London: A Social and Cultural History, 1550–1750, by Robert O. Bucholz and Joseph P. Ward

Abstract

The product of a quarter-century of teaching, this book reflects both the insight and enjoyment which two leading scholars of early modern England have derived from their engagement with London’s history. Dedicating the work ‘to our students’, Robert Bucholz and Joseph Ward have achieved their aim of writing an accessible work which will be of particular value to newcomers to metropolitan history. Although they modestly declare it to be a work of synthesis, their complementary specialist interests also ensure plenty of stimulating commentary for the more established London observer. In the context of the recent historiography of London, their most welcome innovation is to encompass a period which transcends the conventional historical divides of 1660 or 1700. This bold decision enables them to trace developments which most detailed London histories study within more restricted frameworks. Thus, readers will be able to appreciate connections between the great challenges of the Tudor–Stuart period and the more confident growth of the eighteenth century. They do stop short of the new wave of upheavals which greeted the metropolis from the later eighteenth century onwards, but the authors argue that even by 1750 the metropolis had established itself as a key site of modernities which resonate with twenty-first-century society, such as a relatively free press, participatory democracy, an effective civil service, and a commercialised art world. Readers familiar with the work of scholars such as Miles Ogborn will recognise the welcome influence of recent research, which is also evident in the strong topographical emphasis throughout the book. Their broader time-frame, however, enables the authors to identify the roots of these modernities with more confidence, and to chart both change and continuities over a longer period.