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Following the execution of Charles I in January 1649, England's
fledgling republic was faced with a dilemma: which parts of the
nation's bloody recent past should be remembered, and how, and
which were best consigned to oblivion? Across the country, the
state's opponents, local communities, and individual citizens were
grappling with many of the same questions, as calls for remembrance
vied with the competing goals of reconciliation, security, and the
peaceful settlement of the state. Recollection in the Republics
provides the first comprehensive study of the ways Britain's Civil
Wars were remembered in the decade between the regicide and the
restoration. Drawing on a wide-ranging and innovative source base,
it places the national authorities' attempts to shape the meaning
of the recent past alongside evidence of what the English people -
lords and labourers, men and women, veterans and civilians -
actually were remembering. Recollection in the Replublics
demonstrates that memories of the domestic conflicts were central
to the politics and society of England's republican interval,
inflecting national and local discourses, complicating and
transforming inter-personal relationships, and infusing and forging
individual and collective identities. In so doing, it enhances our
understanding of the nature of early modern memory and the
experience of post-civil war states more broadly. Memory was a
multifaceted, dynamic resource, and this book emphasises its
fecundity, the manifold meanings it possessed, and the creativity
of those who deployed it. Further, by situating 1650s England in
relation to other post-conflict societies, both within and beyond
early modernity, it points to a consistency in some of the
challenges that have confronted post-civil war states across time
and space.
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