Political Communication and Political Culture in England, 1558–1688 by Barbara J. Shapiro (review)

In recent years, the term “political culture” has been deployed extensively in descriptions of historical periods for which scholars may still hesitate to deploy some of its modern correlates, such as “public opinion,” “political consensus,” or even the much-debated “public sphere.” Throughout the last twenty-five years or more, historians have proven willing to follow the lead of political scientists in locating political culture outside established power structures. In the case of the early modern period before c.1770, they have used the term as a way of describing a wide array of structures and norms through which power was exercised to regulate, organize, and control social relationships at all levels—from royal courts and the local powers of landowners to law courts, patronage relationships, and even family and household organization.

For historians, political culture in early modern Europe has become a capacious concept helping to link new work about print culture, the function of newspapers, elections, and other forms of political action. For social scientists, such research has given more historical depth to concepts that tended to apply primarily to the period from the American and French Revolutions onward. In seeking to extend the range back in time, we have become more aware of the attendant challenges of political language and the changing forms of broad-based political participation.

Not surprisingly, early modern England has been particularly fertile ground for such research—no period more so than the one covered by this book. The reign of Elizabeth I has long been recognized as a turning point in the establishment of a fully functional relationship between sovereign and “political nation”; the queen herself mastered the art of subtle political communication. Nevertheless, English power politics remained hugely troubled by religious and personal complications, culminating in the English civil wars. Covering more than a century, to the revolution of 1688, Shapiro’s book is highly ambitious in scope. Rather than presenting original detailed research, Shapiro gives a broad overview of genres and channels of political communication—from books and pamphlets to the reports of scientific societies, sermons, plays, diplomatic reports, travel accounts, history writing, scriptural history, ballads, poetry, and libels, complete with a chapter on how rituals of royalty were represented visually and in print. Shapiro also discusses the politics of the legal system, with short sections about oaths, juries, public trials, impeachments, and other public representations of justice.

For scholars of politics or media studies in search of a historical context for their ideas, this volume will provide an excellent overview, and the extensive endnotes provide a wealth of references to a wide range of source material. Historians, however, may feel less satisfied, since Shapiro makes only limited use of major new research in a number of areas. Her discussion of parliament is inevitably perfunctory. Anyone looking for, say, a discussion of what the extensive petition material of early modern England might reveal about broad political concepts is likely to be disappointed. Shapiro writes from the perspective of a political scientist, not much interested in providing a literary contextual analysis of texts or explaining how the Stuart succession of 1603 or the Cromwellian Protectorate created unique features in English political culture.

Shapiro’s book is more descriptive than analytical—eminently readable as an overview but merely hinting at new insights or new research methodologies. Some historiographical guidance is provided in the conclusion, but the lack of a bibliography means that the only way to locate further interdisciplinary work is to trawl through the endnotes. In spite of these limitations, however, Shapiro has provided a helpful and well-organized overview that will appeal to those scholars seeking to understand the extremely complex and sophisticated channels of political communication in this turbulent period of English history.