It is almost twenty-five years since the publication of two landmark studies of state and society in early modern Britain: Michael Braddick’s State Formation (Cambridge, 2000) and Steve Hindle’s The State and Social Change (Palgrave, 2000). These texts have shaped a generation of scholarship on politics, society, law, and power in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
This conference asks where this scholarship is now and where it might be going next. It brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars with specialisms ranging from law and literature to politics and social relations. We will discuss the latest developments in the field and begin to craft a new research agenda for the future.
Speakers include Professor Jason Peacey (UCL), Dr Laura Flannigan (Oxford), and Dr Brodie Waddell (Birkbeck). The conference will feature a roundtable led by Dr Richard Bell (Birmingham), Dr Elly Robson (Oxford), and Dr Hillary Taylor (Padua), and closing remarks from Professor Michael Braddick (Oxford).
Sign up link: https://buytickets.at/centreforearlymodernstudies/1454982
Schedule and Speakers:
09:00 - Arrival
9.30-11.00 – Officeholding and the State
Chair: Dr. Hillary Taylor (Padua)
Prof Jason Peacey (UCL), ‘The ‘postmaster’, the state and public service in Restoration England’
Dr Niall Allsopp (Exeter), ‘Local Offices: Encountering the State in Non-Elite Poetry of the Civil Wars’
Cameron Whiteside (Sheffield), ‘The Commission on Fees and Monarchical Paternalism: Complicating England’s State Formation’
11.15-13.00 – State and Empire
Chair: Dr. Elly Robson (Oxford)
Cen Li (KCL), ‘The Unwritable Founding Father: The Dilemma of Brutus in Early Modern Historiography and History Plays’
Jack Sargeant (QMUL) ’Maritime law and the mercantile state c. 1600: evidence from the Baltic’
Jamie Gemmell (KCL), ‘Practising Slavery in London, 1650 to 1730’
Dr Joel Herman (Dublin), 'The Imperial Public Sphere: Publicity, Political Action, and the Destabilisation of the Imperial State, c. 1695-1765'
Lunch
14.00-15.30 – Courts, Petitions, and the State
Chair: Prof. Jason Peacey
Dr Laura Flannigan (Oxford), 'Rethinking the Role of Justice in Sixteenth-Century State Formation'
Dr Chloe Ingersent (Oxford), ‘Prosecuting “persons of the femall sexe, who are as much subjecte to your highnes lawes than anye the mayle subjectes are”: wives having a riot in the Star Chamber’
Dr Brodie Waddell (Birkbeck), ‘Writing to the state: the production of petitions in early modern England’
Coffee
15.45-17.15 – Roundtable with Dr Richard Bell (Oxford), Dr Elly Robson (Oxford), and Dr Hillary Taylor (Padua)
17.30-18.00 – Closing Remarks by Prof Michael Braddick (Oxford)