Time and the Constitutional Legitimacy of the Revolution

2020 ◽  
pp. 52-98
Author(s):  
Tony Claydon
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Ancient Constitution ◽  
Constitutional Legitimacy ◽  
The Revolution

Chapter two examines the legal and constitutional arguments around the revolution. It argues that contemporaries who defended William’s coming to power—although using a variety of arguments, broadly divided into ‘Whig’ and ‘Tory’—were united in developing a ‘static chronology’ that effectively denied fundamentals of politics could change, and so were happy to cite precedents from long-distance periods as binding. The chapter considers the version of the ‘ancient constitution’ used after 1688–9, showing that it was more resistant to the possibilities of historical development than versions of the concept that had been used earlier in the seventeenth century.

Progressive Williamite Time

2020 ◽  
pp. 211-233
Author(s):  
Tony Claydon
Keyword(s):  
Golden Age ◽  
Developmental Process ◽  
Elizabeth I ◽  
Ancient Constitution ◽  
Constitutional Legitimacy ◽  
The Revolution

Chapter five examines ways in which supporters of the revolution began to develop more dynamic perceptions of time after their initial defence of its constitutional legitimacy. Partly this was in reaction to the Jacobite and opposition rhetorics of the 1690s: William’s supporters were forced to consider developmental chronologies as they answered a case that was based on them. There was also, however, a specifically pro-revolution account of the Stuart age, which saw it as a developmental process of degeneration from the golden age of Elizabeth I. Despite these more ‘modern’ features of Williamite time however, it retained many static qualities: it continued to defend 1688–9 as a restoration of an ancient constitution and of godly religion, while its conception of Stuart history was cyclical rather than linear.

Conclusion: Revolutions, Settlements and Scotland’s Political Development

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alasdair Raffe
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Local Government ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Religious Dissent ◽  
Central Direction ◽  
Established Church ◽  
Power And Authority ◽  
The Revolution

THE REVOLUTION SETTLEMENT OF 1689–90 repudiated many of the principles and policies of royal government in the Restoration period. But while their responses were different, James VII and the makers of the settlement sought solutions to the same fundamental problems. By studying the upheavals of the 1685–90 period, we have focused on two sets of challenges confronting the rulers of seventeenth-century Scotland. The first concerned the character of the established Church. How was it to be constituted and what was the appropriate role for the monarch in its government? How should the civil magistrate deal with religious dissent? A second cluster of problems involved the crown’s power and authority. Was the king ‘absolute’ and what did this mean in practice? To what extent was local government in Scotland autonomous, and how far was it amenable to central direction?...

JOHN DARBY AND THE WHIG CANON

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
JOSEPH HONE
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
History Of The Book ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Revolution

Abstract Through a co-ordinated series of publications in the final years of the seventeenth century, a diverse set of commonwealth texts was entrenched into the canon of whig political thought. This article explores that canon through the lens of the history of the book. A key figure in the formation of this canon was the printer and bookseller John Darby. This article reconstructs Darby's role in the commonwealth opposition to the perceived failures of the Williamite revolution. Using bibliographical methods to establish his output, it shows that from the earliest days of the revolution Darby reprinted a broad range of historic whig texts, ranging from works of history and memoir to collections of poems. These texts provided a language, a rationale, and a model for opposition activity. He also manufactured pamphlets that adapted country principles to contemporary political circumstances. By shifting the focus from John Toland to his printer, the article suggests that the canonical whig texts were one part of a much broader and more ambitious programme to establish an historic canon of oppositional literature.

Invisible Architectures

2000 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans-Jörg Rheinberger
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Basic Problem ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
The Other ◽  
Modern Life ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
Strategy I ◽  
The Invisible

The ArgumentIn this essay I will sketch a few instances of how, and a few forms in which, the “invisible” became an epistemic category in the development of the life sciences from the seventeenth century through the end of the nineteenth century. In contrast to most of the other papers in this issue, I do not so much focus on the visualization of various little entities, and the tools and contexts in which a visual representation of these things was realized. I will be more concerned with the basic problem of introducing entities or structures that cannot be seen, as elements of an explanatory strategy. I will try to review the ways in which the invisibility of such entities moved from the unproblematic status of just being too small to be accessible to the naked or even the armed eye, to the problematic status of being invisible in principle and yet being indispensable within a given explanatory framework. The epistemological concern of the paper is thus to sketch the historical process of how the “unseen” became a problem in the modern life sciences. The coming into being of the invisible as a space full of paradoxes is itself the product of a historical development that still awaits proper reconstruction.

Why This Time and Place?

Born to Write ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 10-19
Author(s):  
Neil Kenny
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Social Position ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Social ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
The Revolution

From about the late fifteenth century onwards, literature and learning acquired increased importance for the social position of noble and elite-commoner families in France. One reason is the expansion and rise to prominence of the royal office-holder milieu, which had no exact equivalent in, say, England, where the aristocracy was much smaller than the French nobility and where there was no equivalent of the French system of venality of office. In France, family literature often helped extend across the generations a relationship between two families—that of the literary producer and that of the monarch. From the late Middle Ages, the conditions for family literature were made more favourable by broad social shifts. Although this study focuses mainly on the period from the late fifteenth to the mid-seventeenth century, it is likely that the production of works from within families of literary producers thrived especially up to the Revolution.

Conclusion

1997 ◽  
pp. 216-225
Author(s):  
Jonathan Israel
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Retail Trade ◽  
Exact Nature ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Cultural Contact ◽  
Portuguese Empire ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
Ownership Of Land ◽  
Great Potency

This concluding chapter assesses what the contribution of the Jews was to seventeenth-century European civilization. It is reasonably clear that the general significance of the Jews has to be assessed under two main heads — the economic and the cultural. The problem is to specify the exact nature of the Jewish role. The techniques of Jewish commerce and finance did not differ from other commerce and finance except in that a vast array of restrictions cut the Jews out of most guilds, most retail trade, and the ownership of land and buildings. The key factor which imparted a certain importance to the post-1570 Jewish role was the simultaneous penetration during the sixteenth century of both Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews, as well as of the Marranos living in Portugal and the Portuguese Empire, into maritime and overland long-distance transit trades linking the Levant with Italy, Poland with the Levant, Poland with Germany, and Portugal and the Portuguese Empire with northern Europe. The commercial importance gained by the Jews in the Levant and Poland, largely as a result of the previous expulsion from the West, in other words, formed the basis of the Jewish revival in Italy, Germany, Bohemia–Moravia, and the Low Countries after 1570. This entrenched position in so many crucial but distant markets proved a factor of great potency, especially in view of the close correspondence and intimate cultural contact between western Jewry and the Jews of the Levant and Poland.

Why Is the Year 2000 a Leap Year?

2000 ◽  
Vol 5 (6) ◽  
pp. 360-362
Author(s):  
Jesse L. M. Wilkins
Keyword(s):  
Historical Development ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Measurement Issues ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Year 2000 ◽  
The Revolution

Keeping track of time has intrigued people throughout history. The constant urge to harness time has resulted in many attempts to perfect the calendar. The study of calendars offers students many opportunities to investigate measurement issues associated with time, the revolution of the earth around the sun, and the historical development of the calendar as civilization became more dependent on keeping accurate time.

The Date and Significance of the Imbangala Invasion of Angola

1965 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Birmingham
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
African History ◽  
Documentary Evidence ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Late Fifteenth

The study of Central African history is still in its infancy. Valuable indications can, however, be obtained by combining the study of oral traditions with that of Portuguese documentary evidence for events taking place near the coasts. It has long been known, for instance, that the overthrow of the powerful Songye rulers of the Luba country indirectly caused long-distance migrations, one of which, that of the Imbangala, came into contact with the Portuguese in Angola. Previous analyses of this migration have suggested that it culminated in the early seventeenth century. In this paper an attempt has been made to show that the Imbangala arrived in Angola much earlier, probably by the mid sixteenth century and certainly before 1575. This date indicates that the Luba invasion of Lunda, which was the direct cause of the migration, probably took place in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Finally, it has been tentatively suggested that the overthrow of Songye rule and the establishment of a new, expansionist Luba empire might have taken place as much as a century earlier, from the fourteenth to the fifteenth century.

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