History of Britain, A - Volume II: The Wars of the British 1603-1776Miramax Books, 2001 - 544 Seiten Inside these pages lies the bloody epic of liberty, the British Iliad. The second volume of Simon Schama's A History of Britain brings the histories of Britain's civil wars -- full of blighted idealism, shocking carnage, and unexpected outcomes -- startlingly to life. These conflicts were fought unsparingly between the nations of the islands -- Ireland, England, and Scotland -- and between parliament and the crown. Shattering the illusion of a "united kingdom," they cost hundreds of thousands of lives: a greater proportion of the population than died in the First World War. When religious passion gave way to the equally consuming passion for profits, it became possible for the pieces of Britain to come together as the spectacularly successful business enterprise of "Britannia Incorporated." And in a few generations that business state expanded in a dizzying process that transformed what had been an obscure, off-shore footnote to Europe's great powers into the main event -- the most powerful empire in the world. Yet somehow, it was the "wrong empire." The British considered it a bastion of liberty, yet it was based on military force and the enslavement of hundreds of thousands of Africans. In America, the emptiness of British claims to protect "freedom" was thrown back into the teeth of colonial governors and redcoat soldiers, while the likes of Sam Adams and George Washington inherited the mantle of Cromwell. Simon Schama grippingly evokes the horror of the battle, famine, and plague; the flames of burning cities; the pathos of broken families, with fathers and sons forced to choose opposing sides. But he also captures the intimacies of palace and parliament and the seductions of profit and pleasure. Geniuses like John Milton, Thomas Hobbes, and Benjamin Franklin stalk vividly through his pages, but so do Scottish clansmen, women pamphleteers, and literate, eloquent African slaves like Olaudah Equiano. |
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... century , it became a received wisdom that the Puritans were , especially by the 1620s , no more than a small if ... century France and early twentieth- century Russia , for example - are invariably zealous sects who believe themselves ...
... century tens of thousands of Highlanders were recruited into the British army and saw action in its many theatres of war around the world from India to Canada . Some 70,000 were said to have served in British reg- iments during the ...
... Century English Political Instability in European Context ( CUP 2000 ) Skinner , Quentin , Liberty Before Liberalism ( CUP 1998 ) Smith , A. G. R. , The Emergence of a Nation State : The Commonwealth of England , 1529-1660 ( Longman ...
Inhalt
Preface | 8 |
LOOKING FOR LEVIATHAN | 171 |
BRITANNIA INCORPORATED | 327 |
Urheberrecht | |
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