Over the last generation a great deal of historical research has
been devoted to the recovery of the role of ordinary men and women
in political processes of the past. To be sure, the vast majority
of people were usually excluded from positions of power and denied
a formal say in workings of government; but through the informal
methods of petitioning and demonstrating, rioting and rebellion,
they were able to influence events on high to a surprising extent.
Te Brake's new survey of popular politics in early modern Europe
synthesizes a vast literature in producing a valuable introduction
to the field. He examines the tumultuous upheavals of these
centuries - the Reformation, the French wars of religion, the civil
wars in Britain - and draws together some fascinating parallels and
common themes in analysing the role of the crowd. (Kirkus UK)
As long as there have been governments, ordinary people have been
acting in a variety of often informal or extralegal ways to
influence the rulers who claimed authority over them. "Shaping
History" shows how ordinary people broke down the institutional and
cultural barriers that separated elite from popular politics in
sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe and entered fully into
the historical process of European state formation. Wayne Te
Brake's outstanding synthesis builds on the many studies of popular
political action in specific settings and conflicts, locating the
interaction of rulers and subjects more generally within the
multiple political spaces of composite states. In these states,
says Te Brake, a broad range of political subjects, often
religiously divided among themselves, necessarily aligned
themselves with alternative claimants to cultural and political
sovereignty in challenging the cultural and fiscal demands of some
rulers. This often violent interaction between subjects and rulers
had particularly potent consequences during the course of the
Reformation, the Counter-Reformation, and the Crisis of the
Seventeenth Century. But, as Te Brake makes clear, it was an
ongoing political process, not a series of separate cataclysmic
events. Offering a compelling alternative to traditionally
elite-centered accounts of territorial state formation in Europe,
this book calls attention to the variety of ways ordinary people
have molded and shaped their own political histories.
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