The Common Freedom of the People: John Lilburne and the English Revolution, by Michael Braddick
The Common Freedom of the People: John Lilburne and the English Revolution, by Michael Braddick
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人民的共同自由：约翰·利尔伯恩和英国革命，作者：迈克尔·布拉迪克
DOI：
10.1093/ehr/cez303
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发表时间：
2019
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Bowen L
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作者：
Bowen L
书评 民主力量在 1640 年代和 1650 年代的动乱期间挑战了僵化的君主制和贵族等级制度。利尔伯恩的最后一位传记作者波琳·格雷格（Pauline Gregg）在这一传统上写下了很多作品。利尔本和平等派在斯图亚特修正主义时期失宠，他和他的激进分子同伴被描绘成 1640 年代叙事中的边缘元素。正如布拉迪克在本书结尾的精彩史学章节中所观察到的那样，“潮流已经从这些立场转向”，近来雷切尔·福克斯利、约翰·里斯、菲利普·贝克、杰森·皮西和大卫·科莫等历史学家对平等主义者和内战激进分子表示同情，但也持批评态度。布拉迪克的著作在很大程度上体现了这种学术风格，但这并没有回到修正主义前的利尔伯恩。布拉迪克完全有能力写一本学术性强但通俗易懂的利尔本传记，在书中，他详细阐述了一些主题，而这些主题在他出色的叙述《上帝的愤怒，英格兰的火》（2008；rev.ante, cxxiv [2009], 1,173-4）中未能得到如此持续的处理。其中包括 1640 年代印刷品的盛行和重要性，以及与此相关的、扩大和知情的公众对政治参与和动员性质的深刻变化。利尔本的经历也对在内战和共和国早期不断变化的格局中政治实践中的创造力问题进行了富有成效的探索。这本书最引人注目的元素之一是相对缺乏平等者。这在一定程度上是对旧史学的反应，旧史学将平等派本质化为一种原始政党，但更多的是与利尔本不是一个团队合作者或创造性思想家的证据有关。事实上，利尔本的出版物普遍强调他不是平等者，而是一位尊重社会差异的绅士。布拉迪克提出了一个引人注目的立场，即平等派是一个基于“文本主体”的政治共同体，而利尔伯恩的作用是出版和倡导 1647 年至 1649 年间各种人民协议中阐明的主体自由和权利。布拉迪克笔下的利尔伯恩是新闻界的产物，在小册子、请愿书和宣传的新环境中长大并自在。事实上，他曾一度观察到“如果没有印刷品，我们就不会有 Lilburne”。将平等者缩减为书中的一章，说明了布拉迪克的重要观点，即这只是利尔本生活的一个阶段，其部分定义是抵抗暴政和捍卫生来自由的英国人的自由。平整者时刻的这种背景化使布拉迪克能够帮助讨论他在 1649 年之后的活动，作为参与林肯郡沼泽排水争议的团体的倡导者，以及他被共和国流放、审判和重新监禁的争议。利尔本是一位多产的作家，布拉迪克允许他发言是这本书的优势之一。利尔本的话语是本书的基础，尽管它们总是被批判性地对待并彻底结合上下文。事实上，这本书的另一个优秀方面是它的可读性以及作者清晰、直接地处理复杂政治发展的能力，同时又不忽视利尔本在事件中的作用或该书更广泛的论点和学术干预。布拉迪克对他的主题表示同情，但并不热心。利尔本是一个非常勇敢的人，但他需要被证明是对的，但几乎是病态的。他的偏执破坏了友谊和政治联盟，甚至让利尔本背叛了他长期受苦的妻子。亨利·马丁…
BOOK REVIEWS democratic force that challenged the ossified hierarchies of monarchy and nobility during the upheavals of the 1640s and 1650s. Lilburne’s last biographer, Pauline Gregg, wrote very much in this tradition. Lilburne and the Levellers fell out of favour during the years of Stuart revisionism, and he and his fellow radicals were portrayed as fringe elements in the narrative of the 1640s. As Braddick observes in an excellent historiographical chapter which ends the book,‘the tide has turned’from these positions, and the Levellers and civil war radicals have been treated sympathetically but critically in recent times by historians such as Rachel Foxley, John Rees, Philip Baker, Jason Peacey and David Como. Braddick’s volume is very much in this vein of scholarship, but this is no return to a pre-revisionism Lilburne. Braddick is well equipped to write a scholarly but accessible biography of Lilburne, and in the book he expands on some of the themes which could not get such sustained treatment in his excellent narrative God’s Fury, England’s Fire (2008; rev. ante, cxxiv [2009], 1,173–4). These include the prevalence and significance of print during the 1640s and, allied to this, the profound changes to the nature of political engagement and mobilisation wrought by an expanded and informed public. The issue of creativity in political practice in the shifting landscapes of the civil war and early republic are also fruitfully explored through Lilburne’s experiences. One of the book’s most striking elements is the relative absence of the Levellers. This is in part a reaction to the older historiography which essentialised the Levellers as a kind of proto-political party, but it is more related to the evidence that Lilburne was not a team player or creative ideologue. Indeed, it was a common refrain of Lilburne’s publications that he was no Leveller but a gentleman who respected social distinctions. Braddick develops the striking position that the Levellers were a political community based around ‘a body of texts’, and Lilburne’s role was in publishing and advocating for the liberties and rights of the subject as articulated in the various Agreements of the People between 1647 and 1649. Braddick’s Lilburne is a creature of the press, brought up and at home in the new environment of pamphlets, petitions and publicity. Indeed, at one point he observes that ‘without print we would have no Lilburne’. The reduction of the Levellers to one chapter of the book illustrates Braddick’s important point that this was just one phase of Lilburne’s life which was defined in part by resistance to tyranny and defence of the free-born Englishman’s liberties. This contextualisation of the Leveller moment allows Braddick helpfully to develop discussion of his post-1649 activities as advocate for groups involved in controversies over fenland drainage in Lincolnshire and his exile, trial, and re-incarceration by the republic. Lilburne was a prolific author, and it is one of the book’s strengths that Braddick allows him to speak. Lilburne’s words are the foundation of the volume, although they are always treated critically and thoroughly contextualised. Indeed, another excellent aspect of this book is its readability and the author’s capacity to deal with complex political developments clearly and directly without losing sight of Lilburne’s role in events or the volume’s wider arguments and scholarly interventions. Braddick is sympathetic to, but not dewy-eyed about, his subject. Lilburne emerges as a man who was enormously brave but almost pathological in his need to be proved right. His monomania broke friendships and political alliances and even saw Lilburne round on his long-suffering wife. Henry Marten …