netherlandish audience, played to Netherlandish concerns, and appeared under a Netherlandish pseudonym. English involvement in the Revolt of the Netherlands on the side of the Protestant rebels meant that anti-Elizabethan sentiment in the Spanish Netherlands was widespread, and the Apologia was part of Stapleton’s efforts to bridge English and Netherlandish Catholic concerns. By presenting his criticism of Elizabeth as a defence of and a sign of devotion to Philip II of Spain by a loyal subject, Stapleton sidestepped accusations of disobedience levelled against the Catholic exiles by the English government. Careful study of Stapleton’s representation of Elizabeth shows why as a general rule other Catholic apologists, such as Robert Persons and Richard Verstegan, did not follow suit. Stapleton’s portrayal of a powerful and malignant queen highlights how the standard representation was influenced by a language of loyal opposition and a need for the nominal preservation of obedience.

Quelle: http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/129/536/19?rss=1

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The Religious Marketplace: Public Disputations in Civil War and Interregnum England

Februar 10, 2014, 5:56 p.m., Capp, B., Allgemein.

The civil wars and interregnum (1640–60) ushered in a period of religious flux and debate, with controversies pursued in fierce pamphlet wars. Equally important, but far less familiar to us, were the public disputations, which spread across England and Wales to become a significant aspect of the religious culture of the age. This article traces their antecedents in the European tradition of university disputation, in the sixteenth-century continental Reformation and in England. The civil-war disputations represented a dramatically new development, in their number and scale, in their genuinely open character, and in the participation of lay preachers, especially Baptists and Quakers. The article explores their appeal for separatist evangelists—and for the huge audiences they attracted—and the factors that could drive parish ministers, often reluctantly, to accept a radical’s challenge. About fifty disputations generated printed narratives, and often also rival accounts, which throw new light on the relationship between oral and print culture in this period. The article explores how editors shaped texts to sway reader reaction, and uses these texts for insights into debating tactics and audience participation. Disputations also offer new evidence in the ongoing debate over the emergence of the ‘public sphere’. In their formal procedures, social inclusivity and geographical spread they far surpass Habermas’s coffee-house milieu, but this was a rough public arena far removed from the world of bourgeois politeness. And with live debates often triggering new pamphlet-wars, we can identify a public sphere in which oral and print culture coalesced.

Quelle: http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/129/536/47?rss=1

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The Rebel Barons of 1264 and the Commune of London: An Oath of Mutual Aid

Februar 10, 2014, 5:56 p.m., Stone, I., Allgemein.

In March 1264, the commune of London, led by its mayor Thomas fitz Thomas, allied with twenty other leading rebels to swear an oath of mutual support. This oath was mentioned by one contemporary chronicler. This article transcribes and translates this hitherto unpublished oath. It examines the significance of the agreement the rebels entered into, which was sworn just six weeks before the battle of Lewes. It analyses the text, placing it alongside other contemporary oaths in order to understand more fully its contents. Through detailed study of the oath’s unique witness list, it seeks to shed new light on the motivations and sympathies of many leading rebels of the day. Lastly, the article discusses what can be learnt about the attitudes of one of the leading chroniclers of the period of baronial reform and rebellion.

Quelle: http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/129/536/1?rss=1

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‚Affluence‘ and the Left in Britain, c.1958-1974

Februar 10, 2014, 5:56 p.m., middleton, s., Allgemein.

Accounts of British politics in the 1950s and 1960s have treated ‘affluence’ as a socio-economic condition to which political thinkers and actors responded, with greater or lesser success. This overlooks the contemporary significance of ‘affluence’, which is better understood as a conceptual field in which many of the Left’s crucial ideological and strategic battles were fought during the 1960s. Whereas historical usage has broadly followed Labour revisionists’ sense of ‘affluence’ as a determinate socio-economic condition, at least three critical usages were developed in opposition to this, which contested both its specific detail and its conception of a prior socio-economic reality to which it was the task of politics to respond. These were synthesised into a shared Labour critique of the Conservative Government in the early 1960s, before being gradually turned against the Wilson administrations by their critics on the left. In particular, two major interventions—the ‘rediscovery of poverty’ (1965), and the ‘Affluent Worker’ study (1968–9)—restored a material referent to these critical accounts of ‘affluence’, but in a more equivocal sense than historical usage has assumed. These critiques helped to influence a broader reorientation of Labour politics after 1970, which accorded greater salience to redistribution and the interests of workers. Simultaneously, they may have helped to fix the meaning of ‘affluence’ in the usage of historians, as a result of which its significance for contemporaries and its influence upon the course of Labour politics have hitherto been incompletely understood.

Quelle: http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/129/536/107?rss=1

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From ‚Borderland‘ via ‚Bloodlands‘ to Heartland? Recent Western Historiography of Ukraine

Februar 10, 2014, 5:56 p.m., Pyrah, R., Allgemein.

Quelle: http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/129/536/139?rss=1

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Continental European Soldiers in British Imperial Service, c.1756-1792

Februar 10, 2014, 5:56 p.m., Conway, S., Allgemein.

Continental Europeans were not just enemies and competitors of the eighteenth-century British Empire; they were also allies, auxiliaries, and coadjutors in British imperial activity. This paper examines the role of European and particularly German soldiers in the British Empire in the second half of the eighteenth century. In chronological terms, the focus is on the Seven Years War and especially on the War of American Independence. Geographically, the paper concentrates on three British imperial sites: India, North America, and the Mediterranean garrisons of Gibraltar and Minorca. Historians have already looked at aspects of European military service in the British Empire; but the various foreign military units, and the different imperial theatres, are not usually examined together, as parts of the process of the British state’s use of other Europeans to defend and even expand its imperial possessions. One of the main objectives here is to assess the significance of that European contribution.

The paper begins by considering why the British state chose European soldiers in preference to other available options, particularly locally raised forces in India and North America, and even British and Irish manpower. The second section attempts to quantify the continental European contribution, both in absolute terms and as compared with British and imperial inputs. The final section endeavours to assess the quality of European military involvement. Some Britons regarded foreign soldiers as inherently unreliable and therefore less valuable than their own troops; however, there is plenty of evidence of positive assessments of the military role of continental Europeans.

Quelle: http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/129/536/79?rss=1

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