“A Man of Intrigue but of No Virtue”

This chapter reconstructs the life of Jean-Baptiste Stouppe (1623–1692), a Huguenot of Italian origin who in the 1650s moved to England and was employed by Oliver Cromwell in important diplomatic / espionage missions. Passing into the service of Louis XIV as a soldier, he published some pro-French propaganda works aimed at Protestants, including a famous description of Dutch religious life, published in 1673, notorious for its negative portrayal of Spinoza’s philosophy. While presenting himself as a defender of Protestant orthodoxy, Stouppe was in fact a libertine with magical-alchemical interests. An unscrupulous and ambiguous figure, his intellectual trajectory is clearly inserted in what has been defined as the crisis of the European conscience.

Fatal Adulteries: Sexual Politics in the English Revolution

This article argues for a reconsideration of the origins of Restoration sexual politics through a detailed examination of the effusive sexual polemic of the English Revolution (1642–1660). During the early 1640s, unprecedented political upheaval and a novel public culture of participatory print combined to transform explicit sexual libel from a muted element of prewar English political culture into one of its preeminent features. In the process, political leaders at the highest levels of government—including Queen Henrietta Maria, Oliver Cromwell, and King Charles I—were confronted with extensive and graphic debates about their sexual histories in widely disseminated print polemic for the first time in English history. By the early 1650s, monarchical sexuality was a routine topic of scurrilous political commentary. Charles II was thus well acquainted with this novel polemical milieu by the time he assumed the throne in 1660, and his adoption of the “Merry Monarch” persona early in his reign represented a strategic attempt to turn mid-century sexual politics to his advantage, despite unprecedented levels of contemporary criticism. Restoration sexual culture was therefore largely the product of civil war polemical debate rather than the singular invention of a naturally libertine young king.

Puritanism in Transatlantic Perspective

David D. Hall’s book comprises a transatlantic history of the Puritan movement from its sixteenth-century emergence to its heyday under Oliver Cromwell and its subsequent political demise after 1660. Hall provides insights into the movement’s trajectory, including the various forms of Puritan belief and practice in England and Scotland and their transatlantic migration. In Hall’s sweeping view, Puritanism was a driving force for cultural change in the early modern Atlantic world and left an indelible mark on religion in America. The four reviewers praise Hall’s book for its monumental achievement, with Abram Van Engen emphasizing the centrality of Puritan theology. They place it within its historiographical context, as Evan Haefeli does by comparing it with Michael Winship’s Hot Protestants: A History of Puritanism in England and America (2018) and as Fred van Lieburg does by reminding us of the centuries-old German tradition of Pietismusforschung. The reviewers also raise critical questions as to the audience of Puritan publications and point to the benefits of studying Puritanism in an even wider comparative framework, one that looks forwards and backwards in time and one that speaks to the large, overarching questions raised by global history and digital humanities, including Andrew Pettegree’s ustc project. In his response David Hall begins by acknowledging the decades of Anglo-American scholarship on the Puritan movement on which his book builds, replies to points raised by the reviewers, and reflects on the situation of Puritan studies in the United States at this moment in time.

Entre racializações: Oliver C. Cox e a sociologia

Resumo Oliver Cromwell Cox foi um sociólogo negro de Trinidad e Tobago que passou a maior parte de sua vida pessoal e intelectual nos Estados Unidos. Neste país, o caráter heterodoxo de suas críticas à sociologia de seu tempo lançaram sobre sua obra um silêncio que durou décadas. Em tempos recentes, porém, o crescente interesse por sua obra trouxe à tona discussões sobre seus fundamentos. Este texto se volta à trajetória inicial do autor, período que abarca desde seu nascimento, no Caribe, em 1901, até a publicação de sua magnum opus Caste, class and race, em 1948. Argumenta-se que esse período é antes de tudo marcado por uma circulação do autor por distintas gramáticas de racialização, que, por sua vez, foram determinantes para o ímpeto desconstrucionista que marcou sua posição em relação às ciências sociais. Argumenta-se ainda que a ênfase nesse aspecto da trajetória de Cox, por meio de um engajamento crítico e sistêmico com raça, oferece uma importante contribuição aos chamados estudos externalistas de intelectuais afro-diaspóricos na sociologia.

El mecanismo de la riqueza

He estado soñando con un tiempo en que los ingleses estén hartos de los laboristas y los conservadores, y escupan sobre el nombre de Oliver Cromwell, y denuncien a esta línea real que aún le alaba, y le alabará por siempre. Morrissey Máquinas, máquinas, objetos que revelan el ingenio y la destreza infinita de la civilización del lucro. Brillan cuidadas con esmero como creaciones supremas, deidades de la era de las herramientas. Una taxonomía impecable las hace resplandecer; son creaciones sucesivas del siglo que perfeccionó la explotación humana. El museo muestra y oculta, destaca y envía al pudridero de la memoria aquello que no quiere ser mostrado a las conciencias fugaces. Estos objetos funcionaban hasta dieciocho horas al día a partir de las manos de obreros, algunos de brazos delgados como cuchillos, mujeres y hombres; nadie había quedado bajo el sol durante la creación mítica del capitalismo. Sus rostros muertos y sus brazos quebradizos han sido eliminados prolijamente. Podrían ocupar modestos retratos bajo el rostro de los propietarios, orgullosos al costado de sus máquinas con atributos de éxito mundial. Hasta un fragmento de espacio se les ha negado. No ha quedado ni imagen lejana de aquellos anónimos que hacían funcionar como una música el mecanismo de la riqueza ajena....

The Cromwellian Army’s Political Role During the Interregnum

From 1649 to 1660 the Cromwellian army, which grew out of the New Model Army, was the dominant political institution in the country and the foundation for each successive government. It forced through the regicide, purged parliaments, dissolved them, restored them, summoned new legislative bodies, produced a written constitution, and briefly flirted with direct military rule under the major-generals. The army elevated Oliver Cromwell, its Lord General, to the position of Lord Protector, and then turned against his son, Richard, and demolished the Protectorate. In 1660 part of the army engineered the restoration of the monarchy. There is no other period in English history, either before or since the interregnum, when a standing army exercised so much power and influence on the politics and government of the country. Its adoption of a political role was initially defensive in terms of securing its due after the civil war in terms of pay and arrears. In the face of parliamentary hostility, that focus on material issues broadened to incorporate a defense of the army’s right to petition and defend its honor and then widened further with its conviction that, as the embodiment of the godly cause, it had a right and a duty to be involved in the settlement of the nation. But the army never felt comfortable with the messy business of politics, and it spent the 1650s trying to find a parliament with which it could coexist. The character of the army inevitably changed during the 11 years of the English republic. Death, wounds, retirement, and political differences removed many senior officers, as well as reshaping much of the junior officer corps and the rank and file. The physical dispersion of the regiments after the conquests of Ireland and Scotland led to substantially different means of political engagement and intervention compared to the years 1647 and 1648, when much of the army was quartered close together within striking distance of London. But alongside these developments there were some fundamental features of the army that remained constant: it continued to be a heterogenous institution that accommodated a wide range of political and religious beliefs among its officer corps; its veneration of Oliver Cromwell never wavered, albeit with some exceptions during the Protectorate, and, in turn, he tolerated its diversity while ruling the army with tight control; and the clarion cry of army unity as the bulwark against “the common enemy” (the Royalists) endured as a potent emotion, even for those who opposed Cromwell’s Protectorate. In 1659 and 1660, after Cromwell’s death, the restored Rump Parliament, the assembly that the army had dissolved in 1653, twice purged the army’s officer corps as it imposed tests of political correctness and fealty on an institution that it deeply distrusted. The purges wrecked army unity and left the army in England incapable of resisting General George Monck when he brought about the restoration of the monarchy.