Annual Booklist 2023 : Professor Andrew Hopper
Andrew Hopper is Professor of Social and Local History at Kellogg College, Oxford and the Principal Investigator of the Civil War Petitions Project. He is the author of ‘Black Tom’: Sir Thomas Fairfax and the English Revolution (Manchester, 2007), and Turncoats and Renegadoes: Changing Sides in the English Civil Wars (Oxford, 2012). He is currently working on his third monograph, Widowhood and Bereavement during the English Civil Wars, based on evidence from the Civil War Petitions website www.civilwarpetitions.ac.uk
Making Empire: Ireland, Imperialism and the Early Modern World by Jane Ohlmeyer (Oxford University Press, 2023).
This exciting new monograph is based on Professor Jane Ohlmeyer’s James Ford Lectures, entitled ‘Ireland, Empire and the Early Modern World’, at the University of Oxford in 2021. These six lectures sadly had to be delivered virtually owing to the Covid-19 Pandemic, but one benefit of that is that they remain freely available online as videos: https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/event/the-james-ford-lectures-2021-ireland-empire-and-the-early-modern-world In the book, Professor Ohlmeyer explains how during the period of 1550 to 1750 Ireland became England’s oldest colony and its ‘laboratory for Empire’, with Irish land increasingly utilised to fund English imperial activities. She explores the many ways in which the Irish as subjects of colonisation became colonisers themselves; showing how Irish Protestants and Catholics alike both participated in the development of Britain’s global empire, fulfilling roles such as ‘migrants, menials, merchants and mercenaries.’ This includes the often disproportionately large presence of the Irish as ‘agents of empire’, in British military and naval forces across the globe from the Americas, including ‘the Irish Caribbean’, to Africa and India. For example, by the nineteenth century over half the British Army in India were Irish. Ohlmeyer’s outward-looking approach is packed with international comparisons about the emergence and operation of empires, encouraging us to look for wider contexts in order to understand better the British and Irish experiences of empire.
The New Model Army: Agent of Revolution by Ian Gentles (Yale University Press, 2022).
The publication of this volume marks the thirtieth anniversary of Professor Gentles’s famous monograph, The New Model Army in England, Ireland and Scotland, 1645–1653 (Blackwell, 1992). This first edition was lengthier but ended with the expulsion of the Rump Parliament in 1653, whereas this updated but streamlined work extends the timeframe to the Restoration of Charles II in 1660. Gentles provides a lively and accessible prose, without sacrificing scholarly rigour and analysis. The main focus of the book is an analytical, chronological narrative of how the New Model Army intervened in politics, consequently fostering thereafter a deep-rooted distrust of standing armies among the political elite. Gentles suggests that the benevolent aspects of the Interregnum regimes, at least in England, were largely due to the Army, and contrasts the Cromwellian Protectorate favourably with modern military dictatorships. Despite the largely political focus, military historians will find plenty of interest in Gentles’s discussions of the New Model’s campaigns, and may want to challenge his contention that Cromwell was an ‘undefeated general’.
Philip Skippon and the British Civil Wars: The Christian Centurion by Ismini Pells (Routledge, 2020).
This wonderful book written by my colleague Dr Ismini Pells showcases one of the civil war’s neglected generals, Philip Skippon, who rose through the ranks to become the Sergeant-Major General of the infantry and third in command of the New Model Army. Pells’s research in continental archives traces Skippon’s origins as a professional soldier in the Low Countries in the army under Horace, Lord Vere. There, unlike most civil war commanders, Skippon first served in the ranks and became a genuine military professional. She explores his role in returning to England to become Captain of the Honourable Artillery Company and commander of the London Trained Bands. Skippon made a number of decisive contributions to ensuring the military survival of the parliamentarian cause, including shaping the formation of the New Model Army and securing control of London in difficult circumstances during the Second Civil War in 1648. This lively, clear and well-written book brings Skippon, including his self-fashioning as ‘the Christian Centurion’ out of Cromwell’s shadow.
Lost Lives, New Voices: Unlocking the Stories of the Scottish Soldiers at the Battle of Dunbar 1650 by Christopher Gerrard, Pam Graves, Andrew Millard and Anwen Caffell (Oxbow, 2018).
This unique book provides an exemplary example of how archaeology and skeleton science can enhance our understanding of what it was like to be a soldier during the British Civil Wars. It publishes the conclusions of an archaeological excavation that began in 2013 close to Palace Green Library at the University of Durham. The investigation unearthed the bodies of 29 of the many hundreds of Scots soldiers who died of starvation, malnutrition and dysentery whilst imprisoned in Durham Cathedral after their capture at the Battle of Dunbar on 3 September 1650. The book was accompanied by an exhibition at Palace Green Library, also in 2018, entitled ‘Bodies of Evidence: How Science Unearthed Durham’s Dark Secret.’ The bone analysis revealed the diets of the soldiers and that many of them were only teenagers. The book also includes the historical investigation that followed into the lives of the prisoners. Many of the survivors were transported into indentured servitude in New England, where their descendants survive today, allowing the team to develop important engagement with a transatlantic audience. The book is written in a very accessible way, aimed at a popular, non-academic audience. There is also a free online course at FutureLearn about the project that may prove of interest to members.
War in England, 1642–1649 by Barbara Donagan (Oxford University Press, 2008).
This landmark, scholarly book is a marvellous example of what can be produced by unhurried scholarship that has been allowed to mature and develope over decades. It sets out to analyse how the civil wars in England were fought. It goes a long way towards uncovering the nature and experience of warfare. It examines the mental world of the combatants, their codes of conduct, the ‘rules of war’ and what factors governed how far these were actually observed in practice. It explores contemporary justifications for war, English anxiety at the perceived excesses of the Thirty Years’ War, and England’s military education prior to 1642. Donagan discusses weapons technology and intelligence gathering, as well as how officers struggled to control their unruly soldiery through courts martial and the articles of war published by the king, the earl of Essex and the New Model Army. There is an ambitious chapter that begins to address the experience of the rank and file, although the nature of the primary sources unfortunately leads us back to the gentry’s view of them. Donagan concludes that the civil wars demonstrate the reverence for the law felt by English people at all social levels, and that the overwhelming consequence of their wartime experience was the desire not to repeat it.
A book that needs to be written is ‘In Redcoat Rags’: The Demobilisation of Revolutionary England. Now that my colleague Dr David J. Appleby has retired from the University of Nottingham, I hope that his long-planned project of taking this on moves towards fruition next year. It has often been assumed that after 1660 the soldiers of the New Model Army and other parliamentarian armies simply returned to their pre-war trades, melting back into civilian society almost as if nothing had ever happened. This book will provide a long overdue challenge to that preconception, uncovering the Restoration regime’s handling of veterans of the Commonwealth and parliamentary armies. It will investigate how Charles II was able to demobilise so many of his former enemies and send 7,000 of the remnants to places such as Portugal, Tangier and Bombay, from which they were not intended to return. Alongside this, the book will also be discussing civilian attitudes towards the embryonic British Army and the origins of the Standing Army Controversy that emerged in the later seventeenth century.