Print culture and political participation in seventeenth century England

这个专著项目通过强调“印刷文化”和“印刷革命”的重要性，重新思考了与早期现代英格兰的政治参与有关的问题。它表明了国家政治生活可能在多大程度上“受欢迎”，因为那些与议会和政府互动的人包括绅士和贵族精英之外和之下的人。它将议会事务与威斯敏斯特以外的世界联系起来，甚至连接到英格兰最偏远的角落，打破了精英政治和大众政治以及社会历史和政治历史之间的区别。这本书概述了廉价印刷如何拓宽和深化了这个政治国家，促进了国家政治文化的发展，以及它在转变公众对时事的认识方面所起的作用。它还将展示印刷如何在人们参与政治的方式、与领导人和代表的互动以及个人和利益集团在威斯敏斯特参与商业活动的程度上带来质的变化。其结果将是在17世纪将印刷文化彻底融入全国公共生活，首次确立印刷对日常政治事务的实际影响，并在英国历史的关键时期从根本上重新评估公共政治的性质。这项工作的关键是需要考虑到有证据表明，博学的论文以及知识分子和神职人员的工作并没有像人们普遍认为的那样主导早期现代印刷文化，而且有必要探索各种印刷体裁，从传单和海报到请愿书和游说文件，以及报纸和小册子。17世纪出现的大量印刷材料的重要性，其中许多被学者们忽视了，只有通过一种方法论才能理解，这种方法加深了我们对人们阅读印刷文化的方式(在分发、消费、获取、反应方面)的理解，以及对印刷提供的信息和分析的性质的理解，尤其是在破坏官方保密方面。此外，该项目制定的方法还考虑了公众作为生产者而不仅仅是消费者与印刷品接触的程度，以及他们能够与政治机构互动的方式，在接触方面(通过请愿和游说)，以及在发展与尺子和政府的新型关系方面，尤其是通过迫使人们重新思考代表权和政治问责的性质。在整本书中，强调不仅必须承认企业家和专业作家和记者主导了文具和印刷商的世界，而且还必须承认公众参与了印刷品的生产和利用。他们写小册子，提交请愿书，或多或少写一些短暂的政治文学作品，他们还对早期现代报纸采取了积极主动的方式，他们越来越能够影响这些报纸的内容。这些发现的含义是，为了充分认识印刷品在17世纪中期日常政治生活中的作用，有必要对手稿集和私人论文进行详细的探索。基于英国和美国的广泛档案研究，这本书展示了印刷体裁在公众参与威斯敏斯特政治的方式中的中心地位，并在这个过程中揭示了迄今未知的印刷品的未开发来源，从行政文件到请愿书、游说文件和小册子。

This monograph project rethinks issues relating to political participation in early modern England, by highlighting the importance of 'print culture' and the 'print revolution'. It demonstrates the extent to which it was possible for national political life to be 'popular', in that those who interacted with parliaments and governments included people beyond and below the gentry and aristocratic elite. It connects parliamentary affairs with the world far beyond Westminster and even into the most remote corners of England, breaking down distinctions between 'elite' and 'popular' politics, and between 'social' and 'political' history. The book outlines the ways in which cheap print broadened and deepened the political nation, and facilitated the development of a national political culture, as well as its role in transforming public awareness of 'current affairs'. It will also show how print brought about a qualitative change in the ways in which people could engage with politics, and interacted with their leaders and representatives, and in the extent to which individuals and interest groups involved themselves in business at Westminster. The result will be a thorough incorporation of 'print culture' into nationwide public life during the seventeenth century, establishing for the first time the practical impact of print upon everyday political affairs, and a fundamental reassessment of the nature of public politics during a critical period of English history. Crucial to this work is the need to take into account evidence that erudite treatises, and the work of intellectuals and clerics, did not dominate early modern print culture to the extent that is generally assumed, and that it is necessary to explore the full range of print genres, from handbills and posters to petitions and lobby documents, as well as newspapers and pamphlets. The significance of the vast amount of printed material that emerged during the seventeenth century, much of which has been ignored by scholars, can only be understood by means of a methodology which deepens our understanding of the ways in which people read print culture (in terms of distribution, consumption, accessibility, response), and of the nature of the information and analysis which print provided, not least in terms of undermining official secrecy. Moreover, the methodology developed by this project also considers the degree to which members of the public could engage with print as producers rather than merely as consumers, and the ways in which they were able to interact with political institutions, in terms of making contact (through petitions and lobbying), and in terms of developing new kinds of relationship with rulers and governments, not least by forcing people to rethink the nature of representation and political accountability. Throughout the book, emphasis is placed upon the importance of acknowledging not only that entrepreneurs and professional writers and journalists dominated the world of stationers and printers, but also that members of the public became involved in the production and exploitation of print. They wrote pamphlets, submitted petitions, and produced more or less ephemeral pieces of political literature, and they also adopted a pro-active approach to early modern newspapers, whose content they were increasingly able to influence. The implication of such findings is that, in order to appreciate fully the role which print played in everyday political life in the mid-seventeenth century, it is necessary to explore in detail manuscript collections and private papers. Based upon extensive archival research in Britain and America, this book demonstrates the centrality of print genres to the ways in which members of the public engaged with Westminster politics, and reveals in the process an untapped source of hitherto unknown printed items, from administrative papers to petitions, lobby documents, and pamphlets.