Comparing Cultures: France and Britain in the 17th Century

The English Civil War and its aftermath is a subject which has prompted historians almost co physical violence and certainly to unbridled verbal exchanges. The storm over the gentry and their alleged 'rise', the radicalism or otherwise of the parliamentary army; the role of the House of Lords; the significance of the personalities of such key figures as Charles I, Archbishop Laud and the Earl of Strafford; and even. whether the Ranters existed have all produced animated anal sometimes downright furious debate between historians.

In recent years the debate has shifted away from the political events in England to a larger stage, to that of the British Isles as a whole. What has become known, after Conrad Russell's lecture in 1985, as 'the British dimension' is rapidly becoming the new orthodoxy. It is certainly becoming unacceptable for historians of seventeenth- century Britain to refer only to the other nations of these islands solely in terms of their impact upon England. Increasingly, the history of the seventeenth century is being read in terms of the interaction of these nations.