Other projects which may be of interest
Freedom and Popular Sovereignty
A landmark investigation of Magna Carta 1215 to mark the Charter’s 800th anniversary. Providing resources and commentary on Magna Carta and King John for scholars, schools and the general public. We are grateful to partners in this project, including Principal Investigator Nicholas Vincent, The Arts Humanities Research Council, and The University of East Anglia, for supporting the History of Independence.
Popular sovereignty is a key normative concept in modern political discourse, underpinning our ideas of legitimacy and democracy, and contributing to the way we conceptualise international order. There currently exists no comprehensive study dedicated to charting the emergence and transformation of this fundamental part of our political heritage. Our aim is therefore to trace for the first time the complex and controversial career of popular sovereignty across ancient and modern history.
Religious Dissent & Colonial America
New England Beginnings is a major initiative coordinated by Francis J. Bremer to commemorate the 400th Anniversaries of the the Plymouth Colony (in 2020) and the Massachusetts Bay Colony (in 2030). The History of Independence Project and the University of East Anglia were delighted to be invited as partners in this initiative.
This research group is devoted to investigating the history of religious nonconformity in Britain, c.1500–c.1800. We have particular interests in the historical and literary study of church books, registers, and related records from Baptist, Congregational, and Presbyterian churches, 1640–1714. Dissenting Experience is a collaboration between Michael Davies (Liverpool University), Anne Dunan-Page (Aix-Marseille) and Joel Halcomb (UEA), with research assistance from Mark Burden (Aix-Marseille University). The History of Independence is an active collaborator and contributor to the project’s published works.
Revolutionary Britain and Ireland
The Oliver Cromwell Project
This project, which was headed by John Morrill and based in Cambridge, brought together a team of leading scholars and researchers to prepare a new five-volume edition of all the recorded words (writings and recorded speech-acts) of Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) which is now in press with Oxford University Press. We are indebted to Professor Morrill and Dr Halcomb for their help with the History of Independence Project’s critical edition.
The Westminster Assembly Project
The Westminster Assembly (1643-1653) was both the largest parliamentary committee of the English civil war and the last of the great post-Reformation synods. The Assembly is perhaps best known as the creed-making body behind the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms, documents which have guided Presbyterian and Reformed churches for centuries. The Westminster Assembly Project exists to make the writings of the Westminster Assembly and its members available to scholars and to the general public. Chad van Dixhoorn offered the History of Independence team extensive help and advise in preparing the project’s critical edition.
The 1641 Depositions are witness testimonies, mainly by Protestants, concerning their experiences during the rebellion of the Catholic Irish in 1641. This unique body of material contains vivid, and often harrowing, accounts of murder, assault, imprisonment, loss of goods and military activity across the country. This project documents the sectarian tensions in colonial Ireland that erupted in 1641, the course of the rebellion, and the fallout that shaped the course of Irish political and social history over the following centuries. It considers the 1641 Rebellion in the wider context of the sectarian massacres of the period across Europe and the Americas, and its enduring place in the myth and memory of Irish Protestants. Dr Edda Frankot joined The History of Independence Project as SRF after working on the 1641 Depositions. We have also been delighted to collaborate with other members of the 1641 Project, including Jane Ohlmeyer, John Morrill, and the Library of Trinity College Dublin.
Society and The Supernatural: New Perspectives
Inner Lives: Emotions, Identity and the Supernatural, 1300-1900
This three-year project (2015-18) brings together historians from the medieval, early modern and modern periods to examine evidence of human engagement with diverse supernatural realms, through prayer and contemplation, ritual and conjuration, astrology and divination. In such activity we glimpse subjective understandings of personal existence in relation to unseen, yet deeply felt, power in the cosmos, and to more intimate contexts of experience, such as communities and households. Emotions formed a reflexive link between the self and the environment, both temporal and celestial. The History of Independence is grateful to the Principal Investigator Malcolm Gaskill for his collaboration as a member of the Research Group and advice on the project’s public exhibition.
