HIST 272 - Radicals, Witches, and Revolutions: Britain in the Seventeenth Century

FDR: HU Humanities Distribution
Credits: 3

This course explores the most tumultuous period of British history, beginning in 1637 on the eve of the British Civil Wars and ending with the “Glorious” Revolution of 1688-89. This era witnessed revolutionary political conflict, destabilizing religious ideas, rapid social and economic transformation, imperial expansion, and lasting intellectual change. Witches were hunted, one king lost his head and another fled the country, religious radicals called for the abolishment of private property, and many feared the apocalypse was nigh: it was, in many ways but certainly not all, a world turned upside down. This class asks why there so much upheaval in the seventeenth century and identifies the profound legacies and lessons of the period.