ABSTRACT
Although ‘New British History’ is still in its infancy, historians such as Nicholas Canny, Keith Brown and David Cannadine have taken a sceptical or critical view of the fledgling. First, it is argued that most studies which treat developments within the three kingdoms as parts of a single, common process have taken a fairly narrow political approach, focusing on politics, the constitution and state religion, while ignoring or greatly underplaying social and economic history, demography, environmental history, commerce, linguistic developments and so on. This is certainly true of most attempts to draw together a British history of the midseventeenth century. Second, it is claimed that much so-called British history is, in reality, simply an attempt more fully to explain English developments through an expanded awareness of how Scottish and Irish factors influenced England, thus retaining a firm Anglocentric focus, rather than providing a balanced attempt to trace the development of each kingdom and the ways in which they interacted with each other. A very detailed published study of the ‘British’ crisis of 1637-42, Russell’s The Fall of the British Monarchies, has attracted criticism on precisely thesegrounds. Third, British history is alleged toexaggerate the unityand integrity of the component kingdoms and to underplay internal divisions. Accordingly it is suggested that, for many periods, including the crises and conflicts of the midseventeenth century, it would be more accurate and informative to adopt a local and provincial rather than national and British approach, or to focus on internal divisions between the highland and lowland zones in Scotland and in England and
Wales, and between the relatively fertile and infertile zones in Ireland. Fourth, it is claimed that much British history underplays or ignores links which the three kingdoms had with the continent of Europe and continental influences in British history. In fact, such influences were not strong in the mid-seventeenth-century British conflict, for much of the continent was absorbed by the later stages of the Thirty Years War and then a continuing Franco-Spanish conflict. Although many British officers had acquired military experience fighting as mercenaries on the continent, there was little direct continental military intervention in the British wars. Fifth, it is suggested that it may be beyond the powers of a single historian to possess or to acquire the deep, specialist knowledge of all three kingdoms needed to write a full and balanced British account and that, in any case, as far less work has been undertaken on Scotland and Ireland than on England, the priority should be for much more specialist research on Scottish and Irish aspects before we are in a position to synthesise material into a British account. In terms of the midseventeenth century it is certainly true that far less research has been conducted on Scotland and Ireland than on England.
