1688 : The First Modern Revolution

by Steve Pincus

• ISBN13: 9780300171433
• ISBN10: 0300171439
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2011-02-22
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

For two hundred years historians have viewed England's Glorious Revolution of 16881689 as an un-revolutionary revolutionbloodless, consensual, aristocratic, and above all, sensible. In this brilliant new interpretation Steve Pincus refutes this traditional view. By expanding the interpretive lens to include a broader geographical and chronological frame, Pincus demonstrates that England's revolution was a European event, that it took place over a number of years, not months, and that it had repercussions in India, North America, the West Indies, and throughout continental Europe. His rich historical narrative, based on masses of new archival research, traces the transformation of English foreign policy, religious culture, and political economy that, he argues, was the intended consequence of the revolutionaries of 16881689. James II developed a modernization program that emphasized centralized control, repression of dissidents, and territorial empire. The revolutionaries, by contrast, took advantage of the new economic possibilities to create a bureaucratic but participatory state. The postrevolutionary English state emphasized its ideological break with the past and envisioned itself as continuing to evolve. All of this, argues Pincus, makes the Glorious Revolutionnot the French Revolutionthe first truly modern revolution. This wide-ranging book reenvisions the nature of the Glorious Revolution and of revolutions in general, the causes and consequences of commercialization, the nature of liberalism, and ultimately the origins and contours of modernity itself.

Author Biography

Steve Pincus is professor of history at Yale University. He is the author of Protestantism and Patriotism and England's Glorious Revolution. He lives in New Haven, CT.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. vii
Acknowledgments	p. xi
Introductory
Introduction	p. 3
The Unmaking of a Revolution	p. 11
Rethinking Revolutions	p. 30
Prerevolutionary England
Going Dutch: English Society in 1685	p. 49
English Politics at the Accession of James II	p. 91
The Ideology of Catholic Modernity	p. 118
The Practice of Catholic Modernity	p. 143
Resistance to Catholic Modernity	p. 179
Revolution
Popular Revolution	p. 221
Violent Revolution	p. 254
Divisive Revolution	p. 278
Revolutionary Transformation
Revolution in Foreign Policy	p. 305
Revolution in Political Economy	p. 366
Revolution in the Church	p. 400
Conclusion
Assassination, Association, and the Consolidation of Revolution	p. 437
Conclusion: The First Modern Revoludon	p. 474
Abbreviations	p. 487
Notes	p. 489
Manuscripts Consulted	p. 619
Index	p. 631
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.