Review: Britain and Europe, 1500–1780.By Ralph Houlbrooke. Pp. xvi, 383.ISBN: 9780340581193 (paperback).London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011. £19.99

Murdoch, Alexander

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Alexander Murdoch

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The Scottish Historical Review

<i>Britain and Europe, 1500–1780.</i>  By Ralph Houlbrooke. Pp. xvi, 383. ISBN: 9780340581193 (paperback). London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011. £19.99.

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     Edinburgh Research Explorer                                      Britain and Europe, 1500-1780Citation for published version:Murdoch, A 2012, 'Britain and Europe, 1500-1780', The Scottish Historical Review, vol. 91, no. 232, pp.356-357. https://doi.org/10.3366/shr.2012.0114Digital Object Identifier (DOI):10.3366/shr.2012.0114Link:Link to publication record in Edinburgh Research ExplorerDocument Version:Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of recordPublished In:The Scottish Historical ReviewPublisher Rights Statement:© Murdoch, A. (2012). Britain and Europe, 1500-1780. Scottish Historical Review, 91(232), 356-357.10.3366/shr.2012.0114General rightsCopyright for the publications made accessible via the Edinburgh Research Explorer is retained by the author(s)and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise andabide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.Take down policyThe University of Edinburgh has made every reasonable effort to ensure that Edinburgh Research Explorercontent complies with UK legislation. If you believe that the public display of this file breaches copyright pleasecontact openaccess@ed.ac.uk providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately andinvestigate your claim.Download date: 29. Nov. 2025356 reviewsWhile some chapters in this book engage only loosely with identity, overallthis volume indicates a number of approaches to the study of Scottish identitiesthat will be useful in shaping future research.The University of the Highlands and Islands D.A.J. MACPHERSONDOI: 10.3366/shr.2012.0113Britain and Europe, 1500–1780.By Ralph Houlbrooke. Pp. xvi, 383.ISBN: 9780340581193 (paperback).London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011. £19.99.The great challenge of producing broad historical surveys is to avoidmeaningless generalities and to endeavour to draw on the best and latestresearch (not always the same thing) in serving the readers’ interests. Thisis a book not just for university students but for the elusive ‘general reader’,and it brings together an impressive amount of work with largely Anglophonehistoriography. It focuses on Britain but does make a genuine effort to analyseearly modern British history in a European context. One advantage of suchan approach is that it enables the author to explore the ambiguities of therelationship of Ireland to England but also to the island of Britain as awhole, over what can be understood as the key period in its development. Ofcourse, this could be said of British relations with France, with Spain, with theNetherlands and with other parts of Europe but considering the developmentof Ireland’s relationship with Britain (as colony and province but never as equal)makes for particularly effective analysis in a broader European context. Muchtext in a substantial book is taken up with the need to include a great deal ofinformation. The author has the advantage of considerable knowledge of thelife and career of James VI and I of Scotland and England (and Wales andIreland). This is reflected in the division of the text into three parts dividedchronologically into 1500–1603, 1603–1707 and 1707–1780 (though why notto 1789 and the outbreak of the French Revolution is unclear). The union ofthe crowns in 1603 gave substance to the idea of Britain on several levels, withand without an Irish context; the seventeenth century is characterised both by acatastrophic descent into anarchy and the emergence of a civil society out of thatdisaster and the British perspective of the book is made explicit in accepting thedate of the parliamentary union of England and Scotland as the starting pointfor consideration of British and European history for most of the eighteenthcentury.The author squares up to the challenge of avoiding superficiality bycomplementing more general discussion of the Reformation, the monarchy,population and the economy, and the Enlightenment (there is a single referenceto the ‘renaissance’ in the index) with specific discussion at certain points in thetext of Britain and Ireland, France, the Netherlands and Spain in particular, butnot to the complete exclusion of other kingdoms and regions of the continent.How does Scotland fare in relation to the demands of accommodating so muchelse within one text? Some readers might suspect tokenism but there is an evenconsideration of aspects of Scottish subjects throughout the text. There areseparate discussions of the Reformation in relation to England and to Scotlandbut also to France and the Netherlands, and a separate discussion of ‘theimpact of the British Reformations’, as well as a chapter entitled ‘Contacts andConnections: Renaissance and Reformation’. It is interesting that the authorreviews 357makes the confident statement (p. 231) that ‘English politicians tended totreat Scotland almost like a colony’. Discuss! This certainly is an example ofa determination not to be content to generalise. A valuable characteristic of thebook is its awareness of the broader context of the union issue, for example,by careful (but not lengthy) discussion of the history of the British union withHanover from 1714, which did not come to an end until the accession of QueenVictoria in 1837. Houlbrooke relates that ‘as early as February 1716, George Imade a will for the separation of Britain and Hanover, which he thought wouldbenefit both of them’ (p. 286). George II suppressed this but his son PrinceFrederick had planned to implement independence for Hanover only for deathto overtake his ambitions. Was his son a unionist because his tutor and mentorwas a Scotsman in the shape of the third earl of Bute?The University of Edinburgh ALEXANDER MURDOCHDOI: 10.3366/shr.2012.0114The Scottish Middle March, 1573–1625. Power, Kinship, Alliance.By Anna Groundwater. Pp. xii, 236.ISBN: 9780861933075.Woodbridge: The Boydell Press for the Royal Historical Society, 2010.£50.00.Recent studies of the Borders centering on the sixteenth century – suchas Professor Meikle’s A British Frontier? (2004) – have concentrated less oncataloguing the violence of a society distinctively organized for warfare (thesociety of the ‘steel bonnets’ highlighted by disapproving contemporaries,and romanticised by Sir Walter Scott). Instead, emphasis has been placedon parallels in their social organization and governance with other parts ofScotland, and on their links with the Court and central government. Theeventual containment and marginalisation of violence in Border society hasbeen viewed in the context of the state’s more general reformist interventions,especially from the later sixteenth century onwards.Dr Groundwater’s study reinforces and expands these interpretative trends.Her analysis advances our understanding of how the deeply rooted, oftenunruly, kinship groups of the Middle March came to be transformed intomore responsive agencies of government policy and, ultimately, came to losetheir rationale and vigour. The study is valuable too for understanding thevarying pace of change throughout the Anglo-Scottish marches. Comparisonsare made with the more intractable Scottish west march, rent by the long-lastingJohnstone-Maxwell feud and remote from the haunts of court and privy council.Some contrasts are sketched with the English marches, wary and sometimesresistant to peremptory admonitions from distant Whitehall.At the core of the study is the reconstitution of the composition andmechanisms of Border kin-groups, the ‘surnames’, in the middle march.Aspects of them besides their well-rehearsed capacity for collective andfragmented violence are emphasised and reappraised. They are shown asbeing characteristically of long-standing provenance, and susceptible to useas forces for stability as well as disorder. They provided mechanisms for thesettlement of disputes and feuds, as well as for their prosecution. In JamesVI’s minority, inclinations to violence by surnames were notably ratcheted upthrough the attachment of chiefs to rival magnates and Court factions, as wellas by cross-Border raiding; James’ often fraught relations with Queen Elizabethinclined him on occasion to tolerate the unruly power and defiant willfulnessof surnames. The issue of the English succession was a prime factor in his

Britain and Europe, 1500-1780

     Edinburgh Research Explorer                                      Britain and Europe, 1500-1780Citation for published version:Murdoch, A 2012, 'Britain and Europe, 1500-1780' Scottish Historical Review, vol 91, no. 232, pp. 356-357.,10.3366/shr.2012.0114Digital Object Identifier (DOI):10.3366/shr.2012.0114Link:Link to publication record in Edinburgh Research ExplorerDocument Version:Publisher final version (usually the publisher pdf)Published In:Scottish Historical ReviewPublisher Rights Statement:© Murdoch, A. (2012). Britain and Europe, 1500-1780. Scottish Historical Review, 91(232), 356-357.10.3366/shr.2012.0114General rightsCopyright for the publications made accessible via the Edinburgh Research Explorer is retained by the author(s)and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise andabide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.Take down policyThe University of Edinburgh has made every reasonable effort to ensure that Edinburgh Research Explorercontent complies with UK legislation. If you believe that the public display of this file breaches copyright pleasecontact openaccess@ed.ac.uk providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately andinvestigate your claim.Download date: 20. Feb. 2015356 reviewsWhile some chapters in this book engage only loosely with identity, overallthis volume indicates a number of approaches to the study of Scottish identitiesthat will be useful in shaping future research.The University of the Highlands and Islands D.A.J. MACPHERSONDOI: 10.3366/shr.2012.0113Britain and Europe, 1500–1780.By Ralph Houlbrooke. Pp. xvi, 383.ISBN: 9780340581193 (paperback).London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011. £19.99.The great challenge of producing broad historical surveys is to avoidmeaningless generalities and to endeavour to draw on the best and latestresearch (not always the same thing) in serving the readers’ interests. Thisis a book not just for university students but for the elusive ‘general reader’,and it brings together an impressive amount of work with largely Anglophonehistoriography. It focuses on Britain but does make a genuine effort to analyseearly modern British history in a European context. One advantage of suchan approach is that it enables the author to explore the ambiguities of therelationship of Ireland to England but also to the island of Britain as awhole, over what can be understood as the key period in its development. Ofcourse, this could be said of British relations with France, with Spain, with theNetherlands and with other parts of Europe but considering the developmentof Ireland’s relationship with Britain (as colony and province but never as equal)makes for particularly effective analysis in a broader European context. Muchtext in a substantial book is taken up with the need to include a great deal ofinformation. The author has the advantage of considerable knowledge of thelife and career of James VI and I of Scotland and England (and Wales andIreland). This is reflected in the division of the text into three parts dividedchronologically into 1500–1603, 1603–1707 and 1707–1780 (though why notto 1789 and the outbreak of the French Revolution is unclear). The union ofthe crowns in 1603 gave substance to the idea of Britain on several levels, withand without an Irish context; the seventeenth century is characterised both by acatastrophic descent into anarchy and the emergence of a civil society out of thatdisaster and the British perspective of the book is made explicit in accepting thedate of the parliamentary union of England and Scotland as the starting pointfor consideration of British and European history for most of the eighteenthcentury.The author squares up to the challenge of avoiding superficiality bycomplementing more general discussion of the Reformation, the monarchy,population and the economy, and the Enlightenment (there is a single referenceto the ‘renaissance’ in the index) with specific discussion at certain points in thetext of Britain and Ireland, France, the Netherlands and Spain in particular, butnot to the complete exclusion of other kingdoms and regions of the continent.How does Scotland fare in relation to the demands of accommodating so muchelse within one text? Some readers might suspect tokenism but there is an evenconsideration of aspects of Scottish subjects throughout the text. There areseparate discussions of the Reformation in relation to England and to Scotlandbut also to France and the Netherlands, and a separate discussion of ‘theimpact of the British Reformations’, as well as a chapter entitled ‘Contacts andConnections: Renaissance and Reformation’. It is interesting that the authorreviews 357makes the confident statement (p. 231) that ‘English politicians tended totreat Scotland almost like a colony’. Discuss! This certainly is an example ofa determination not to be content to generalise. A valuable characteristic of thebook is its awareness of the broader context of the union issue, for example,by careful (but not lengthy) discussion of the history of the British union withHanover from 1714, which did not come to an end until the accession of QueenVictoria in 1837. Houlbrooke relates that ‘as early as February 1716, George Imade a will for the separation of Britain and Hanover, which he thought wouldbenefit both of them’ (p. 286). George II suppressed this but his son PrinceFrederick had planned to implement independence for Hanover only for deathto overtake his ambitions. Was his son a unionist because his tutor and mentorwas a Scotsman in the shape of the third earl of Bute?The University of Edinburgh ALEXANDER MURDOCHDOI: 10.3366/shr.2012.0114The Scottish Middle March, 1573–1625. Power, Kinship, Alliance.By Anna Groundwater. Pp. xii, 236.ISBN: 9780861933075.Woodbridge: The Boydell Press for the Royal Historical Society, 2010.£50.00.Recent studies of the Borders centering on the sixteenth century – suchas Professor Meikle’s A British Frontier? (2004) – have concentrated less oncataloguing the violence of a society distinctively organized for warfare (thesociety of the ‘steel bonnets’ highlighted by disapproving contemporaries,and romanticised by Sir Walter Scott). Instead, emphasis has been placedon parallels in their social organization and governance with other parts ofScotland, and on their links with the Court and central government. Theeventual containment and marginalisation of violence in Border society hasbeen viewed in the context of the state’s more general reformist interventions,especially from the later sixteenth century onwards.Dr Groundwater’s study reinforces and expands these interpretative trends.Her analysis advances our understanding of how the deeply rooted, oftenunruly, kinship groups of the Middle March came to be transformed intomore responsive agencies of government policy and, ultimately, came to losetheir rationale and vigour. The study is valuable too for understanding thevarying pace of change throughout the Anglo-Scottish marches. Comparisonsare made with the more intractable Scottish west march, rent by the long-lastingJohnstone-Maxwell feud and remote from the haunts of court and privy council.Some contrasts are sketched with the English marches, wary and sometimesresistant to peremptory admonitions from distant Whitehall.At the core of the study is the reconstitution of the composition andmechanisms of Border kin-groups, the ‘surnames’, in the middle march.Aspects of them besides their well-rehearsed capacity for collective andfragmented violence are emphasised and reappraised. They are shown asbeing characteristically of long-standing provenance, and susceptible to useas forces for stability as well as disorder. They provided mechanisms for thesettlement of disputes and feuds, as well as for their prosecution. In JamesVI’s minority, inclinations to violence by surnames were notably ratcheted upthrough the attachment of chiefs to rival magnates and Court factions, as wellas by cross-Border raiding; James’ often fraught relations with Queen Elizabethinclined him on occasion to tolerate the unruly power and defiant willfulnessof surnames. The issue of the English succession was a prime factor in his

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