4/8: The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England, 1603-1689 Hardcover – Deckle Edge, April 11, 2023. by Jonathan Healey (Author)
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🗓️ 5 August 2023
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4/8: The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England, 1603-1689 Hardcover – Deckle Edge, April 11, 2023. 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.
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Jonathan Healey, Professor Jonathan Healey, Social Historian at an Associate Professor |
| 0:10.5 | at Oxford University. |
| 0:11.5 | His new book is The Blazing World, a new history of the Revolutionary England, 1603 to 1689. |
| 0:18.7 | Jonathan mentions the Scottish revolt, but that's the first of many, rising up against |
| 0:23.8 | the absolute power of the king. |
| 0:26.0 | We need now to go quickly through the 1630s and the 1640s, because the king's power |
| 0:32.1 | is challenged not only by religion, but also by people who have been disappointed about |
| 0:41.0 | his way of exacting penalties, exacting taxes, and what is an effect, a tyrannical, the |
| 0:49.2 | word tyranny is used all the time. |
| 0:51.8 | Jonathan, the fighting begins almost casually in the early 1640s, with the king riding |
| 0:59.8 | around with retainers, that is to say his private army, traveling with him. |
| 1:05.5 | At the time, there was no standing army, is that correct, when the king needed men |
| 1:11.0 | to fight with him, he'd call to his lords and they'd raise the army. |
| 1:14.6 | So is the king understood to be, at this point, ordinary riding with his protectors or |
| 1:22.5 | is this seen to be a step back, a weakness on his part? |
| 1:26.7 | Well, I mean, if you like the sort of the kind of rubicon moment, if you like, is when |
| 1:33.4 | in, at the very, well, the winter of 1641, 1642, where essentially, so what's happened |
| 1:41.8 | is that Charles has been forced to call Parliament. Parliament has pushed him down a sort |
| 1:46.4 | of, you know, a path of reform. As part of that, they have put William Lord in prison and |
| 1:52.6 | they've put strafford on trial, eventually had him executed against the king's wishes. |
| 1:58.2 | The king wasn't able to do anything about it. And after that period of reform, which |
| 2:04.4 | the king has basically sort of broadly been forced to accept, he then stages a bit of a |
... |
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