English and European Political Ideas in the Early Seventeenth Century: Revisionism and the Case of Absolutism

1996 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johann P. Sommerville
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Old English ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Democratic Institutions ◽  
English History ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Central Argument

The central argument of this article is that English political thinking in the early seventeenth century was not distinctively English. More particularly, we shall see that a number of English writers put forward political doctrines that were precisely the same as those of Continental theorists who are usually described as absolutists. If the Continental thinkers were absolutists, then so were the English writers. The theory of absolutism vested sovereign power in the ruler alone and forbade disobedience to the sovereign's commands unless they contradicted the injunctions of God Himself. It is with the theory of absolutism and not with its practice that this article is concerned.To claim that English and Continental ideas closely resembled each other, and that absolutism flourished on both sides of the Channel, is to challenge not only the old Whig interpretation of English history but also the newer views of so-called revisionists. True, the revisionists often say that they reject Whig ideas. But in fact they adopt some of the central contentions of the Whigs. In order to set what follows into a broad historiographical context, it may be worthwhile to elaborate a little on this theme.Whig historians of the nineteenth century were keen to emphasize the distinctiveness of England's political development. The Anglo-Saxons, they argued, brought free and democratic institutions into England from their Teutonic forests. Elsewhere in Europe, liberty succumbed to the authoritarianism of popes, kings, and Roman lawyers, but the sea kept foreigners and their unpleasant ways out of England, and there freedom lived on. When the Conqueror came, the old English liberties were for a while in jeopardy.

History and Theory: The Norman Conquest in Early Stuart Political Thought

1986 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-261 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johann P. Sommerville
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
English History ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
Continental Thought ◽  
History And Theory

Orthodoxy maintains that English political thinking before Hobbes was based upon an unphilosophical, precedent-bound reading of history. According to J. G. A. Pocock, Sir Edward Coke typically held that English customary law was pre-historical and that the continuity of English traditions had never been broken by conquest. Conquerors possessed sovereign power; in England there had been no conqueror; so there was no supra-legal sovereign. English liberty was deducible from history. Pocock's thesis is inadequate since Coke and many others admitted that there had been a conquest. Their claims rested not upon English history but upon theoretical premises characteristic of Continental thought. Coke's concept of custom was itself theory-laden. Rival theories were largely indifferent to the question of the Norman Conquest, a non-issue in political debate.

The Tudors Viewed by French Romantic Artists

Tudorism ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
STEPHEN BANN
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
English History ◽  
Historical Themes ◽  
Paul Delaroche ◽  
Historical Moment

This chapter singles out two features of the cult of British historical themes in French Romantic painting, and focuses on the most prominent of the artists who cultivated such scenes involving Tudors and Stuarts: Paul Delaroche. It argues that the pronounced nineteenth-century French interest in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English history was a form of displacement, so that Delaroche's painting of the execution of Lady Jane Grey (1834), for example, opened up for the French viewer a space in which to negotiate memories of the Terror within the relative comfort of a more distant and foreign historical moment.

Überzeugungen, Wandlungen und Zuschreibungen

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Leader ◽  
Political Practice ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
Political Career ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Practical Politics ◽  
Otto Von Bismarck

The statesman Otto von Bismarck epitomised political thinking and practical politics in equal measure. Germany’s most significant political leader in the nineteenth century, he was profoundly influenced by the principal political currents of the period, but he also left his mark on them in the course of a political career that lasted some five decades. In this volume of essays, twelve leading experts examine the interaction between Bismarck’s political thought and his political practice and the later reception of this process. This book is aimed at readers interested in history and political ideas. With contributions by Michael Epkenhans, Andreas Fahrmeir, Ewald Frie, Lothar Höbelt, Hans-Christof Kraus, Ulrich Lappenküper, Ulf Morgenstern, Christoph Nonn, Christoph Nübel, Martin Otto, T. G. Otte and Johannes Willms

scholarly journals The Influence of Indian Philosophy on French Romanticism

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 14-24
Author(s):  
Swagata Bhattacharya
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
French Literature ◽  
Indian Philosophy ◽  
Religious Texts ◽  
Romantic Movement ◽  
Diachronic Study ◽  
Central Argument

France’s connection to India dates back to the seventeenth century when the French came to establish trading relations with India and neighboring countries. Even in the heydays of Enlightenment, France, the champion and cradle of Reason and Rationality in Europe, was looking for an alternative and philosophers like Rousseau, Diderot and Voltaire looked towards India as a source of inspiration. That tradition was continued by the French Romantics who were even more influenced and inspired by Indian philosophy and wanted to change the course of French literature with the help of it. This paper aims to explore literary transactions between India and France culminating in the movement called Romanticism in French literature. The paper shall trace the trajectory of how Indian philosophy and thought traveled to Europe in the form of texts and influenced the works of the French from Voltaire in the eighteenth century to Jules Bois in the twentieth. The central argument of this diachronic study, based on the theory of influence, is to prove how significant the role of India and her literary/religious texts have been in the context of the Romantic Movement in French literature in the nineteenth century.

Conclusion: Revolutions, Settlements and Scotland’s Political Development

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alasdair Raffe
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Local Government ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Religious Dissent ◽  
Central Direction ◽  
Established Church ◽  
Power And Authority ◽  
The Revolution

THE REVOLUTION SETTLEMENT OF 1689–90 repudiated many of the principles and policies of royal government in the Restoration period. But while their responses were different, James VII and the makers of the settlement sought solutions to the same fundamental problems. By studying the upheavals of the 1685–90 period, we have focused on two sets of challenges confronting the rulers of seventeenth-century Scotland. The first concerned the character of the established Church. How was it to be constituted and what was the appropriate role for the monarch in its government? How should the civil magistrate deal with religious dissent? A second cluster of problems involved the crown’s power and authority. Was the king ‘absolute’ and what did this mean in practice? To what extent was local government in Scotland autonomous, and how far was it amenable to central direction?...

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Jones
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Old English ◽  
English Studies ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Political Events ◽  
Two Phases ◽  
Scholarly Contribution ◽  
Anglophone World ◽  
The Relationship

This introductory chapter contextualizes the philological study of language during the nineteenth century as a branch of the evolutionary sciences. It sketches in outline the two phases of poetic Anglo-Saxonism for which the rest of the book will subsequently argue in more detail. Moreover, the relationship between Anglo-Saxonism and nineteenth-century medievalism more generally is articulated, and historical analogies are drawn between nineteenth-century Anglo-Saxonism and more recent political events in the Anglophone world. Finally, the scholarly contribution of Fossil Poetry itself is contextualized within English Studies; it is argued that ‘reception’ is one of the primary objects of Anglo-Saxon or Old English studies, and not merely a secondary object of that field’s study.

Hymnody and Liturgy

2019 ◽  
pp. 491-506
Author(s):  
Jonathan Hehn
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
North American ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Church Of Scotland ◽  
Metrical Psalmody ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church

This chapter outlines the history of Presbyterian worship practice from the sixteenth century to the present, with a focus on North American Presbyterians. Tracing both their hymnody and their liturgy ultimately to John Calvin, Presbyterian communions have a distinct heritage of worship inherited from the Church of Scotland via seventeenth-century Puritans. Long marked by metrical psalmody and guided by the Westminster Directory, Presbyterian worship underwent substantial changes in the nineteenth century. Evangelical and liturgical movements led Presbyterians away from a Puritan visual aesthetic, into the use of nonscriptural hymnody, and toward a recovery of liturgical books. Mainline North American and Scottish Presbyterians solidified these trends in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; however, conservative North American denominations and some other denominations globally continue to rely heavily on the use of a worship directory and metrical psalmody.

PAWNSHIP, DEBT, AND ‘FREEDOM’ IN ATLANTIC AFRICA DURING THE ERA OF THE SLAVE TRADE: A REASSESSMENT

2014 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul E. Lovejoy
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
Guinea Coast ◽  
Congo River

AbstractA reassessment of the institution of pawnship in Africa for the period from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth century tightens the reference to situations in which individuals were held as collateral for debts that had been incurred by others, usually relatives. Contrary to the assumptions of some scholars, pawnship was not related to poverty and enslavement for debt but rather to commercial liquidity and the mechanisms by which funds were acquired to promote trade or to cover the expenses of funerals, weddings, and religious obligations. A distinction is made, therefore, between enslavement for debt and pawnship. It is demonstrated that pawnship characterized trade with European and American ships in many parts of Atlantic Africa, but not everywhere. While pawnship was common north of the Congo River, at Gabon, Cameroon, Calabar, the interior of the Bights of Biafra and Benin, the Gold Coast, and the upper Guinea coast, it was illegal in most of Muslim Africa and the Portuguese colony of Angola, while it was not used in commercial dealings with Europeans at Bonny, Ouidah, and other places.

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