Renaissance Forum: v2no1 (Spring 1997): Mike Braddick

John Morrill. Ed. 1996. The Oxford Illustrated History of Tudor and Stuart Britain. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. xv + 487 pp. ISBN 0-19-820325-X. Ł25.00.

This is an impressive collection of essays, of uniformly high standard. Collectively, the contributions represent an interesting blend of imaginative and novel approaches to the period with more familiar perspectives. Individual chapters give high quality accounts of the current state of play, dealing with complex material concisely and with great clarity. A number, particularly those of Adamson, Haigh and Morrill are written with real elegance and wit. It is clear, then, that the collection as a whole will appeal not only to the interested general reader but that some chapters will be used in teaching at undergraduate level. It is also interesting to see how, overall, the agenda of early modern British history has changed: there is no corrupt medieval church, no high road to civil war and the whig and marxist master narratives do not even figure as straw men. Here is, broadly speaking, an account of where we are after revisionism. That it will have a 'popular' audience is clear. It is broad-ranging, well-written and beautifully illustrated: a very handsome production.
The opening chapter, by Webster, gives an account of the changing landscape, as a way into aspects of the economic history of the period. It is suggestive of the potential and interest of landscape history, something to which early modern British history has been relatively immune, despite the impact of Hoskins. On the other hand, Webster does have to revert to more traditional approaches and cannot sustain the discussion of the landscape through the whole chapter. But the freshness of the approach serves to introduce what is, in all, an imaginative collection. There follows a pair of chapters, by MacCulloch and Ellis, which give an important spatial context for the discussion of the period. Most histories of the period treat as a norm of government and society a pattern of institutions and social relations which was actually peculiar to south-east England. MacCulloch discusses the gradual spread of these norms within England and Ellis discusses the very different patterns observable in other parts of the British Isles. Morrill's first chapter then takes this story through to 1688, discussing the interrelations of the three kingdoms. Those familiar with the recent work of Morrill and Ellis on these issues will find here convenient summaries.
Six chapters follow which reflect the impact of social and cultural history in recent years. Erickson's intelligent discussion of family, household and community skillfully conveys the main lines of recent enquiry. It tackles, inter alia, the social experience of women but is organised around the household as a unit of production and reproduction, and around the life-cycle as a determinant of social experience. O'Day's chapter ably summarises the literature on schools, universities and the role of literacy in early modern society and Gurr captures nicely the social and cultural importance of the theatre. Brooks's chapter on law and litigation represents an important and accessible statement of our knowledge of an important aspect of social life and whets the appetite for his full-length study of the subject. Adamson's chapter on the mental world of the aristocracy is written with an admirable lightness of touch, evoking in an accessible way some of the presumptions that governed the behaviour of the early modern aristocracy. Walter's discussion of the mental world of the commons brings to bear an impressive command of an increasingly rich area of research.
Two chapters discuss political culture, Guy on the Tudors and Sharpe on the Stuarts. There is some difference of tone: Sharpe's is the more fully committed to cultural history, discussing court style in terms of art, architecture and image, while Guy, although organising his chapter around the notion of kingship, gives more space to institutional history. They work well as a pair, though, again alerting us to the impact of cultural history on the ways in which political life is now being discussed. Religion gets a thematic treatment too, in chapters by Russell and Goldie. Here the disjunction between the interests of the two authors is more marked, Russell's being a history of the Church and its opponents, while Goldie is more alive the broader meanings of religion in early modern society. A reader looking for the prehistory of the issues covered by Goldie will find it split between the essays by Russell and Walter.
The collection then, has a broad and ambitious agenda. As a result we are three-quarters of the way through the book before we hit the political narrative and discussions of foreign policy. The final five chapters deal with these issues, broadly familiar to the specialist, but covered here with aplomb. The political history is divided into three: 1485-1585 (MacCaffrey); 1570-1630 (Haigh); and 1630-1690 (Morrill). All three are admirable treatments, but Morrill's chapter will be of particular interest to those in the field, covering as it does such a controversial period in such brief compass. It is an admirable traverse. In the final two chapters Adams and Reeve consider the place of Tudor England and Stuart Britain in the wider world, with particular emphasis on European politics.
As has already been suggested there are some differences of approach between the authors. The job of co-ordinating eighteen authors is a formidable one and some differences of tone and thematic concern are inevitable. So too, are omissions. The history of the domestic economy is not addressed head on, but crops up in the essays by Webster, Erickson, Walter. With such a marked contribution from Cambridge-based or trained historians it is odd to see a volume with virtually no discussion of demography and migration. The commercial and military revolutions do not get a look-in either, except in so far as they impinge on foreign policy. Perhaps, for a general audience, a chapter on the discoveries and the great movements of population across the Irish sea and the Atlantic would have rated as much space as the theatre? This might also have linked the British history, well-represented here, with the history of the wider British atlantic world, which receives less attention. At the same time, the British themes are not pursued comprehensively: the social history of Ireland and Scotland is not here, nor are their religious and institutional histories discussed particularly fully. Moreover, there is no extended discussion of resistance to, and subversion of, the various forms of authority described here. And while an account of the main lines of political thought in the period is embedded in particular contributions it might have warranted separate treatment. In addition to these gaps, some topics sit uneasily between authors: the chapters by Guy and Sharpe inevitably overlap with the political narratives, for example. Overall, however, it must be emphasised that this is a well-controlled volume with a clear shape and purpose, which covers a very broad territory with clarity and economy.
The contributions are not just bald summaries of the state of play and to that extent the format is a bit restricting: it is to be hoped that some of the contributors will return to their themes on other occasions. One would like to ask Adamson, for example, why he gives quite the prominence that he does to astrology and Webster's chapter should surely encourage more work on those issues. This is the constraint of the form, of course, but there is a more fundamental question here of how individual contributors have reacted to the constraints. It is not always clear that they are writing with the same audience in mind and this is compounded by the fact that, while some essays are summarising a well-established field, others are discussing a more experimental approach. This, no doubt, will be less clear to non-specialists and by no means mars the collection. But it does suggest that individual chapters will be read by different audiences for different purposes.
This, perhaps, might suggest a final question, of how to write professionally -respectable history for a general audience. We cannot presume that the contributors set out with this high-minded mission, but I think it is one of which we should be aware. Mark Kishlansky, launching his Penguin history in London recently, pointed out that most of us are producing tomorrow's rare books, with print runs of a few hundred and audiences of a similar size. History books no longer stand at the front of the book shops and we all know how implausible our research sounds to non-historians (and even to other historians) at dinner parties. Kishlansky pointed out how, although papers by academic chemists are also impenetrable to the general reader, at least chemists help to produce things that are consumed by the population at large. This is not the place to discuss Kishlansky's book as a response to the problem, of course. The volume under discussion here, though, does seem to be one which will satisfy both those of us in the game and those who like to pop in every now and then to see what's going on. Extended historiographical discussion has been banished without in my view (the few grumbles outlined above notwithstanding) ruling out its use for teaching. At the same time the responsibility of communicating the full range of scholarly interest and endeavour has also, largely, been shouldered. The price of collaboration, of course, is bound to be some unevenness of tone and coverage. But professional history still awaits its David Attenborough, and in the meantime we should welcome such collective endeavours.

MIKE BRADDICK
UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD