What’s heartening is the story’s suggestion that the long arc of history tends to bend, however slowly, toward improvement. Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial? Following the defeat of the Nazis in 1945, the idea took hold that Austria had been the first casualty of Hitler’s aggression when in 1938 it was incorporated into the Third Reich.’

The 17th century was the most dramatic and consequential in British history, the period during which the modern world was formed, and Jonathan Healey is as assured a guide to its twists and turns, its tragedies and triumphs as one could wish for. The Blazing World is a triumph of scholarship and concision.” —Paul Lay, historian, author of Providence Lost If I had a minor criticism of the book, it is that some of the analysis might have benefited from more fleshing out. In some cases, casual links and conclusions are drawn without a great deal of explanation. We are told that the so-called 'middling sort' (i.e., yeomen and lesser gentry) were drawn to Puritanism because its theology of pre-destination fitted with their own experience of worldly success 3. Elsewhere, the idea of Royal absolutism is described as a 'reaction' to the idea that monarchs were accountable to those they ruled. Over two paragraphs, a series of casual connections are made connecting economic change to a more widespread belief in common law civil liberties: as economic growth outpaced the growth of the money supply, credit became more commonplace; that resulted in greater litigation in relation to unpaid debt, and that 'in a culture so saturated with lawyers and litigants, legal ideas inevitably seeped into politics', including ideas about civil liberties. 4 To be fair to the author, they are all interesting ideas worth considering, and there may be a lot of research and thought underlying them. But they are dealt with in a cursory fashion in the book, whilst appearing to justify closer inspection. ConclusionKing James, King of Scotland, inherited the English throne in 1603 from his aunt, Queen Elizabeth. He slowly alienated Parliament. When he died, his son Charles I inherited the throne.

There is a temptation to look for parallels between what happened during this really chaotic century and current political and economic situations, and Healey writes so that those wishing to draw connections (or at least note similarities) are able to do so. He makes it clear, however, the the century was its own time and that the people who starred in it would be more out of place in other eras. So the links to modern Britain can be considered, although circumstances as well as long term trends determined much of what eventually happened. The most interesting parts to me were the glimpses of the impact on every day people, and I do wish that we had learnt a bit more about what the government of the day was doing outside of the various plots to get either Protestants or Catholics in power - e.g how was healthcare provided, how was literacy going? Etc… but maybe that would have made it a ridiculously long book.

The Restoration, widely welcomed, saw a return towards monarchical absolutism, for which Louis XIV, the French Sun King, was the model and apogee. James II, who inherited the Crown after his brother Charles II’s death in 1685, had learnt nothing from the tumultuous age into which he had been born. His misjudgments climaxed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which ensured the Protestant Crown in Parliament under William and Mary, in whose reign scientific and economic innovations would pave a path to global ascendancy.