1688: The First Modern Revolution - Hardcover

Steve Pincus

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300115474 ISBN 13: 9780300115475

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2009

Synopsis

For two hundred years historians have viewed England's Glorious Revolution of 1688-1689 as an un-revolutionary revolution - bloodless, 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 1688-1689. James II developed a modernization programme 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 post-revolutionary English state emphasized its ideological break with the past and envisioned itself as continuing to evolve. All of this, argues Pincus, makes the Glorious Revolution - not the French Revolution - the 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.

About this title

Review:

`Steve Pincus's book [is] a work of spectacular ambition and astonishingly wide learning ... dense yet lucid and vigorous.' --Blair Worden, Literary Review, October 2009

`Mr Pincus explodes in succession each of the myths about the Glorious Revolution ... [a] cogently argued account.' --Economist, 17th October 2009

'...compelling and forcefully argued... It is a book that will prompt intense historical debate for many years to come.' --Ted Vallance, New Statesman, 26th October 2009

`In 1688 ... [Pincus] has written a swashbuckling book ... As fearless iconoclasm, 1688 can hardly be bettered.'
--David Scott, Standpoint, 1st November 2009

`An engaging read...this book will unquestionably become a major talking-point among all interested in Britain's last revolution.'
--Ted Vallance, BBC History Magazine, 1st December 2009

`Pincus's marvellously learned book is the product of years of industrious archival labour.'
--Jonathan Clark, Times Literary Supplement, 15th January 2010

`...one of the most ambitious works of history to appear in recent years... The book is a marvel of scholarship.'
--Matthew Price, The National, 25th December 2009

`A book that will be difficult for any student of the 17th century or of the revolutions to ignore.' --Mark Knights, Reviews in History, April 2010

`No historian of the Glorious Revolution - or the regime it established - will be able to overlook this remarkable work.'
--William Gibson, Archives, April 2010

About the Author:

Steven Pincus is professor of history at Yale University. He is the author of 'The Politics of the Public Sphere in Early Modern England', 'Protestantism and Patriotism: Ideologies and the Making of English Foreign Policy, 1650-1668', and 'England's Glorious Revolution: A Brief History with Documents'.

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0300115474
• ISBN 13: 9780300115475
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 672