Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Civil Wars after 1660: Public Remembering in Late Stuart England, by Matthew Neufeld

2014; Oxford University Press; Volume: 129; Issue: 540 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/ehr/ceu232

1477-4534

Matthew Jenkinson,

Historical Studies of British Isles

Despite the legislative urging of the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion, memories of the civil wars and Interregnum did not simply disappear with the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660. While it made practical political sense to try to forgive and forget most of those who had fought against the Stuarts, or administered the Commonwealth and Protectorate, such traumatic events were bound to remain in the popular consciousness. They were interpreted and reinterpreted through different political or ecclesiological lenses, as observers tried to make sense of what had caused such a cataclysmic past, and what that past might tell them about their present and future. Matthew Neufeld’s book is a wide-ranging attempt to ascertain how authors and preachers of different political persuasions interpreted the causes and lessons of the events of the 1640s and 1650s. It marries Restoration historiography and memory studies by placing England’s recovery from the civil wars in the context of other countries’ recoveries from violent national traumas, especially in the way they negotiate a common but passionately-debated heritage.