<i>The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England, 1603–1689</i> by Jonathan Healey

The Tudor era may grab all of the attention in our current popular culture, but there is an argument to be made that the people and events of the seventeenth century are every bit as exciting and dramatic. Healey’s recent work makes the case that the period 1603–1689 deserves our attention as a critical juncture in which the ideas and actions of the people mattered. With lively prose and a clear sense of direction, Healey narrates the upheavals of what he sees as a revolutionary century, forging a gateway to the modern era.Healey’s narrative is based on sound scholarship, synthesizing a wide array of historical works, reflected in extensive footnotes. That synthesis is complemented by ample use of contemporary pamphlets and print literature, as well as some archival material; Star Chamber records, among others, are used to good effect. With a popular audience in mind, the book rarely addresses scholarly debates and historiography overtly, but those who know these debates will see the book’s interpretive foundations. Healey acknowledges but moves past the old Whig narrative of democratic progress, the Marxist focus on material considerations, and Revisionists’ emphasis on structural issues rather than ideological difference. For Healey, the religious and political beliefs of the people, stoked by the proliferation of print, were vital forces of change across the seventeenth century. No longer was it simply the “digitus Dei” (“the finger of God”) that was seen to move events and trouble princes, but the “digitus populi” (160).Although the book is a traditional narrative history, built on a chronological framework, the author uses a variety of disciplinary perspectives in weaving together that narrative. Healey is particularly attuned to cultural and social change, as well as the impacts of economic downturn or uprise on the people of the era. The methodologies of social, economic, and cultural history are apparent behind his narrative, and sections on political events are interspersed with those on social and cultural change. Vivid reconstructions of local events from archival sources put faces on more abstract patterns of economic and social development. Even the techniques of fiction occasionally enter the narrative. At one point the author writes, “It was a winter’s night: the smell of woodsmoke scented the crisp air of the Somerset coast, accompanied by the clattering percussion of the masts from the town’s dock” (55). That is evocative, though it surely goes beyond what the evidence in the State Papers actually tells us.Such flourishes add to the drama, which is one of the strengths of the book. So, too, is the author’s skill at drawing brisk character sketches—figures like John Lambert, William Petty, and Margaret Cavendish, among many others—which populate the narrative. Healey does not create an entirely new interpretation of the era, and the book does not stray much beyond the boundaries of England itself, with only occasional brief forays to Dublin and Edinburgh. Coverage of the last forty years of the century is slenderer than the first sixty. Nevertheless, the book succeeds in constructing an effective and informative narrative while evoking the dynamism of the period. It shines its light not just on kings and lords but on the struggles and ideas of common people, the middling sorts who would turn the world upside down and usher in a new era.