English historiography: recent trends in the study of the Early Modern Period

Abstract

This article is a brief survey of current trends in the historiography of early modern England, noting the abundance of output as well as a concern over excessive specialisation. The ambition of bringing research on society, culture and politics together more as a way of explaining the mainstream of social change is leading to a new emphasis on ‘forms of power’. There is a new stress on the elements of continuity in early modern England. Economic change is now presented as more gradual and less revolutionary than was once thought. English attitudes, as revealed in recent research on the Reformation or the Civil War, appear fairly conservative. So, social and cultural developments, rather than precipitating political change, look more like a response to the latter — to the particular direction given by elites who have managed to take control of the reins of power at particular turning points, such as the Reformation and the Civil War. The growing role of the state as a source of social control now seems to have been the real revolution of the early modern period. And there is a new concern to place the individual, rather than long-term trends, at the centre of historical explanation.