Translating English Republicanism in the European Enlightenment

I feel lucky that we have so many excellent early modern intellectual and cultural historians based at Newcastle with whom I can talk and collaborate. One of these is my friend and colleague Gaby Mahlberg who currently holds a Marie Sklodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellowship with us. In late June, Gaby organised a workshop as part of her fellowship which brought a number of excellent scholars who work on the translation of political texts to Newcastle. The workshop explored a number of themes, including: the purpose of translations; the roles of the individuals involved in producing them; the building of canons; and free speech.

As someone who has worked on translations since the very beginning of my research career, I have often reflected on their purposes. We tend to assume that the main aim of a translation is to disseminate the ideas contained within the text and that those involved in producing the translation identify the text as relevant to their own cultural and political context and audience. Yet, some of the examples discussed at the workshop suggested that this is not always the case.

Plaque commemorating Thomas Paine’s time in Lewes, East Sussex, which appears on the wall of the White Hart Inn. Image by Rachel Hammersley.

Elias Buchetmann briefly discussed the partial translation of Thomas Paine's Rights of Man, which appeared in Leipzig in 1791. Though it made available part of Paine's famous work to a German audience, the aim appears to have been less to disseminate Paine's ideas than to contain them, reinforcing instead the position of Paine's antagonist Edmund Burke. This is evident in the way in which the footnotes are used to contradict and correct Paine's views, so that the reader does not receive Paine's ideas in isolation but via a Burkean lens.

Ariel Hessayon's paper on the translation of Gerrard Winstanley's New Law of Righteousness raised a different question: whether a translation is always produced for circulation. We know about this German translation of Winstanley's text from the catalogue of the library of Petrus Serrarius, though no copy of the translation survives. The translator was probably Serrarius himself. We might assume that since he could read English he must have translated it to circulate among others who could not, but in the discussion we noted that this is not necessarily the case. Katie East reminded us that translation was a long-established pedagogical technique for those learning classical languages and that this could equally apply to the learning of European languages. It was also noted that translating a work could be used to develop a deeper understanding of it.

A title page from Cato’s Letters. Taken from the Internet Archive.

Several papers challenged the assumption that a translated political text is necessarily seen as relevant to the political context into which it is translated. The transmission of English republican ideas into France, which has been explored in detail by several of the workshop participants, certainly seems to fit this model. The Huguenots, who were particularly concerned with justifications for resistance, translated works by Algernon Sidney and Edmund Ludlow. Whereas Harrington's works, as Myriam-Isabelle Ducrocq's paper reminded us, came into their own during the French constitutional debates of the 1790s. Several papers, however, made clear that the translation of English texts into German tells a rather different story. Both Felix Waldmann in his account of the German translations of John Locke's works and Gaby Mahlberg in her discussion of the German reception of Cato's Letters highlighted a sense among both translators and reviewers that those texts applied specifically to England, and that their insights and models could not easily be applied in a German context. Of course, this could be a rhetorical device to distance the translator, editor, or printer from potentially controversial ideas, but it is certainly true that the German states in the eighteenth century were very different from that of early modern England.

As well as thinking about the purpose of translations, several speakers touched on the role of the individuals involved in their production. Thomas Munck's paper drew attention to the fact that, despite being in France during the Revolution, Thomas Paine contributed very little to debates and events there. Though he was a member of the Convention, he hardly ever spoke, he did little while in France to promote his own works, and though he advocated certain proposals - such as a fairer tax system - he had little to say about the practical means of achieving them. In the discussion that followed we reflected on how we should classify Paine. Was he a political thinker, a politician, an activist, or more like a journalist or observer (at least during his time in France)? It was also noted that political thinkers and writers do not always make good politicians.

Similar questions were asked about Pierre Des Maizeaux who was the focus of Ann Thomson's paper. He was not an original thinker, nor was he much interested in political discussion - being more of an erudite scholar. Yet he was crucial to the dissemination of political ideas thanks to his role as an intermediary, editor and populariser.

These examples point towards a wider question of the connection between theory and practice. Today it often seems as though politicians engage very little with political thought, while academics engaged in political thinking have little influence on practical policy. Yet, it might be argued, both are necessary if improvements are to be made. Thinking about the channels that exist - or could be developed - between the two, and celebrating the intermediaries and popularisers who forge and sustain them, has potential value for us all.

Algernon Sidney by James Basire after Giovanni Battista Cipriani, 1763. National Portrait Gallery NPG D28941. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

The role or identity of key thinkers was approached from a different perspective in Tom Ashby's paper on the reception of Algernon Sidney's ideas in eighteenth-century Italy. Tom's account of the figures Sidney was associated with by different Italian thinkers at different times prompted much discussion. Initially he was linked, as one might expect, to natural law thinkers such as Samuel Pufendorf and Locke. But the Italian Jacobin Matteo Galdi associated Sidney, instead, with a more eclectic list of thinkers including Francis Bacon, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the baron de Montesquieu, Gaetano Filangieri and Giambattista Vico. Galdi presented these figures as advocates of what he called 'new politics' (presumably building on Vico's 'new science'). Similarly, Christopher Hamel reminded us that the marquis de Condorcet associated Sidney with René Descartes and Rousseau in his Esquisse, and Sidney was also regularly linked in the eighteenth century with his contemporary John Hampden as examples of patriotic martyrs. While some of these links appear bizarre, and while it can be difficult to understand the thinking behind them, they do offer another potential avenue by which we can explore the tricky question of reception.

Finally, some of the papers touched on issues of free speech and toleration. Christopher Hamel drew attention to the idea of 'disinterested historians' in his paper on the French reception of Thomas Gordon's Discourses on Tacitus. Reviewers praised Gordon's tactic of simply describing, for example, 'the flattery which reigns at the court of tyrants' without feeling the need explicitly to pass judgement. It was noted that the Royal Society had emphasised the idea of disinterested scientists who would develop conclusions purely on the basis of reason, observation, and experimentation. The suggestion was presumably that historians could do something similar.

Ann Thomson reflected in a similar way on the approach of Huguenots such as Des Maizeaux and Jean Le Clerc. Des Maizeaux has sometimes been seen as advocating irreligion on account of his willingness to circulate free thinking works, but Ann suggested that his aim was really the promotion of toleration. This was reflected in the fact that he invested a great deal of time and energy into producing an edition of the works of William Chillingworth, who was a latitudinarian Anglican. Similarly, in a review of John Rushworth's collection of documents from the civil wars, Des Maizeaux noted a republican bias in the selected texts and suggested that royalist texts should be published as a complement. Jean Le Clerc also seems to have been concerned with offering a balanced account of the mid-seventeenth-century conflict. When reviewing the Earl of Clarendon's History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England in Bibliothèque choisie he noted that it was 'very zealous' for the King's party and suggested that Edmund Ludlow's Memoirs be read to provide a contrast or comparison.

These examples reminded me of Thomas Hollis. As I have discussed previously in this blog, Hollis published not just works that he favoured but also those expressing opposing views - on the grounds that readers needed to read both and judge for themselves. Moreover, Hollis also picked up specifically on Clarendon's History, though his suggestion was that it should be read alongside the works not of Ludlow, but of John Milton.

In short, the workshop provided much stimulation for thought about the role and importance of translations and translators in adding to our understanding of early modern political cultures, and the relationship between ideas and practical action. At the same time, it prompted thought about that relationship today. What means can be used to bring the rich political thinking of academics to bear on contemporary political issues? And what specific role might 'disinterested historians' play in this task?

Fifty Years of the World Turned Upside Down

Is what I am doing worthwhile? How can I make a difference? I often ask myself these questions. They feel especially pressing in the midst of the current cost of living crisis, in the face of impending environmental disaster, and in a situation of growing inequality both within Britain and between us and the global south. In this context, writing books and articles on obscure early modern figures and their ideas - and teaching classes to students who are relatively privileged - can feel self-indulgent. It was, therefore, reassuring to learn from Penny Corfield, at a recent conference to celebrate 50 years since the publication of The World Turned Upside Down, that the eminent early modern historian Christopher Hill was troubled by these questions too. Like me, Hill was no doubt partly prompted by the inspiring phrase from Gerrard Winstanley, which I have quoted before in this blog: 'action is the life of all, and if though dost not act, though dost nothing' (Gerrard Winstanley, A Watch-Word to the City of London and the Armie, London, 1649).

The programme for the conference, which was expertly organised by Waseem Ahmed in conjunction with John Rees.

In his excellent paper on Hill's life and thought, which marked the culmination of the conference, Mike Braddick explained that as a young man in the 1930s Hill was already 'thinking like a Marxist' but did not yet know what to 'do'. Of course, he soon found his role. As Mike explained, writing history was Hill's contribution. As one obituary of him noted, Hill was 'an historian's historian' and yet works like The World Turned Upside Down spoke not just to academics, but also to ordinary people. Moreover, as Ann Hughes explained in her paper, Hill also reached out in many different ways to a wider public through his involvement with organisations such as the Workers' Educational Association, the Open University, and the BBC. I was bemused to learn that Hill's piece 'James Harrington and the People' was originally written for radio. Oh if only someone would commission a radio programme on Harrington today! Similarly John Rees reported, on the basis of his own experience, that Hill was always happy to be associated with the organised left and gave inspiring speeches to large crowds.

There is an interesting parallel between Hill's commitment to venture beyond academia, presenting his historical research (and that of others) to the general public, and the subject matter of The World Turned Upside Down. That book took seriously the ideas of ordinary people. Its protagonists are not the 'great' thinkers of the seventeenth century but rather the ordinary people (some of them very humble indeed) who were caught up in events. Hill was interested in ideas that inspire practical political action, regardless of the social status or level of education of those who voiced those ideas and took that action.

A poster advertising the film Winstanley about the Digger movement, one of the key groups to feature in Christopher Hill’s The World Turned Upside Down. Author’s own copy.

This focus was reflected in several of the papers at the conference, including papers that dealt with figures who feature in The World Turned Upside Down and papers on those who perhaps should have done, but do not. It was apt to have Ariel Hessayon talking about the Ranters and Bernard Capp to say something about the Fifth Monarchists. Ariel contextualised Hill's account of the Ranters in The World Turned Upside Down and emphasised the fact that the strength of Hill's book lay in making these rather obscure figures visible. He also noted that Hill came to the Ranters quite late. Capp extended this point, acknowledging that the radicals are not prominent in many of Hill's earlier works such as The English Revolution 1640 and The Century of Revolution (though this partly reflects the nature of those publications). Capp also suggested that the Fifth Monarchists and Muggletonians ranked lower in Hill's estimations than the Ranters and the Diggers, not least because their ideas did not all sit comfortably with his understanding of radicalism.

Author’s copy of Hill’s book showing the tub-thumping preacher on the cover.

Several speakers made the case for particular individuals to be considered as radicals. Jackie Eales's paper focused on the radical preacher James Hunt of Sevenoaks, who does not appear in The World Turned Upside Down despite probably being the tub-thumping preacher on the cover of the original edition. Jason Peacey argued the case for George Wither and asked the thought-provoking question: How would our view of radicalism change if Wither were taken more seriously? Ed Legon's paper focused on individuals even more obscure than Hunt and Wither, textile workers-cum preachers such as one Thomas Moore, 'Dingle', and others for whom we do not even have a name. The link between textile workers and radical puritanism has long been recognised, if not fully explored, but other speakers found radicals in even more unexpected places. Will White made the case for the neutral Francis Nethersole as a radical of sorts. He pointed out that refusing to take sides was itself a political act, which might lead to disobedience and required considerable courage. He also noted the similarities between ideas put forward by Nethersole to justify his neutrality and those expressed by the Leveller William Walwyn in The Bloody Project. The fluidity implicit in Walwyn's position (and acknowledged by Hill) was also reflected in the activities of another Leveller, Captain William Bray, who was the subject of Ted Vallance's paper. Ted showed how Bray haunted the boundary between the Levellers and the Ranters. In part, this fluidity stems from thought being geared to political action, since engaging in politics (rather than merely contemplating it) may require pragmatism: deploying different arguments for different audiences; rearranging priorities in response to events; and even setting aside key principles at certain moments.

The image of the world turned upside down from the pamphlet of the same name.

This leads to another point that was reflected in both Hill's life and his work. The importance of free and open debate, and even the possibility that ideas might be changed through it. As Ann, John and Mike all noted, Hill experienced this himself in the debates in which he engaged as a member of the Communist Party Historians’ Group between the late 1930s and 1957. The idea of open debate was also reflected in papers that themselves turned conventional interpretations upside down. For example, Richard Bell showed that the interest of key Levellers in prisons was not a case of them bringing political consciousness to prisoners, but rather of the Levellers tapping into a long-standing campaign for prison reform. Similarly, Laura Stewart made a convincing case for the notion of a Scottish Revolution, emphasising the need for it to be understood on its own terms.

Laura's paper was one of many that either ventured beyond Hill's field of enquiry or even challenged key aspects of his thought. As Penny Corfield made clear, Hill would have enjoyed and appreciated the debate. He welcomed respectful disagreement on the grounds that thinking could be advanced in the process. As Mike explained, the members of the Communist Party Historians’ Group were not aiming to impose an orthodox view of the English Revolution but rather engaged in lengthy, deep and open discussion to try to work out the relevance of Marxist theory for English history. For Hill it was important that ideas were debated and kept in use.

Sketch of the bust of Thomas Spence. From the collection of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne. Hedley Papers. Reproduced with kind permission. With thanks to Harriet Gray.

The conference papers and discussions certainly inspired me, helping me better to understand and articulate the meaning of my own life and work. I too am committed to analysing not simply the ideas of great political thinkers of the past, but also those of ordinary people caught up in events. My PhD research examined the ideas of relatively humble French revolutionaries who were members of the Cordeliers Club, and considered the ways in which they adapted English republican ideas to their own situation. In my current research I am exploring how reformers and radicals in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain articulated their arguments. In this regard, the Newcastle-born radical Thomas Spence is of particular relevance. Despite being from a very humble background, Spence developed innovative political ideas of his own and believed strongly in the value of providing political education to all members of society, regardless of their wealth or social status.

At the same time, I am committed to engaging with audiences beyond academia. I have been involved with a number of exciting projects alongside our excellent educational outreach team from Newcastle University's Robinson Library and staff at the National Civil War Centre. Our current project involves working with Year 12 students on oracy and debate. Meanwhile, the Experiencing Political Texts project (https://experiencingpoliticaltexts.wordpress.com) has provided an opportunity to work with members of the public in a regular reading group where discussions are always thought-provoking. We will develop this further as we put together two exhibitions, one at the Robinson Library, Newcastle University this summer and another at the National Library of Scotland, opening in December. Finally, this blog has provided a valuable opportunity to share my research with a wider audience, but also to reflect on the implications of the ideas of the past today. I can only dream of producing a book like The World Turned Upside Down, but by taking seriously the ideas of all people - including those who have so often been silenced - perhaps I can make a small contribution and heed Winstanley's injunction to 'act'.

Political Engagement: Utopias and Political Texts

In the last few weeks I have engaged in two public-facing events in which I have shared my research with non-academic audiences. Participants at both raised interesting questions and comments prompting me to think more deeply about the topics I am currently researching. In this blog I reflect on what I have learned from this engagement.

The first event was 'The Quest for Utopia', organised by the Liverpool Salon and held at the wonderful Athenaeum in Liverpool's City Centre. The Salon has been hosting public conversations on philosophical, political, and cultural topics on Merseyside for more than seven years, providing valuable opportunities for 'critical discussion'. The event in which I participated (a recording of which can be accessed here) was the first of a series exploring the theme of utopia. In his opening talk Ronnie Hughes, who presents himself as 'an occasional and formerly enthusiastic utopian practitioner', raised the provocation that the term 'utopia' has been misunderstood ever since it was first coined by Thomas More in 1516. More's aim, Ronnie insisted, had not been to create a 'perfect' society, but merely a 'better' one. I developed this point in my own introduction on James Harrington's The Commonwealth of Oceana, emphasising that when thinking about improving society we need to follow Harrington in taking human beings as they are rather than proposing plans that require super-human virtue or self-sacrifice. Moreover, given the constant dynamism of human life, deliberately leaving some things for future generations to work on (as Ronnie and his team did with the Granby Four Streets project) provides hope and opportunity for the future.

The Reading Room at the Liverpool Athenaeum. Image by Rachel Hammersley.

The emphasis on perfectionism may be one reason why, as participants lamented, utopianism is in short supply today. In our discussion we spent some time thinking about how to rekindle utopianism in the present and future. One obstacle is undoubtedly a pessimistic tendency - 'doom and gloom' as one person put it. It is easy to get so caught up in complaining about how bad things are, that we talk ourselves out of being able to do anything about it. Here too Ronnie had some wise words for us, identifying as a 'utopian moment' the point in his discussions with the Granby Four Streets residents when he told them they could have five more minutes of moaning, but then had to start talking positively about what they wanted. That shift is crucial if we are to have any hope of making things better. I was not the only participant reminded of Gerrard Winstanley and his comment that 'action is the life of all, and if thou dost not act, thou dost nothing' (Gerrard Winstanley, A Watch-Word to the City of London and the Armie, London, 1649). The first key to moving forward, then, is to turn from the negative to the positive; and to take action to move from how things have been, to how they could be.

Another important point that arose from our discussions was that scale is crucial. Grand visions can be impressive and inspiring, but they are also difficult to implement, and it can be hard to know where to start. Perhaps, then, instead of thinking big we need to take smaller steps initially to bring about concrete change. This might mean working locally rather than nationally or internationally. The Granby Four Streets project was local, as were the town projects arising out of the Garden City movement of the twentieth century. Such projects might not change the world fundamentally or bring about perfection, but they can and do make a difference to people's lives. Growing up in Milton Keynes, I was conscious that despite it often being the butt of jokes, there were many positive features of my home town (such as an extensive and well-lit cycle network) which I have missed in other places I have lived. Moreover, even small projects can have a big impact. After all, the Granby Four Streets project won the Turner Prize in 2015.

The Liverpool Athenaeum’s copy of Thomas More’s Utopia. Image by Rachel Hammersley and courtesy of the Library of the Liverpool Athenaeum - with particular thanks to Robert Huxley.

This leads to my third point: the importance of utopian thinking being grounded in place. The etymology of utopia means 'no place' and, as Robert Huxley demonstrated in his talk, a lot of utopian thinking of the Renaissance and early modern period was inspired by voyages of exploration that brought Europeans into contact with previously unknown places. But Vanessa Pupavac emphasised in her introduction that utopias work best when they are 'some place' connected to an actual location and its history. Believing, as some early explorers did, that we can impose our utopia or 'civilisation' on others - or, conversely, that we can import the Tahitian dream back to Europe - is a misconception that has repeatedly resulted in misery and disaster. We cannot remake the world divorced from the realities of climate, geography, culture, or human nature. Our utopias, then, must not only be positive and realistic, but also grounded in a particular time and place.

These ideas about how to build a better future remained in my mind as I approached the first meeting of our Experiencing Political Texts reading group, which took place at another wonderful city institution, Newcastle's Literary and Philosophical Society. The aim of this group is to explore the dissemination of political information both today and in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, thinking in particular about how the medium through which political ideas are conveyed can frame, influence - and even distort - the message.

Infographic advertising the Experiencing Political Texts reading group. With thanks to Nifty Fox Creative for the design.

At our initial meeting we talked about where each of us gets our knowledge about politics and current affairs from. There were various responses ranging from traditional media such as print newspapers and journals through to social media such as Twitter. It was also clear that while some of us favour text-based material, others prefer aural forms such as radio and podcasts. Fewer of us seemed to prioritise visual media, but that is also a format that is increasing in popularity - especially among the young.

Participants also commented on the limitations of some of these formats. In social media, headlines are accentuated, yet these do not always provide an accurate indication of the content of the article. Even longer articles may not provide as much depth - particularly on the history behind events - as might be necessary to properly understand them. Social media have been criticised for creating echo chambers, but participants also questioned the extent to which individuals reading conventional media seek out views and opinions different from their own.

This image and the one below are infographics produced by Nifty Fox Creative during the live scribing of our first reading group meeting.

More broadly, participants identified two pressing issues. First, the increasingly blurred line between truth and fiction - which becomes especially worrying when it is applied to the outcome of elections, as has been the case in several countries recently. Secondly, the fact that in many quarters the presentation of the news seems to be aimed primarily at entertaining the audience rather than informing or educating them. I share these concerns, but it also struck me that some of the early modern figures I have been studying actively deployed such tactics in order to engage readers. For example, Henry Neville deliberately presented his political views in entertaining genres such as a travel narrative and dialogue, and he used satire to draw in his audience. He also deliberately blurred the line between truth and fiction in order to prompt his readers into thinking more deeply about the truth of the information being presented to them. There is clearly a complexity here that requires careful unpicking.

Finally, we looked at some examples of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century political texts and compared them with the sources of political information available to us today. The group discussed what sort of people would have been able to read these works, thinking about access, class, and literacy. We acknowledged that the sharing of texts - for example by reading them aloud, passing them on to friends, and using the circulating and subscription libraries that emerged in the eighteenth century - will have increased the number of people who could engage with them. The presentation of works will also have been affected by the authors' sense of their target audiences - including the fact that some works will have been designed to be read aloud in coffee houses. The group also raised the thought-provoking question of whether authors thought only about contemporary audiences or whether they also had future readers in mind. If not, what does that mean for reading groups like ours addressing these texts today? I look forward to exploring these issues further in later sessions.

Early Modern Political Thought and C21 Century Politics: A Workshop

As part of my British Academy Fellowship I organised a workshop at Newcastle's Literary and Philosophical Society on Wednesday 16 May 2018, on the relationship between early-modern political thought and twenty-first-century politics. The Lit and Phil is an ideal place to host such a discussion, having been a vibrant centre for thought and learning in the heart of Newcastle for more than 200 years. Although its founders eschewed discussion of religion and politics, its forerunner - the Philosophical Society - debated such issues as 'Whether a National Religion, or a variety of Sects, is of greater advantage to the State?', 'Whether the Civil War in the reign of Charles I and the present conflict with America be similar?' and 'Which is the better form of government, a limited monarchy as in Great Britain, or a republic?' 

I invited four distinguished speakers to the workshop each to speak on a different theme. 

Image of Thomas Rainsborough from a mural in the Ouseburn Valley, Newcastle. Image by Rachel Hammersley.

John Rees, author of The Leveller Revolution, talked about political organisation and mobilisation during the Civil War. He focused on the Putney Debates arguing that it was in that forum that some of the arguments deployed ever since for and against democratic change were laid down. Thomas Rainsborough set out his famous plea for the right to representative government and democratic accountability. He argued that: 'the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he' and therefore that 'every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government' (The Clarke Papers, ed. C. H. Firth, London: Royal Historical Society, 1992, p. 301). Against him General Henry Ireton asserted that only those with property should have the vote. Moreover, as Rees noted, the organisation of those debates themselves hinted towards a more direct notion of democracy, with ordinary soldiers acting as the voices of their regiments. Drawing on his own experiences in opposing the regime of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Rees showed that these arguments retain relevance and resonance today.

Professor Ann Hughes speaking at the workshop. Taken by Rachel Hammersley.

Ann Hughes, Emeritus Professor of History at Keele University, engaged with the question of religious liberty and toleration. The period of the mid seventeenth-century witnessed the articulation of arguments both for and against toleration. The Presbyterian Thomas Edwards rejected toleration, citing the dangers that full religious liberty would bring. By contrast, in Areopagitica, John Milton celebrated the acceptance and even encouragement of (moderate) division and variety. Hughes highlighted the fact that Edwards and Milton essentially had different conceptions of the truth. Edwards believed that he knew what the truth was and that the task was to enforce it. By contrast, Milton emphasised the need for openness in order to discover the truth. Once again, we can see how these two views remain in conflict among us today with figures on both sides of the secular-religious divide in danger of being closer to Edwards than to Milton.

Image from Dr Ariel Hessayon's talk at the workshop. Taken by Rachel Hammersley.

Ariel Hessayon, of Goldsmiths College, discussed environmental issues, noting that while we worry today about global warming and its implications for competition over scarce resources, people in the seventeenth century were anxious about the impact of a cooling climate in what has become known as the 'little ice age'. Building on Geoffrey Parker's important work on this topic, Hessayon considered the sources that seventeenth-century men and women used to make sense of what was going on, and their responses to environmental change and challenge.

Dr Gaby Mahlberg speaking at the workshop. Taken by Rachel Hammersley

Finally, the historian and journalist Gaby Mahlberg opened with Berthold Brecht poem Thoughts on the Duration of Exile in order to address the issue of refugees and exile. She reminded us that exile is generally a matter of necessity rather than choice, and explored the ways in which seventeenth-century English republican exiles were affected by the people and ideas with which they came into contact in the nations that gave them shelter. She also spoke of the difficulties they faced in attempting to maintain and pursue their political activities abroad.

The four papers were linked in my mind by the fact that fear seems to have been a pervasive and constant presence in mid-seventeenth-century England. Ireton was afraid of the social anarchy he thought would inevitably arise from giving the poor and propertyless the vote (while those poor and propertyless were of course endlessly fearful of what the authorities would do to them). Edwards was fearful that tolerating certain religious positions would be a slippery slope that would again result in anarchy. The idea of the religious sects of the time as a canker eating away at society is a powerful image of the intensity of this fear. At the same time, members of those religious sects must have been constantly fearful of repression. Extreme weather events and other natural phenomena then, as now, bred fear as human beings grappled with the question of how to deal with what is beyond their control. Finally, exiles and refugees today, as in the past experience great fear for their lives and prospects, and at the same time have the potential to provoke a fearful reaction in others: their 'otherness' makes them suspect and a threat.

Frontispiece from the pamphlet The World Turned Upside Down (1645) taken from https://open.conted.ox.ac.uk/resources/images/early-media-role-woodcuts and shared on the basis of a creative commons license.

It is perhaps not surprising that a period of great change and revolution was marked by fear. Thomas Hobbes commented that he and fear were twins (it was said that his mother went into labour on hearing news of the Spanish Armada) and fear certainly played a central role within his political thought. Similarly the title and frontispiece to the pamphlet The world turned upside down of 1645 reflects the sense of fear and strangeness that seems to have been palpable at the time. Historians typically focus on the changes that were introduced, the debates that were played out, and the ideas that emerged, but perhaps refocusing on the fear would prove fruitful. 

Image said to be of Gerard Winstanley from a mural in the Ouseburn Valley, Newcastle. Image by Rachel Hammersley.

It is also important to remind ourselves that fear need not always provoke a violent, destructive or exclusive response. On this point I was struck by Ariel Hessayon's comment that Gerrard Winstanley's answer to the climactic problems of the seventeenth-century (and indeed to those of poverty and division too) was in essence peaceful, communal and constructive. He set about planting beans and turnips on St George's Hill in Surrey in a bid by himself and the members of his community to feed themselves.

Speaking of Winstanley brings me back to the poster I produced for the event and the image on it depicting a slightly quirky quartet of figures. Winstanley and Rainsborough are there joined by the nineteenth-century Chartist William Cuffay and the "King of the Hippies" Sid Rawle, under a banner stating 'This Land is your Land' 'Take it'. This mural can be found painted on to an artists' studio at the top end of the Ouseburn Valley in Newcastle. It would seem that I, and those attending the workshop, are not the only current residents of Newcastle who can see the relevance of seventeenth-century political ideas.

Ouseburn Valley mural with our four speakers: Gaby Mahlberg, Ann Hughes, John Rees and Ariel Hessayon.

You can find another blogpost on this event by Liam Temple, complete with audio recordings of the papers at:http://theosophicaltransactions.com/conference-report-early-modern-political-thought-and-twenty-first-century-politics-16th-may-2018/