'The First Modern Revolution: Reappraising the Glorious Events of 1688'
Fri, February 26, 2010 • 3:00 PM • Tom Lea Rooms, HRC 3.206
Steve Pincus, Yale University
The Revolution of 1688-89 is often described as England's un-revolutionary revolution. Where continental Europeans and non-Europeans transformed their regimes in bloody and radical upheavals, the English sensibly and calmly agreed to rid themselves of the absolutist and Catholic James II. This national myth has comfortably reinforced stories of British exceptionalism. Unfortunately it is completely wrong. Instead England's Glorious Revolution was a radically transformative and modern event that set the blueprint for subsequent revolutions and in so doing laid the framework of the modern liberal state.
Steve Pincus is Professor of History and International and Area Studies at Yale University, where he also serves as Chair of Yale's Council on European Studies and Director of Graduate Studies in History. He has published on English politics, culture, and society in the seventeenth century. He is now working on a new book on the origins of the British Empire 1580-1780, and the New Oxford History of Later Seventeenth Century England.