England's Troubles: Seventeenth-Century English Political Instability in European Context. (Reviews).

England's troubles. Seventeenth-century English political instability in European context. By Jonathan Scott. Pp. xii + 546. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. [pounds sterling](45 (cloth), [pounds sterling]17.95 (paper). 0521 41192 0; 0 521 42334 1

JEH (53) 2002; DOI: 10.1017/S0022046902842567

This is a work of enormous intellectual ambition. Dr Scott, after rebuking the sterile pointillism of recent 'revisionist' scholarship, attempts nothing less then a holistic analytical account of the seventeenth century in England, which locates national experience decisively within a European framework. The traditional, artificial, chronology that emphasises the 1660 watershed is dismissed. A key leitmotiv gives the century its essential coherence as a unit of historical study: the attempt to reorganise the resources of the English state to enable it to participate as a major military force in the confessional politics of Europe. This endeavour was initially vitiated by practical problems that swiftly engendered periods of embittered political strife, fierce ideological dispute and institutional instability. These periods -- 1618-48, 1678-83, and 1688-97 -- constitute 'England's troubles'. These must be viewed, argues Scott, as phases of a single crisis, not as discrete entities. The three phases were not on ly …