Politics and Protest: changing responses to economic crisis in Tudor and Stuart England

Brodie Waddell joined the department of History, Classics and Archaeology, Birckbeck, University of London, in 2012, after completing post-doctoral research fellowships at York and Cambridge. His work on early modern England currently focuses on social and economic life in the late seventeenth century.

Brodie writes:

The ‘political’, ‘cultural’ and ‘economic’ realms are too often considered in isolation from each other. My work focuses on the relationships between these different spheres of history: How does radical political change transform the economic climate? What is the impact of shifting policies or ideologies on the daily lives of ordinary people? Why does religious zeal or moral commitment sometimes overcome self-interest? By investigating these sorts of questions in the context of early modern England, I try to show how powerful ideas or crucial events can ripple through an entire society, shaping the way people see and experience their world. Moreover, the shock of a sudden change or an acute crisis often spurred intense reactions from those affected. Investigating these aspects of early modern society can reveal unexpected connections that can reach well beyond the seventeenth century.

My research interests span a variety of aspects of England, c.1550-1750, including:

• the economic crisis of the 1690s
• charity, welfare and the poor law
• religious attitudes to economic issues
• craft and trade guilds
• local government and local democracy
• petitions about social and economic issues
• land management and common/public lands
• protest, riot and rebellion
• ballads, pamphlets and other printed ‘popular culture’

Publications include:

• God, Duty and Community in English Economic Life, 1660-1720 (Boydell, 2012)
• ‘Governing England through the Manor Courts, c.1550-1850’, Historical Journal, 55:2 (June 2012), pp. 279-315
• Landscape and Society in the Vale of York, c.1500-1800 (York: Borthwick Papers, no. 120, Dec. 2011), 56pp.
• ‘Economic Immorality and Social Reformation in English Popular Preaching, 1585-1625’, Cultural and Social History, 5:2 (June 2008), pp. 165-182.