Plucked hens and principals: Tackling Dutch politics in seventeenth century England

Professor Jason Peacey, UCL History, Jason has taught early modern British history at UCL since 2006, and his research focuses on political culture and the history of communication, most obviously in terms of the print revolution and the birth of journalism. His publications include Politicians and Pamphleteers. Propaganda in the Civil Wars and Interregnum (2004), and Print and Public Politics in the English Revolution (2013). This talk involves early results from a major new project on Anglo-Dutch political culture in the seventeenth century.

Despite growing awareness about the cultural, economic and social interactions between different parts of Europe in the early modern era, political historians of the period generally remain wedded to a picture of separate and more or less competitive states, which sometimes forged dynastic, political and confessional alliances, but which frequently found themselves in conflict as well. This talk will offer new perspectives on seventeenth century European politics, by drawing attention not just to the English fascination with the Dutch political system, but also to contemporary recognition of the need to work with and through Dutch institutions, and to confront the limitations of state sovereignty.