Puritanism in Transatlantic Perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-87
Author(s):  
Abram C. Van Engen ◽  
Evan Haefeli ◽  
Andrew Pettegree ◽  
Fred van Lieburg ◽  
David D. Hall
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
The United States ◽  
Global History ◽  
Indelible Mark ◽  
Transatlantic History ◽  
Oliver Cromwell ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anglo American

Abstract David D. Hall’s book comprises a transatlantic history of the Puritan movement from its sixteenth-century emergence to its heyday under Oliver Cromwell and its subsequent political demise after 1660. Hall provides insights into the movement’s trajectory, including the various forms of Puritan belief and practice in England and Scotland and their transatlantic migration. In Hall’s sweeping view, Puritanism was a driving force for cultural change in the early modern Atlantic world and left an indelible mark on religion in America. The four reviewers praise Hall’s book for its monumental achievement, with Abram Van Engen emphasizing the centrality of Puritan theology. They place it within its historiographical context, as Evan Haefeli does by comparing it with Michael Winship’s Hot Protestants: A History of Puritanism in England and America (2018) and as Fred van Lieburg does by reminding us of the centuries-old German tradition of Pietismusforschung. The reviewers also raise critical questions as to the audience of Puritan publications and point to the benefits of studying Puritanism in an even wider comparative framework, one that looks forwards and backwards in time and one that speaks to the large, overarching questions raised by global history and digital humanities, including Andrew Pettegree’s ustc project. In his response David Hall begins by acknowledging the decades of Anglo-American scholarship on the Puritan movement on which his book builds, replies to points raised by the reviewers, and reflects on the situation of Puritan studies in the United States at this moment in time.

The Cambridge History of America and the World

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
The United States ◽  
Global History ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Early American ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Indentured Servants

The first volume of The Cambridge History of America and the World examines how the United States emerged out of a series of colonial interactions, some involving indigenous empires and communities that were already present when the first Europeans reached the Americas, others the adventurers and settlers dispatched by Europe's imperial powers to secure their American claims, and still others men and women brought as slaves or indentured servants to the colonies that European settlers founded. Collecting the thoughts of dynamic scholars working in the fields of early American, Atlantic, and global history, the volume presents an unrivalled portrait of the human richness and global connectedness of early modern America. Essay topics include exploration and environment, conquest and commerce, enslavement and emigration, dispossession and endurance, empire and independence, new forms of law and new forms of worship, and the creation and destruction when the peoples of four continents met in the Americas.

The Puritans

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
David D. Hall
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Transatlantic History ◽  
Oliver Cromwell ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Movement ◽  
The Church

This book is a sweeping transatlantic history of Puritanism from its emergence out of the religious tumult of Elizabethan England to its founding role in the story of America. Shedding critical new light on the diverse forms of Puritan belief and practice in England, Scotland, and New England, the book provides a multifaceted account of a cultural movement that judged the Protestant reforms of Elizabeth's reign to be unfinished. The book describes the movement's deeply ambiguous triumph under Oliver Cromwell, its political demise with the Restoration of the English monarchy in 1660, and its perilous migration across the Atlantic to establish a “perfect reformation” in the New World. It examines the tribulations and doctrinal dilemmas that led to the fragmentation and eventual decline of Puritanism. It presents a compelling portrait of a religious and political movement that was divided virtually from the start. In England, some wanted to dismantle the Church of England entirely and others were more cautious, while Puritans in Scotland were divided between those willing to work with a troublesome king and others insisting on the independence of the state church. The book traces how Puritanism was a catalyst for profound cultural changes in the early modern Atlantic world, opening the door for other dissenter groups such as the Baptists and the Quakers, and leaving its enduring mark on what counted as true religion in America.

The early modern town—its history and historians: a review article

Urban History ◽  
1981 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 55-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Burke
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Institutional History ◽  
American Scholar ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Schools ◽  
American Research ◽  
Anglo American

Twenty-five years ago, when Jean Delumeau published his study of sixteenth-century Rome, contributions to the social (as opposed to the institutional) history of early modern towns were still rare events. Since about 1960, the trickle has become a flood. Historians from different countries have contributed to this development to varying degrees and in different ways; the French, with a shelf of massive doctoral theses; the Italians, with multi-volume histories of specific cities; the Germans, with symposia on small towns, and so on. The virtually simultaneous publication of three monographs on provincial English towns, one of them by an American scholar (J. T. Evans), prompts a question about the place of Anglo-American research in this picture. Are there distinctive English and American schools of preindustrial urban history? If so, is this because the towns studied are different, or the historical traditions of the students?

The Book of Common Prayer: A Guide

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Hefling
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
The United States ◽  
History Of The Book ◽  
Book Of Common Prayer ◽  
Prayer Book ◽  
Corporate Worship ◽  
History Of ◽  
Common Prayer ◽  
The Church

This book surveys the contents and the history of the Book of Common Prayer, a sacred text which has been a foundational document of the Church of England and the other churches in the worldwide community of Anglican Christianity. The Prayer Book is primarily a liturgical text—a set of scripts for enacting events of corporate worship. As such it is at once a standard of theological doctrine and an expression of spirituality. The first part of this survey begins with an examination of one Prayer Book liturgy, known as Divine Service, in some detail. Also discussed are the rites for weddings, ordinations, and funerals and for the sacraments of Baptism and Communion. The second part considers the original version of the Book of Common Prayer in the context of the sixteenth-century Reformation, then as revised and built into the Elizabethan settlement of religion in England. Later chapters discuss the reception, revision, rejection, and restoration of the Prayer Book during its first hundred years. The establishment of the text in its classical form in 1662 was followed by a “golden age” in the eighteenth century, which included the emergence of a modified version in the United States. The narrative concludes with a chapter on the displacement of the Book of Common Prayer as a norm of Anglican identity. Two specialized chapters concentrate on the Prayer Book as a visible artifact and as a text set to music.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Hamilton
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Early Modern History ◽  
History Of Collecting ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Renaissance

This chapter explores the material culture of everyday life in late-Renaissance Paris by setting L’Estoile’s diaries and after-death inventory against a sample of the inventories of thirty-nine of his colleagues. L’Estoile and his family lived embedded in the society of royal office-holders and negotiated their place in its hierarchy with mixed success. His home was cramped and his wardrobe rather shabby. The paintings he displayed in the reception rooms reveal his iconoclastic attitude to the visual, contrasting with the overwhelming number of Catholic devotional pictures displayed by his colleagues. Yet the collection he stored in his study and cabinet made him stand out in his milieu as a distinguished curieux. It deserves a place in the early modern history of collecting, as his example reveals that the civil wars might be a stimulus as much as a disruption to collecting in sixteenth-century France.

Jus Tempus in the Magna Carta: The Sovereignty of Time in Modern Politics and Citizenship

2010 ◽  
Vol 43 (03) ◽  
pp. 463-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth F. Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
The Political ◽  
Place Of Birth ◽  
Political Status ◽  
Modern Politics ◽  
American Tradition ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Right ◽  
Constitutional Tradition

In the English constitutional tradition, subjecthood has been primarily derived from two circumstances: place of birth and time of birth. People not born in the right place and at the right time are not considered subjects. What political status they hold varies and depends largely on the political history of the territory in which they reside at the exact time of their birth. A genealogy of early modern British subjecthood reveals that law based on dates and temporal durations—what I will call collectivelyjus tempus—creates sovereign boundaries as powerful as territorial borders or bloodlines. This concept has myriad implications for how citizenship comes to be institutionalized in modern politics. In this article, I briefly outline one route through whichjus tempusbecame a constitutive principle within the Anglo-American tradition of citizenship and how this concept works with other principles of membership to create subtle gradations of semi-citizenship beyond the binary of subject and alien. I illustrate two main points aboutjus tempus: first, how specific dates create sovereign boundaries among people and second, how durational time takes on an abstract value in politics that allows certain kinds of attributes, actions, and relationships to be translated into rights-bearing political statuses. I conclude with some remarks about how, once established, the principle ofjus tempusis applied in a diverse array of political contexts.

Friends and Enemies in the Global History of Diplomacy

2020 ◽  
pp. 164-222
Author(s):  
Mark Netzloff
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Final Section ◽  
European Regions ◽  
Global History ◽  
State Service ◽  
Unique Position ◽  
Gunpowder Plot ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Diplomacy

This chapter juxtaposes three episodes in the history of early modern diplomacy: Sir Henry Wotton’s tenure as England’s ambassador to Venice; the English state’s efforts to extradite a group of Catholic exiles in connection to the Gunpowder Plot; and Sir Francis Drake’s alliance with the nation of Cimarrons in Panama. The discussion of Wotton focuses on the unique position of the embassy as a space of residence, domestic business, and social and pedagogical conduct. In contrast to Wotton’s more autonomous model of state service, the English response to the Gunpowder Plot reflects the elision of any legal or conceptual place for the exile, extraterritorial subject, or nonstate agent. The final section examines the modes of sociability and definitions of enmity applied to colonial and extra-European regions, looking at the lines of amity, the premise that extraterritorial violence “beyond the line” did not disrupt peaceful relations among European states.

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