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When the English Civil War broke out, London’s economy was diverse and dynamic, closely connected through commercial networks with the rest of England and with Europe, Asia and North America. As such it was uniquely vulnerable to hostile acts by supporters of the king, both those at large in the country and those within the capital. Yet despite numerous difficulties, the capital remained the economic powerhouse of the nation and was arguably the single most important element in Parliament’s eventual victory. For London’s wealth enabled Parliament to take up arms in 1642 and sustained it through the difficult first year and a half of the war, without which Parliament’s ultimate victory would not have been possible. In this book the various sectors of London’s economy are examined and compared, as the war progressed. It also looks closely at the impact of war on the major pillars of the London economy, namely London’s role in external and internal trade, and manufacturing in London. The impact of the increasing burden of taxation on the capital is another key area that is studied and which yields surprising conclusions. The Civil War caused a major economic crisis in the capital, not only because of the interrelationship between its economy and that of the rest of England, but also because of its function as the hub of the social and economic networks of the kingdom and of the rest of the world. The crisis was managed, however, and one of the strengths of this study is its revelation of the means by which the city’s government sought to understand and ameliorate the unique economic circumstances which afflicted it.
A history of London during the English Civil Wars, including a guide to sites today.
Having won renown in the 1850s for his vivid warfront dispatches from the Crimea, William Howard Russell was the most celebrated foreign journalist in America during the first year of the Civil War. As a special correspondent for The Times of London, Russell was charged with explaining the American crisis to a British audience, but his reports also had great impact in America. They so alienated both sides, North and South, that Russell was forced to return to England prematurely in April 1862. My Diary North and South (1863), Russell's published account of his visit remains a classic of Civil War literature. It was not in fact a diary but a narrative reconstruction of the author's journeys and observations based on his private notebooks and published dispatches. Despite his severe criticisms of American society and conduct, Russell offered in that work generally sympathetic characterizations of the Northern and Southern leadership during the war. In this new volume, Martin Crawford brings together the journalist's original diary and a selection of his private correspondence to resurrect the fully uninhibited Russell and to provide, accordingly, a true documentary record of this important visitor's first impressions of America during the early months of its greatest crisis. Over the course of his visit, Russell traveled widely throughout the Union and the new Confederacy, meeting political and social leaders on both sides. Included here are spontaneous - and often unflattering - comments on such prominent figures as William H. Seward, Jefferson Davis, Mary Todd Lincoln, and George B. McClellan, as well as quick sketches of New York, Washington, New Orleans, and other cities. Alsorevealed for the first time are the anxiety and despair that Russell experienced during his visit - a state induced by his own self-doubt, by concern over the health and situation of his wife in England, and, finally, by the bitter criticism he received in America over his reports, especially his famous description of the Union retreat from Bull Run in July 1861. A sometimes vain and pompous figure, Russell also emerges here as an individual of exceptional tenacity - a man who abhorred slavery and remained convinced of the essential rectitude of the Northern cause even as he criticized Northern leaders, their lack of preparedness for war, and the apparent disunity of the Northern population. In calmer times, Crawford notes, Russell's independent qualities might have brought him admiration, but in the turbulent climate of Civil War America they succeeded only in arousing deep suspicion.
A brilliant appraisal of the Civil War and its long-term consequences, by an acclaimed historian. The political upheaval of the mid-seventeenth century has no parallel in English history. Other events have changed the occupancy and the powers of the throne, but the conflict of 1640-60 was more dramatic: the monarchy and the House of Lords were abolished, to be replaced by a republic and military rule. In this wonderfully readable account, Blair Worden explores the events of this period and their origins - the war between King and Parliament, the execution of Charles I, Cromwell's rule and the Restoration - while aiming to reveal something more elusive: the motivations of contemporaries on both sides and the concerns of later generations.
'The English Civil War is a joy to behold, a thing of beauty... this will be the civil war atlas against which all others will judged and the battle maps in particular will quickly become the benchmark for all future civil war maps.' -- Professor Martyn Bennett, Department of History, Languages and Global Studies, Nottingham Trent University The English Civil Wars (1638–51) comprised the deadliest conflict ever fought on British soil, in which brother took up arms against brother, father fought against son, and towns, cities and villages fortified themselves in the cause of Royalists or Parliamentarians. Although much historical attention has focused on the events in England and the key battles of Edgehill, Marston Moor and Naseby, this was a conflict that engulfed the entirety of the Three Kingdoms and led to a trial and execution that profoundly shaped the British monarchy and Parliament. This beautifully presented atlas tells the whole story of Britain's revolutionary civil war, from the earliest skirmishes of the Bishops' Wars in 1639–40 through to 1651, when Charles II's defeat at Worcester crushed the Royalist cause, leading to a decade of Stuart exile. Each map is supported by a detailed text, providing a complete explanation of the complex and fluctuating conflict that ultimately meant that the Crown would always be answerable to Parliament.
Miller provides a clear and comprehensible narrative, a coherent and accurate synthesis, intended as a guide for students and the general reader to an extremely complex period in British history. His aim is to help readers avoid getting lost in a maze of detail and rather to maintain a grasp of the big picture. Although the English Civil War is usually seen, in England at least, as a conflict between two sides, it involved the Scots, the Irish and the army and the people of England, especially London. At some points, events occurred and perspectives changed with such disorienting rapidity that even those who lived through these events were confused as to where they stood in relation to one another. As the 1640s wore on, events unfolded in ways which the participants had not expected and in many cases did not want. Hindsight might suggest that everything led logically to the trial and execution of the king, but these were in fact highly improbable outcomes. Since the 1980s, a 'three kingdoms' approach has become almost compulsory, but Miller's focus is unashamedly on England. Events in Scotland and Ireland are covered only insofar as they had an impact on events in England.
Sir, God hath taken away your eldest son by a cannon shot. It brake his leg. We were necessitated to have it cut off, whereof he died.' In one of the most famous and moving letters of the Civil War, Oliver Cromwell told his brother-in-law that on 2 July 1644 Parliament had won an emphatic victory over a Royalist army commanded by King Charles I's nephew, Prince Rupert, on rolling moorland west of York. But that battle, Marston Moor, had also slain his own nephew, the recipient's firstborn. In this vividly narrated history of the deadly conflict that engulfed the nation during the 1640s, Peter Gaunt shows that, with the exception of World War I, the death-rate was higher than any other contest in which Britain has participated. Numerous towns and villages were garrisoned, attacked, damaged or wrecked. The landscape was profoundly altered. Yet amidst all the blood and killing, the fighting was also a catalyst for profound social change and innovation. Charting major battles, raids and engagements, the author uses rich contemporary accounts to explore the life-changing experience of war for those involved, whether musketeers at Cheriton, dragoons at Edgehill or Cromwell's disciplined Ironsides at Naseby (1645).
Nominated for the Deutscher Memorial Prize.The London Revolution 1640 - 1643: Class Struggles in 17th Century England chronicles England's history through the revolution in 1641 - 1642, which toppled the feudal political system, and its aftermath. It explores how the growing capitalist economy fundamentally conflicted with decaying feudal society, causing tensions and dislocations that affected all social classes in the early modern period. In contrast with most other works, this book posits that the fundamental driving force of the revolution was the militant Puritan movement supported by the class of petty-bourgeois artisan craftworkers, instead of the moderate gentry in the House of Commons.The London Revolution 1640 - 1643 further traces the detrimental effects of the political alliance between the free-trade Atlantic merchants and the gentry for the revolution. Despite the conservative and contradictory nature of the English bourgeois revolution, the experience in London is the original source for democratic ideas that were codified in the 1689 Bill of Rights and the U.S. Bill of Rights a century later.Taken in its entirety, The London Revolution 1640 - 1643 refutes the virulent attacks on Marxist social class analysis spearheaded by revisionist historians who would rather write the concept of revolution out of history.
This book investigates the origins of civil wars which emerge from failed attempts at democratization. The main aim of this volume is to develop a theoretical explanation of the conditions under which and the mechanisms through which social movements’ struggles for democracy end up in civil war. While the empirical evidence suggests that this is not a rare phenomenon, the literatures on social movements, democratization and civil wars have grown apart from each other. At the theoretical level, Social Movements and Civil War bridges insights in the three fields, looking in particular at explanations of the radicalization of social movements, the failure of democratization processes and the onset of civil war. In doing this, it builds upon the relational approach developed in contentious politics with the aim of singling out robust causal mechanisms. At the empirical level, the research provides in-depth descriptions of four cases of trajectory from social movements for democratization into civil wars: in Syria, Libya, Yemen and the former Yugoslavia. Conditions such as the double weakness of civil society and the state, the presence of entrepreneurs of violence as well as normative and material resources for violence, ethnic and tribal divisions, domestic and international military interventions are considered as influencing the chains of actors’ choices rather than as structural determinants. This book will be of great interest to students of civil wars, political violence, social movements, democratization, and IR in general.