Print and Radicalism in the British Civil Wars

我的研究项目旨在探索英国内战期间和之后印刷品和激进主义之间的关系。它将寻求用微观历史的方法来揭示个人印刷商和出版商在促进和促进内战时期的激进话语方面所发挥的作用，以及人口学技术，以探索这些个人在多大程度上与更广泛的激进社会、宗教和政治网络相联系。它还将致力于使用排版分析来识别以前匿名的文本来源，并在世界发生翻天覆地的变化的背景下将它们联系起来。在这样做的过程中，该项目将寻求挑战内战时期普遍存在的对激进主义的概念性史学方法；这种方法试图从具有明确、有凝聚力的想法和议程的明确、离散的群体的角度来理解激进主义。然而，通过恢复个人经验的现实，并通过更紧密地描绘个人与他们的思想之间的复杂关系，我的目标是使修正主义方法复杂化，该方法试图将激进内战环境的不稳定动态分成更容易解决的块，尽管有些不合时宜。该项目将力求在内战和过渡时期不稳定和不确定的现实背景下恢复个人、思想和效忠的流动性。因此，这项研究将建立在越来越多的后修正主义学者的基础上，这些学者试图将激进主义重新定位到内战时期的中心，并重新定位理解它的概念基础。例如，大卫·科莫的《被精神吹》不仅分析了南北战争前伦敦激进宗教情绪的程度和影响，而且试图从“结社网”而不是稳定的团体或政治实体的角度来理解地下宗教。乔尔·哈尔科姆的工作旨在突出激进宗教教堂的内部个人机制，而大卫·布拉迪克最近的作品呼吁对激进主义蓬勃发展的背景及其影响程度进行更深入的分析。这个项目的来源基础将主要是文本，利用在牛津大学伍斯特学院举办的两个巨大的托马森原野和威廉·克拉克收藏。尽管这两个收藏非常有名，但它们包含的许多小册子却鲜为人知，往往被忽视或边缘化，被认为是过于简单化的宣传。然而，这个项目将寻求更彻底地分析这些来源的内在机制，它们是如何产生的，由谁制作，为谁服务，以及为了什么目的。微观历史方法将再次成为理解这些文本的鲜为人知的印刷商和作家的关键，以及它们与内战期间英国更广泛的政治和宗教派别的联系方式。这样的分析可以为内战的史学以及印刷品和激进主义在其中的位置提供一个新的视角。

My research project aims to explore the relationship between print and radicalism during and after the British civil wars. It will seek to use a microhistorical approach to uncover the role played by individual printers and publishers in facilitating and fostering the radical discourse of the civil war period, and prosopographical techniques to explore the extent to which these individuals were connected to wider radical social, religious and political networks. It will also aim to use typographical analysis to both identify previously anonymous textual sources and contextualise them within the context of a world being turned upside down. In so doing, this project will seek to challenge the prevailing conceptual historiographical approach to radicalism in the civil war period; an approach which has sought to understand radicalism in terms of defined, discrete groups with clear, cohesive ideas and agendas. By recovering the realities of individual experience, however, and by more closely delineating the complex relationship between individuals and their ideas, I aim to complicate the Revisionist approach which has sought to separate the unstable dynamic of the radical civil war milieu into more soluble, if somewhat anachronistic, chunks. This project will seek to recover the fluidity of individuals, ideas and allegiances within the context of the precarious and uncertain reality of the civil war and interregnum period. This research will thus build on a growing body of post-revisionist scholarship which has sought to reorientate radicalism back towards the centre of the civil war period and reposition the conceptual basis for understanding it. David Como's Blown By the Spirit, for example, not only analysed the extent and impact of radical religious sentiment in antebellum London, but sought to understanding the religious underground in terms of "webs of association" rather than stable groups or political entities. Joel Halcomb's work has aimed to bring to the fore the internal personal mechanics of radical religious churches, whilst David Braddick's recent works have called for a much deeper analysis of the contexts in which radicalism flourished and the extent of its impact. The source base for this project will primarily be textual, utilising the two vast collections of the Thomason Tracts and the William Clarke collection held at Worcester College, Oxford. Although these two collections are very well known, many of the pamphlets they contain are poorly understood, often disregarded or marginalised as simplistic propaganda. This project, however, will seek to more thoroughly analyse the internal mechanics of these sources, the ways they were produced, by whom, for whom, and to what end. A microhistorical approach will again be key in understanding the little-known printers and writers who produced these texts and the ways in which they were connected to broader political and religious factions in the civil war Britain. Such an analysis can offer a fresh perspective upon the historiography of the civil wars and the place of print and radicalism within it.