1/8: The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England, 1603-1689 Hardcover – by Jonathan Healey (Author)

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John Batchelor

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🗓️ 24 December 2024

⏱️ 11 minutes

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1/8: The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England, 1603-1689 Hardcover – by Jonathan Healey (Author)

https://www.amazon.com/Blazing-World-History-Revolutionary-1603-1689/dp/0593318358

The seventeenth century was a revolutionary age for the English. It started as they suddenly found themselves ruled by a Scotsman, and it ended in the shadow of an invasion by the Dutch. Under James I, England suffered terrorism and witch panics. Under his son Charles, state and society collapsed into civil war, to be followed by an army coup and regicide. For a short time—for the only time in history—England was a republic. There were bitter struggles over faith and Parliament asserted itself like never before. There were no boundaries to politics. In fiery, plague-ridden London, in coffee shops and alehouses, new ideas were forged that were angry, populist, and almost impossible for monarchs to control.

But the story of this century is less well known than it should be. Myths have grown around key figures. People may know about the Gunpowder Plot and the Great Fire of London, but the Civil War is a half-remembered mystery to many. And yet the seventeenth century has never seemed more relevant. The British constitution is once again being bent and contorted, and there is a clash of ideologies reminiscent of when Roundhead fought Cavalier.

The Blazing World is the story of this strange, twisting, fascinating century. It shows a society in sparkling detail. It was a new world of wealth, creativity, and daring curiosity, but also of greed, pugnacious arrogance, and colonial violence.

1646 QUEEN ANNE OF DENMARK, JAMES I, PRINCE OF WALES (CHARLES I)

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is CBS Eye on the World.
0:08.5	Here's John Batchelor.
0:11.5	It is 1605 in London.
0:15.6	A discovery is made in the vaults below the building where the king and his family will gather for an
0:22.3	important presentation to court. The king is James I of England, James the 6th of Scotland.
0:30.4	He is the beginning monarch that understands the challenge ahead of him is to deal with a country that is both rich and
0:40.1	divided, divided by religion, divided by government, divided by region, divided by the vicissitudes of
0:48.7	nature. And I now turn to Jonathan Healy. His new book, The Blazing World, introduces James I as a way of
0:58.7	understanding what we remember in America as the English Revolutionary Times, very violent, extremely
1:07.2	difficult to generalize about, and leading to the glorious revolution that was the
1:13.8	sponsor of peace and stability in the 18th century, and the imperial project then became serious,
1:21.4	the building of the Great British Empire. Jonathan is an historian. He's an associate professor
1:26.9	in social history at Oxford University. Jonathan is an historian. He's an associate professor in social history at Oxford University.
1:30.5	Jonathan, congratulations and a very good evening to you. The gunpowder plot. Remember,
1:35.6	remember the 5th of November. The attempt by a small group of men, Catholics, to destroy James
1:42.1	the first. Why? What was their motive and what did James make of it
1:46.4	good evening to you Jonathan hi good evening and thank you for thank you for having me on the
1:51.2	gunpowder is I mean it's something that it's one of those events that in the UK we
1:56.7	we all remember because as you say remember remember the 5th 5th of November, gum powder, treason and plot.
2:03.3	And the context was that at the end of the 16th century, at the reign of the end of the reign of
2:09.9	Queen Elizabeth, England had moved away from Roman Catholicism, starting under Henry VIII.
2:19.5	But that process had not been complete in that there were many people who believed that it should go further, that there
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