The Glorious Revolution
1688 - Britain's Fight for Liberty
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
In 1688, a group of leading politicians invited the Dutch prince William of Orange over to England to challenge the rule of the catholic James II. When James's army deserted him he fled to France, leaving the throne open to William and Mary. During the following year a series of bills were passed which many believe marked the triumph of constitutional monarchy as a system of government. In this radical new interpretation of the Glorious Revolution, Edward Vallance challenges the view that it was a bloodless coup in the name of progress and wonders whether in fact it created as many problems as it addressed. Certainly in Scotland and Ireland the Revolution was characterised by warfare and massacre. Beautifully written, full of lively pen portraits of contemporary characters and evocative of the increasing climate of fear at the threat of popery, this new book fills a gap in the popular history market and sets to elevate Edward Vallance to the highest league of popular historians.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
England's "Glorious Revolution" when the ruling, quasi-Catholic Stuart dynasty was usurped by the robustly Protestant William of Orange has traditionally been regarded as the most boring revolution ever. It was quick, it was bloodless, it was polite all very English, in other words. As Vallance's epigraphs show, commentators as diverse as Karl Marx and Margaret Thatcher agreed that William's ascent to the throne led to Britain's rise as a commercial, democratic, religiously tolerant world power. Vallance, a professor of early modern history at the University of Liverpool, aims to upset this comfortable consensus and to inject some vividness, action and even gore into the story. He succeeds nicely and his account serves as an admirable introduction to this confusing era. Writing with brio, Vallance possesses a sound grasp of narrative pacing and clarifies the often incomprehensible (at least to modern readers) political, religious and constitutional issues of the time. Paradoxically, Vallance is weakest on the personal character and motivations of the deposed king James II, who remains something of a cipher. Though Vallance wrote originally for a British audience, American readers will be startled to discover how greatly their founders relied on the principles of the Glorious Revolution a century later. 8 pages of color illus.
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