Celebrating the Glorious Revolution, 1689–1989

1990 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lois G. Schwoerer
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Glorious Revolution ◽  
English Revolution ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
History Of ◽  
Centennial Anniversary ◽  
The Glorious Revolution ◽  
The City ◽  
The Revolution

1988 and 1989 have been vintage years all over the world for centenary celebrations. People have celebrated the centenary of the Eiffel Tower, the bicentenary of the French Revolution, the bicentenary of Australia, the bicentenary of the American Bill of Rights, the quatercentenary of the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the sexcentenary of the battle of Kosovo (this one may have escaped your notice, but it brought over a million people to a gathering in the city of Pristina in Yugoslavia in June 1989), and, of course, the tercentenary of the English Revolution of 1688–89, with which I am concerned tonight. You will have no trouble believing that I have been “concerned with” and “celebrating” the Glorious Revolution for two years now, but I want to confess to you in the intimacy of this festive occasion that it has really been at least ten years, and that sometimes it feels more like three hundred!How did centennial observances start? Why do people go to trouble, take time, and spend money to call to mind an event that happened one, two, or three hundred years ago? What is it about centennial moments that turns serious-minded, scholarly-inclined historians like ourselves into “party people”? What do celebrations tell us about the uses of the past in successive “presents”? The fact is that celebrations, each varying in character, have attended the Glorious Revolution from its beginnings on through each centennial anniversary thereafter — in 1788–89, 1888–89, and 1988–89. The observances at these centennial moments not only celebrated the Revolution itself, but also served, even as they reflected, current political, cultural, and/or economic ideas and goals. In a long perspective, the celebrations are an important part of the political and cultural history of the Revolution of 1688–89 itself. They illustrate how high and low politics may intersect, show how political ideas circulate through society and undergo transformation, and offer an index of changing ideological and cultural assumptions and aspirations over three hundred years.

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian O'Connor
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Dynamics ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Institutions ◽  
Public Instruction ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
The Revolution

The conclusion discusses how re-examining the ‘education question’ in Ancien Régime and Revolutionary France offers new insight to the cultural dynamics at work in the political upheavals of late-eighteenth century France. It argues that recognizing the practical nature of many of the debates over education – even into the radical period of the Revolution – helps us to situate revolutionary politics within its historical moment and to better understand how participatory and representative politics were pursued after 1789. The conclusion situates the pursuit of both public instruction and representative government within the broader legacy of the Revolution, a legacy that has shaped modern political culture in lasting and fundamental ways. It also argues that approaching the political and cultural history of revolutionary France through the interplay of ideas about education and practical efforts to establish new institutions (political and pedagogical alike) suggests new ways to think about the relationship between the Enlightenment and the French Revolution and about the legacy of the Revolution for the theory and practice of democratic politics ever since.

Women and the Glorious Revolution

1986 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lois G. Schwoerer
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Direct Access ◽  
Basic Question ◽  
Glorious Revolution ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
Role Of Women ◽  
The Glorious Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

The role of women in revolutions has recently excited a good deal of scholarly interest. Innovative studies have appeared on women in the English Civil War, the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution that have not only rescued women from oblivion but also modified and enlarged understanding of the revolutions themselves. But for the English Revolution of 1688-89 there has been, aside from biographical studies of the two future queens, Mary and Anne, very little published work on the role of women. My purpose is to remedy that situation, and to broaden the inquiry by addressing four major questions: (1) what role did women from all social groups, lower, middle, aristocratic and royal, play in the Revolution: (2) why, in view of customary restraints, did they enter the public arena; (3) what influence did they have on the Glorious Revolution; and (4) what influence did the Revolution have on women? Underlying these queries is the basic question of what are the contextual conditions that encourage or even make possible women's participation in revolutions?Such a topic requires changes in the questions customarily used in studying political history. If politics is defined in traditional terms simply as the competition for and exercise of power by individuals through their office, voting, and decision making, then there is nothing to say about women in the Glorious Revolution. Women, whatever their social status, had no direct access to the levers of conventionally-defined politics. They did not vote, sit in either house of Parliament, or hold office on any level of government, unless they were queens. In a predominantly patriarchal society, females, except for widows, were customarily subordinate to their fathers or husbands and confined to the sphere of the family and household.

The Mob and the Revolution of 1688

1964 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
William L. Sachse
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Urban Population ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Glorious Revolution ◽  
Popular Opinion ◽  
Coup D'etat ◽  
English Revolution ◽  
Stuart England ◽  
The Glorious Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

Among the major political upheavals which have been called revolutions, the English Revolution of 1688 is generally recognized as extraordinary. Long accepted among moderate Englishmen as “glorious,” a revolution to end revolutions, in more radical quarters it has not been regarded as constituting a true revolution. Contemporary Russian opinion, for example, refuses to bestow upon it this accolade, regarding it as a mere coup d'état. Its conservatism, its legalism, its bloodlessness, the absence of zeal to be found among its protagonists: all contribute to this point of view. That these are characteristics of the Glorious Revolution cannot be denied. More precisely, they characterize the actions of the leaders of the Revolution — of the councillors and legislators and soldiers whose names are known. Of popular opinion and aspiration much less is known, and it is probable that little can be discovered in the surviving evidence. But they can be assessed, to some degree, by following the actions of the mob — or, more accurately, the mobs — as they erupted in London and other parts of the Kingdom.Mob disturbances, like the plague, were more or less endemic in Stuart England. Roger North, in his Examen, asserts that “the Rabble first changed their Title, and were called the mob” in the gatherings of the Green Ribbon Club. Regardless of when the term was first used, seventeenth-century Englishmen were well acquainted with various manifestations of mob activity. England's growing urban population augmented the mob, and before Shaftesbury, Pym had demonstrated that he was aware of the existence of this popular force and of the uses to which it could be put.

scholarly journals “The Bloody Assizes:” Whig Martyrdom and Memory after the Glorious Revolution

1995 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 373-396 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melinda Zook
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
New Order ◽  
Glorious Revolution ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Popular Memory ◽  
Street Literature ◽  
The Glorious Revolution ◽  
The French Revolution

Revolutionaries of modern times often imagine themselves not only as creators of a new future, but also as constructors of a new past. They seek to reinterpret events, rewrite texts, desacralize old idols and icons, and institute new heroes, heroines and martyrs for the cause newly victorious. They hope to recast popular memory to justify the new order. Historians might easily associate such attempts to reconstruct history and manipulate memory with the violent context of the French Revolution. Recent work in French cultural history has provided scholars with a fuller awareness of the functions of revolutionary propaganda, from iconography to ritual. Investigations into festival, street literature, rhetoric, reading, audience, and memory have given the revolutionary experience in France a cultural history that England's still lacks.

Press and Parliament in the Revolution of 1689

1977 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 545-567 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lois G. Schwoerer
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Examination ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
Glorious Revolution ◽  
English Revolution ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Upheaval ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Glorious Revolution ◽  
Elected Representatives ◽  
The Revolution

The Convention Parliament, the revolutionary tribunal of the English Revolution of 1689, prohibited the printing of news of its affairs and barred the public from its debates. Authors, printers and publishers, however, defied these orders and published unlicensed accounts of speeches, votes, committee reports, and the membership of the Convention. Although the laws and administrative procedures which the later Stuarts had used to restrict the press were still in effect, they were not enforced. During the weeks of political crisis, quantities of news-sheets, newspapers and tracts reporting parliamentary news and political opinion appeared. At a time of growing scholarly and popular interest in the Glorious Revolution, it may be useful to examine the relationship between parliament and press. Although studies of the early press and of parliamentary reporting have been made, no detailed examination of these matters during the months of political upheaval in the winter of 1688–9 has been undertaken. Two central questions suggest themselves. How did the politically conscious public learn about what was happening in Westminster where their elected representatives and the peers of the realm were meeting to resolve the crisis facing the nation? What was the attitude of those representatives and peers to having information about their affairs spread beyond their chambers? The answers to such questions may deepen understanding of the Convention and of one aspect of the part played by the press in the Revolution.

Who Dubbed It “The Glorious Revolution?”

1987 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 579-585
Author(s):  
James R. Hertzler
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Glorious Revolution ◽  
English Revolution ◽  
House Of Lords ◽  
William Iii ◽  
The Glorious Revolution ◽  
Considerable Discussion ◽  
The Revolution

It was not very glorious at first, at least to many English people of the late seventeenth century. With a king of undoubted legitimacy squeezed out and a new, albeit related monarch installed and recognized by Parliament, the transaction shook government, nation and church alike. It left Jacobite and non-juring splinters all round. The Revolution, happening in fulfillment of ideals of exclusionist Whigs, did not entirely satisfy those partisans, who soon learned that they could not control their masterful king, William III. As for the Tories, their consciences ached due to their resistance to a divinely-appointed sovereign. Few highly-placed Englishmen were comfortable with their need to call in a foreigner to help them solve their domestic squabbles. Indeed, one writer, reflecting on the letter inviting the Prince of Orange to invade England, thought it would have been “more glorious … to assist our undoubted Soveraign [sic], then to suffer him to be dethroned, solely because he is a Roman Catholic.”Twentieth-century historians called the Revolution other names than “glorious.” It has been dubbed a “sensible,” a “model,” a “moral,” a “respectable,” a “palace,” and simply the English Revolution. All agreed that it was indeed a Revolution, and they themselves were in agreement with some early writers who were contemporary with the event. The Orange Gazette, at the very end of the year 1688, reported on “the Revolutions that had occurred.” The historian Nicholas Tindal wrote that William of Orange himself, in a speech before the House of Lords, spoke of “this late Revolution.” Considerable discussion ensued in Parliament and in pamphlets as to whether William conquered James, or whether the king had abdicated, or had deserted his kingdom. But little question with contemporaries: there was a Revolution.

‘The greatest irregular’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Scurr
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Thomas Carlyle ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dramatic Narrative ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

Thomas Carlyle claimed that his history of the French Revolution was ‘a wild savage book, itself a kind of French Revolution …’. This chapter considers his stylistic approaches to creating the illusion of immediacy: his presentation of seemingly unmediated fact through the transformation of memoir and other kinds of historical record into a compelling dramatic narrative. Closely examining the ways in which he worked biographical anecdote into the fabric of his text raises questions about Carlyle’s wider historical purposes. Pressing the question of what it means to think through style, or to distinguish expressive emotive writing from abstract understanding, is an opportunity to reconsider Carlyle’s relation to his predecessors and contemporaries writing on the Revolution in English.

Urban Space and Aristocratic Power in Late Antique Rome

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Machado
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
The Social ◽  
Traditional Elite ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

This book analyses the physical, social, and cultural history of Rome in late antiquity. Between AD 270 and 535, the former capital of the Roman empire experienced a series of dramatic transformations in its size, appearance, political standing, and identity, as emperors moved to other cities and the Christian church slowly became its dominating institution. Urban Space and Aristocratic Power in Late Antique Rome provides a new picture of these developments, focusing on the extraordinary role played by members of the traditional elite, the senatorial aristocracy, in the redefinition of the city, its institutions, and spaces. During this period, Roman senators and their families became increasingly involved in the management of the city and its population, in building works, and in the performance of secular and religious ceremonies and rituals. As this study shows, for approximately three hundred years the houses of the Roman elite competed with imperial palaces and churches in shaping the political map and the social life of the city. Making use of modern theories of urban space, the book considers a vast array of archaeological, literary, and epigraphic documents to show how the former centre of the Mediterranean world was progressively redefined and controlled by its own elite.

‘The Rulers now on Earth’: Locke'sTwo Treatisesand the Revolution of 1688

1985 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles D. Tarlton
Keyword(s):  
Glorious Revolution ◽  
William Iii ◽  
The Glorious Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

When we believed that Locke had writtenTwo treatises of governmentto justify the Glorious Revolution, we could say a great deal about his purposes in relation to the events of 1688–89. The book served to interpret those events, to disclose their underlying meaning; philosophy and action were joined in such a manner that both gained lustre from the link. But, now we have generally accepted the view that Locke actually wroteTwo treatisesin the partisan heat of the Exclusion debate, and we have stopped saying very much of anything about the book's relation to William III and the events of the year in which Locke anonymously published it.

Puccini's La Bohème

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Music Drama ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
La Boheme ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Many ◽  
The City

La bohème is one of the most frequently performed operas in the world. But how did it come to be so adored? Drawing on an extremely broad range of sources, Alexandra Wilson traces the opera’s rise to global fame. Although the work has been subjected to many hostile critiques, it swiftly achieved popular success through stage performances, recordings, and filmed versions. Wilson demonstrates how La bohème acquired even greater cultural influence as its music and dramatic themes began to be incorporated into pop songs, film soundtracks, musicals, and more. In this cultural history of Puccini’s opera, Wilson offers a fresh reading of a familiar work. La bohème was strikingly modern for the 1890s, she argues, in its approach to musical and dramatic realism and in flouting many of the conventions of the Italian operatic tradition. Considering the work within the context of the aesthetic, social, and political debates of its time, Wilson explores Puccini’s treatment of themes including gender, poverty, and nostalgia. She pays particular attention to La bohème’s representation of Paris, arguing that the opera was not only influenced by romantic mythologies surrounding the city but also helped shape them. Wilson concludes with a consideration of the many and varied approaches directors have taken to the staging of Puccini’s opera, including some that have reinvented the opera for a new age. This book is essential reading for anyone who has seen La bohème and wants to know more about its music, drama, and cultural contexts.

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