Stuart Britain

I've written before on the blog about Oxford's series of "Very Short Introductions." To make a long story short: I'm a fan. I find these volumes accessible, engaging, and most importantly perhaps, encouraging of further reading. 

All of this, by and large, can be said of the most recent "Introduction" I've finished -- this one focused on Stuart Britain and the English Civil Wars. I offer that caveat -- that "by and large" -- because the volume, while spirited and speedy, does not always deliver. I recognize the goal here is expediency, but more time, I thought, might have been committed to the causes of the Civil Wars and the emergence of Puritanism. Equally, I thought that more might have been written about the final Stuart monarch, Queen Anne, and the transition following her death to the Hanoverian dynasty.

That said, there's much to like here, including a thoughtful treatment of the four primary Stuart monarchs as well as that experiment toward the middle of the century with radical republicanism under Cromwell. I also thought the volume presented an effective argument for just how much personality guided British politics under the Stuarts: Charles I and James II, especially, emerge as fascinating, if misguided, characters. The same, I think, can be said for secondary figures like Archbishop Laud, whose flirtations with an Anglicized form of Catholicism led the country toward war.

Ultimately, this "Short Introduction" provides a sound orientation to the state of the British monarchy on the eve of the Civil Wars; it provides an equally apt overview Parliament and its evolving position in British society. The volume's author, John Morrill, does, though, come up short on other topics, including causation. It's here that I'd wished that his introduction might have been just a bit longer...