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Charles Thorpe argues sociology lacks a “language of society as a whole.” He holds that positivist sociologists de-legitimated holistic theories or broad normatively oriented “social theories,” leaving the discipline without discursive means to critically assess and deliberate its overall directions and those of society. Thorpe does not address holistic theory directly or explain how it differs analytically from standard “sociological theory.” My intent is to clarify these matters by extending facets of his argument to illuminate the interdependence between holistic theorizing and empirical-historical social science, which is necessary to create the type of “reflexive sociology” that Thorpe argues would make sociology more cosmopolitan and capable of addressing the turbulent sociopolitical conditions in the interregnum after neoliberalism.

Staging the revolution offers a reappraisal of the weight and volume of theatrical output during the commonwealth and early Restoration, both in terms of live performances and performances on the paper stage. It argues that the often-cited notion that 1642 marked an end to theatrical production in England until the playhouses were reopened in 1660 is a product of post-Restoration re-writing of the English civil wars and the representations of royalists and parliamentarians that emerged in the 1640s and 1650s. These retellings of recent events in dramatic form mean that drama is central to civil-war discourse. Staging the revolution examines the ways in which drama was used to rewrite the civil war and commonwealth period and demonstrates that, far from marking a clear cultural demarcation from the theatrical output of the early seventeenth century, the Restoration is constantly reflecting back on the previous thirty years.

Many places in the post-socialist world undergo emptying: a loss of their constitutive elements—people, infrastructure, services, and futures past. Some people see this emptying as a loss, others as an opportunity. We argue that the shift from loss to opportunity—or vice versa—is a site of the political, that is, a moment of decision about the place of the present in a framework of meaning that gives form and direction to life. Drawing on contributions to the theme section, as well as on literature on hegemony, the political, and Anthropocene, we identify a potential tension between re-politicization on the scale of geopolitics and de- politicization on the scale of the planetary.

After the Restoration, parliamentarians continued to identify with the decisions to oppose and resist crown and established church. This was despite the fact that expressing such views between 1660 and 1688 was to open oneself to charges of sedition or treason. This book uses approaches from the field of memory studies to examine ‘seditious memories’ in seventeenth-century Britain, asking why people were prepared to take the risk of voicing them in public. It argues that such activities were more than a manifestation of discontent or radicalism – they also provided a way of countering experiences of defeat. Besides speech and writing, parliamentarian and republican views are shown to have manifested as misbehaviour during official commemorations of the civil wars and republic. The book also considers how such views were passed on from the generation of men and women who experienced civil war and revolution to their children and grandchildren.

This volume looks at how mid-seventeenth-century debates on the government and order of the Church related to the political crisis of the time. It explores debates concerning the relationship between church, state and people, the nature of the various post-Reformation settlements in the British Atlantic and how they impacted on each other, as well as central and local responses to ecclesiastical upheaval. This is one of the first scholarly collections to focus on the topic of church polity and its relation to politics during a critical period of transatlantic history. It will be of interest to scholars and students of the British revolutions as well as those working on the history of the Church and early dissenting tradition.This volume looks at how mid-seventeenth-century debates on the government and order of the Church related to the political crisis of the time. It explores debates concerning the relationship between church, state and people, the nature of the various post-Reformation settlements in the British Atlantic and how they impacted on each other, as well as central and local responses to ecclesiastical upheaval. This is one of the first scholarly collections to focus on the topic of church polity and its relation to politics during a critical period of transatlantic history. It will be of interest to scholars and students of the British revolutions as well as those working on the history of the Church and early dissenting tradition.

The essay reassesses the ways in which book historians define the politics of early modern publishers by examining a selection of books published during the late 1640s and 1650s by Humphrey Moseley, a prominent London bookseller whom modern scholars have routinely characterized as a Royalist stationer. It argues that starting in 1648 Moseley’s publishing began to shift away from the overt Royalism of his earlier career just as Parliamentary and republican forces were consolidating their victories over King Charles I. From that year onwards, Moseley increasingly published material that repackaged the social, political and cultural values of former Royalists for inclusion within the intellectual and discursive spheres of republican England. His political flexibility during this period of Parliamentary supremacy and republican rule received expression through publishing strategies of contingency, conformity and collaboration. These publishing strategies offer modern scholars a set of critical methods for making sense of seemingly contradictory evidence within the historical archive. Rather than inconsistency, such evidence may signify that a publisher was changing their specialization or simply adapting to the times. With the shifting developments of his career after 1648, Moseley’s example ultimately cautions us against assigning fixed political identities to early modern publishers. 

Following the English invasion of Scotland in July 1650, ministers and laymen in the Church of Scotland splintered between Protester and Resolutioner factions: The Protesters argued that the Church of Scotland required further moral reformation in order to appease a vengeful God, and the Resolutioners were more content to accept the reintegration of former royalists into places of trust following the civil wars. This article explores the profound ways in which this split fundamentally altered relationships in the unusually well-documented parish of Crichton in Midlothian. Unlike other studies that have emphasized the ways in which the Protesters moved toward a position of separation from the rest of the kirk, this article explores a group of Protesters who sought to actively reform the kirk from within. Godly agitation in parish affairs was characterized by three traits: it was coordinated, remarkably litigious, and disseminated in manuscript libels and petitions rather than print. Ultimately, while this godly elite was adept at agitating for further reformation at the parish level, it did so without seceding from the structures of the national church altogether.

This anthology brings together extensive selections of poetry by the five most prolific and prominent women poets of the English Civil War period: Anne Bradstreet, Hester Pulter, Margaret Cavendish, Katherine Philips and Lucy Hutchinson. It presents these poems in modern-spelling, clear-text versions for classroom use, and for ready comparison to mainstream editions of male poets’ work. The anthology reveals the diversity of women’s poetry in the mid-seventeenth century, across political affiliations and forms of publication. Notes on the poems and an introduction explain the contexts of Civil War, religious conflict, and scientific and literary development. The anthology enables a more comprehensive understanding of seventeenth-century women’s poetic culture, both in its own right and in relation to prominent male poets such as Marvell, Milton and Dryden.

In a recent contribution Hendrikse (2018) has coined the concept of neo-illiberalism to signify mainstreaming of illiberal doctrines among neoliberal elites, thereby signifying a ‘mutation and restoration of transatlantic neoliberalism’. After a critical appraisal of his concept, this contribution argues that it is too early to claim that neoliberalism is mutated and suggests that the present conjuncture can better be termed ill-neoliberal instead. Following numerous scholars who have argued that we have arrived at an interregnum, I argue, also by applying Gramscian framework, that neoliberalism is increasingly malfunctioning, ‘ill’ or even dying, while something new is yet to be born. Yet in contrast to those who apply a Gramscian approach, I do not regard the rise of Trump or the European far right as ‘morbid symptoms’, but as attempted remedies (or authoritarian restorations) for neoliberalism. Neoliberal elites, somewhat reluctantly, welcome illiberal actors and doctrines in an effort to keep existing hierarchies in place or even restore old ones, now by even more authoritarian means. This transformation in the transatlantic neoliberal heartlands towards more illiberal regimes differs, then, from the emerging (and already) illiberal or authoritarian world powers such as China. If we were to accept the validity of the term ‘neo-illiberalism’ this should be exclusively applied to those regimes that are consistently illiberal, but increasingly rely on an ever-growing private economy (cf. Aiyar. 2016). Yet, whether such powers will be able to install a new (global) order depends foremost on the ability of the transatlantic heartlands to overcome neoliberalism. The article therefore concludes by pointing at some outlooks for the renewal and further contestation of an increasingly malfunctioning neoliberalism.    

Scholars have given only passing attention to Francis Kirkman’s The Presbyterian Lash (1661), a polemical play offering gendered, sexual, and confessional commentary about efforts to remove a parson from the ecclesiastical living of London’s St. Botolph Aldgate. Yet when read within multiple contexts—national, municipal, and parochial—the play allows the linking of literary analysis of Restoration tragicomedy with historical scholarship on seventeenth-century clerical ejections. Making this connection not only reveals the generic flexibility of tragicomedy but also demonstrates how depriving clergy of their benefices between the 1640s and 1660s informed the memory and the religio-political dynamics of “England’s Second Reformation.”