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BEYOND POST-REVISIONISM? THE CIVIL WAR ALLEGIANCES OF THE MINERS OF THE DERBYSHIRE ‘PEAK COUNTRY’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 1997

ANDY WOOD
ANDY WOOD
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
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Abstract

This essay challenges the established interpretation of the political allegiances of the miners of north-west Derbyshire. It shows that, far from being dominated by parliamentarian and puritan ideas in 1642, the miners were deeply divided in their response to the war. Both the king and the parliament were able to recruit troops from amongst the miners throughout the first civil war. From this, a broader critique of recent historical work on popular politics and popular allegiances before and during the English Revolution is mounted. It is argued that ‘post-revisionist’ and Marxian historians have deployed overly schematic and deterministic models of allegiance which frequently fail to reflect the complexity of popular responses to war and revolution in England in the 1640s.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , March 1997 , pp. 23 - 40
Copyright
© 1997 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

Previous versions of this paper have been delivered to the Early Modern British History Seminar, Selwyn College, Cambridge; the Tudor and Stuart Seminar, Institute of Historical Research; the Early Modern Seminar, University of Manchester; and the Staff Seminar, Department of Economic and Social History, University of Liverpool. I am especially grateful to Michael Frearson, John Morrill, Kate Peters, Garthine Walker, Keith Wrightson, and most of all to Mick Brightman, for their comments.