Remaking English Society: Social Relations and Social Change in Early Modern England

Remaking English Society re-examines the relationship between enduring structures and social change in early modern England. Collectively the essays in the volume reconstruct the fissures and connections that developed both within and between social groups during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Focusing on the experience of rapid economic and demographic growth, and on related processes of cultural diversification, the contributors address fundamental questions about the character of English society during a period of decisive change. Prefaced by a substantial introduction which traces the evolution of early modern social history over the last fifty years, these essays (each of them written by an leading authority) not only offer state-of-the-art assessments of the historiography but also represent the latest research on a variety of topics that have been at the heart of the development of ‘the new social history’ and its cultural turn: gender relations and sexuality; governance and litigation; class and deference; labouring relations, neighbourliness and reciprocity; and social status and consump