A Cold Welcome by Sam White

Dr. Sam White was the assistant professor of environmental history at Oberlin College before moving to the history department at Ohio State University. His research comprises of how we can use natural and human records to reconstruct past environments and human reactions to them. His primary focus is the Little Ice Age, publishing two works on the subject. His first book, The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire, was published in 2011 and focuses on the impacts of the Little Ice Age on the Middle East. His second book,titled A Cold Welcome: The Little Ice Age and Europe’s Encounter with North America, was published in 2017 and discusses the experience of English, Spanish, and French colonists and they attempted to establish footholds in the New World. A Cold Welcome is a groundbreaking work as one of the first publications to examine the Little Ice Age‘s influence in the colonization of the Americas. Dr. White, through this book, argues that the reason Europeans had so much difficulty establishing footholds in the New World was due to the brutal seasons caused by climactic shifts created by the Little Ice Age.

A Cold Welcome is comprised of ten chapters, each designated to colonization efforts of different geographic regions by different European nations. Chapter one discusses European preconceptions of climate based on their home nations and religious beliefs. Many people believed that shifts in weather was brought on by their sins rather than climate change. Chapter two discusses the attempt made by Spanish aristocrats to conquer Florida. Dr. White explains that their attempts were futile and foiled by the terrain and weather as many settlements did not last. Chapter three discusses France‘s attempt to settle in Florida. The French run into the same issues as the Spanish and England emerges as a competitor. Though England is undermined by religious strife, they establish the Roanoke colony in 1587. This colony eventually disappears, most likely due to drought and starvation brought on by climate change. Additionally, Dr. White explains within this chapter the issues of lack of stable funds and lack of emphasis on permanence that colonies faced during this time.  Chapter four examines the discovery of silver in South America by the Spanish and the Inflation it creates back in Europe. This discovery forces other European nations to look to the New World for lucrative resources and food supplies.  Chapter five discusses the establishment of Jamestown and the role of John Smith in its survival as well as reconnaissance expeditions made by the French, English, and Russians of the Canadian coasts in search of the Northwest Passage. Chapter six discusses Jamestown in further depth and the challenges faced by colonists that reinforced codependency with the Powhatan peoples. Chapter seven discusses English attempts at settling the New England region. Dr. White also utilizes this chapter to discuss the study of tree rings, ice cores, and lake sediment as effective forms of measuring climate change over time. Chapter eight discusses the Spanish conquest of New Mexico and how the Little Ice Age effected desert regions. Chapter nine discusses European exploration of the eastern Canadian coastline and development of the region as a fishing staple. Chapter ten discusses struggles back in England to recruit colonists and Jamestown‘s starving time.

Dr. White utilizes a vast array of primary sources to gain firsthand insight into human experiences during such a unique phenomenon: intelligence documents, journals, diaries, ship or captain‘s logs, personal correspondence, medical records, sermons, government documents, and pamphlets. These were woven into the work seamlessly to present information in a captivating manner. This is the greatest strength of the work. Instead of feeling like a scientific read, the book itself felt more like an intimate story of desperation and human perseverance. A Cold Welcome could easily be read by any curious reader or academic alike

Free Choice: A Cold Welcome: The Little Ice Age and Europe’s Encounters with North America

A Cold Welcome: The Little Ice Age and Europe’s Encounter in North America is a comprehensive analysis of how different European powers interacted with the various climates of North and South America. This book was very interesting because it heavily explored the idea of the Little Ice Age as being the main reason for a lot of the early struggles that European faced in the Americas. By using both physical and human sources from history, the author was able to craft a holistic view of how colonists and Europeans viewed and interacted with the climate of the Americas. The author goes into detail about the successes and failures of certain colonies located around the Americas. The book’s author is Sam White who is an expert in environmental history focusing on how historians can use both natural and human records to reconstruct past climates and look into how societies coped with them. His expertise and focus in this area of study make him very qualified and trusted to write this book. 

This book has a few main arguments. First, it aims to show how early modern Europeans interacted with the climate of the Americas as well as back home in Europe. By looking into the human interactions, ideas, and experiences with the climates of this time we can start to understand the broader ideas of societies during this time. Additionally, this book aims to argue that climate and climate change had a profound impact on the experiences of colonizers, and changed the course of the first European colonies in the Americas. This book is organized thematically with the chronological aspects to it as well. Thematically it is broken down into various geographic regions as well. Some chapters focus on specifically the Spanish, French, and English expeditions. Additionally, the author tries to focus on geographic regions of the Americas as well, taking the readers through Florida, New Mexico, The Carolinas, Virginia, and Maine. This book does not have too much thematic organization in terms of the categorization of climate impacts on colonists. That would have added a different dimension to the book, maybe allowing readers to see trends of climate impacts across different European colonies. 

Chapter 1 focuses on the pre knowledge Europeans may have had about climate and weather before setting out on expeditions. Additionally, the author even spends a few paragraphs explaining the high and low-pressure systems that impact the prevailing winds and temperatures around the earth. Chapters 2 and 3 focus on the Spanish exploration of Florida talking about the failures and successes of Cabeza de Vaca and Velasco. These chapters also discuss the French interactions with Florida and the Roanoke colony in Virginia. These chapters detail how almost every colonist who interacted with the southern United States at that time was met with unfamiliar weather due to their lack of knowledge, and climate change. Chapter 4 jumps across the pond to talk about some of the impacts of climate change within Europe and how that might have spurred or hindered explorations to the Americas. Nobody was left untouched by the unusually cold temperatures. Chapters 5 and 6 explore Jamestown and how certain misfortunes of weather and geography led to a very rough couple of years in that colony. Chapter 7 explores the Sagadahoc colony during the very cold winter of 1608. Chapter 8 talks about how colonists in New Mexico greatly miscalculated what the weather and climate would be like, leading to some great misfortunes. Chapter 9 explores Quebec and Chapter 10 explores the rescue of Jamestown in Virginia. 

In terms of weaknesses, the first thing that comes to mind is organization This book felt like it jumped all over the place geographically and thematically. Although it was very helpful to get a geographical analysis, sometimes the author would talk about several geographic areas in one paragraph which would cause some confusion. This book might have helped readers organize their thoughts better if chapters were organized by theme instead of geography. The writing style of the author was oftentimes not clear, and the main argument was not often mentioned. Including a mini-thesis at the beginning and the end of each chapter might have helped readers to draw better connections on how climate and climate change were impacting colonists. In terms of strengths, the Introduction and Conclusion were very comprehensive and clear which helped layout the main ideas and arguments for the readers. Additionally, the use of both physical and historical sources such as tree ring analysis added a scientific dimension to the paper. 

In the conclusion, the author also added commentary on how it is important to continue to reconstruct and study the climate of the past. Not only does this help us study climate change, but it helps us to preserve climate history as our earth is so rapidly changing. This sense of environmental advocacy added a unique dimension to the book, as this is not often discussed in the history world.

Calculated Values

Calculated Values: Finance, Politics, and the Quantitative Age.

William Deringer. Harvard University Press, 2018

1720 was a bad year for financial innovation. Both the British South Sea Company (SSC) and the French Mississippi Company (MC) collapsed in scandal that year. The hybrid public-private enterprises had been authorized as high-concept solutions to troublesome national debts in Britain and France. Each relied on complicated financial schemes. Each relied on its relationship with the state to entice private investors. And each failed because it sold far more dividend-bearing shares of stock than it could service, leading to a collapse in stock prices, angry investors, governmental investigations, public criticism, and disgrace.

William Deringer, an MIT historian of science and technology, uses the SSC to illustrate the role numerical calculations played in public discourse in Britain in the early modern period. His main thesis is that such calculations were thought of quite differently during the early modern period than they are today. In his telling, before the Glorious Revolution in 1688, numerical calculations were derogated by many elites as ungentlemanly, the tools of merchants, mechanics, and tradesmen, and certainly not suitable for matters of state. But after the Glorious Revolution Parliament assumed much more responsibility for state finances – which required financial, and hence numerical calculation. In essence, Deringer is arguing that the Glorious Revolution can also be seen, in part, as a financial revolution. Along with these expanded institutional responsibilities, persistent alliances formed, the Tory and Whig parties. Also, once press regulation was removed the number of newspapers and pamphlets grew rapidly. All of these factors led to noisy, sometimes vicious, public debates about a number of public issues. Deringer argues that numerical calculation gained credibility and influence during the course of these partisan struggles between the parties not because numerical calculations led to better, truer, more objective understanding but because such calculations were useful in these partisan polemics. “Questions about evidence, methodology, and indeed epistemology became a regular part of political practice. This ruthless, adversarial context became fertile ground for quantitative arguments.” [26]

 

Deringer illustrates his thesis by focusing on several contentious public issues during the period between 1688 and the end of Walpole’s ministry. How much money should Parliament provide to the Monarch? What is the national debt, is it a problem, and if so, how should it be resolved? How much should be paid today to Scotland to offset the future cost of taxes they are expected to pay for English debt incurred before Union? If the British government were to provide relief to shareholders who lost money in the collapse of SSC stock, how would the original shareholders fare? What is the “intrinsic value” of something, how should it be calculated, who determines it? How important is the trade balance – the difference between the amount of goods sold to foreigners and the amount of goods purchased from foreigners – and how should it be calculated? Each of these issues, and many more, was vigorously contested.

Whichever party was out of power in Parliament criticized the decisions and proposals of the party in power. “Numerical calculators” would mount an attack on a program or proposal, usually in a widely-distributed pamphlet. A calculator working for the principal being attacked would respond. And so it would go, back and forth, until the next issue emerged or the combatants had exhausted their arguments. Usually there was no resolution. Out of these often fierce partisan controversies though, there emerged improvements in techniques and presentation. Even if issues were not resolved with calculations, sometimes the points of disagreement became clearer. Some problems recurred: how to handle compound interest, how to compare accounting numbers with analytic numbers, how to adjust for incomplete and erratic data.

Deringer’s last illustration is Walpole’s administration. After the collapse of SSC stock, Deringer argues, public appreciation of financial calculation began to increase sharply. Those who had argued that the price of SSC stock was unsupportable were proven right by events. Walpole seized on that public trust to use numerical calculations as a tool of state, as a way to choose among alternative policies, rather than (only) as a polemical tool. He ends the book by tracing the acceptance (and criticism) of numerical calculation into the present with an emphasis on David Hume’s criticisms and Richard Price’s enthusiasms later in the 18C.

In Deringer’s terms, the adoption of financial calculation as a trustworthy way to understand public matters represents a shift in civic epistemology. His book, then, can be understood as the history of this shift. But the book plays in many different historiographical fields: intellectual and cultural, science and technology, commerce, finance, banking, public finance, political science, rhetoric and discourse, and social.

Deringer offers a kind of summary: ““This image of the conflict between the quantitative and the political simply did not obtain in the eighteenth century, though. Political calculators in that period were not exploiting some preexisting authority that numbers held in the minds of the British public. Rather, it was the use of numerical calculations to pursue political ends that generated their power and prestige within British civic epistemology. To put it bluntly: Britons did not come to fight with numbers in the eighteenth century because numbers were already believed to be trustworthy and authoritative; numbers came to be seen as trustworthy and authoritative because Britons fought with them.”

The number and variety of pamphlets that Deringer uses in his narrative is impressive. His explication of the complicated financial schemes and the point-counterpoint polemics surrounding them makes them more intelligible to modern readers. His ability to see the similarity between the conceptual analytical strategies of early modern calculators and modern computer spreadsheets is commendable. But his single-minded focus on political argumentation as the midwife of modern-day numeracy is less praiseworthy. Surely 17C civic epistemology was the result of multiple influences: the 16/17C scientific and intellectual societies of England and the Continent, mathematical education, the demands of mercantile trade, the influence of the Dutch Republic, mercantilism, … But that would be a different book. This one is a good one.

 

 

Review of Calculated Values: Finance, Politics, and the Quantitative Age

Calculated Values: Finance, Politics, and the Quantitative Age was written by William Deringer, an associate professor of science technology and society at MIT in 2018. Deringer received his bachelors degree in History at Harvard in 2006 and his masters and Ph.D. degrees on the History of Science at Princeton University in 2009 and 2012 respectively. Deringer has focused his research on the history of the social sciences, finance, and the sociology of quantification, with most of his publications and collaborations centered on the history of finance and ‘calculations’[1]. Within Calculated Values, Deringer argues that numbers and ‘calculations’ gained the authoritative status that we associate with them today in the decades after 1688’s Glorious Revolution and the subsequent financial debates that occurred in the English Parliament. Deringer attempts to show how the highly publicized debates over England’s finances and the idea of ‘calculating’ revenues and expenditures in part lead to wider acceptance of numbers as an objective arbiter of facts despite the often-misleading tactics of those who employed ‘calculations’ to sway public opinion.

In the introduction Deringer ‘briefly’ discusses contemporary states such as France, Prussia and the Dutch Republic’s relationship with calculations and financial policy, specifically in regards to the secrecy often associated with the discussion had between the leaders of these states and their financial ministers. Deringer compares these states approaches to England’s fiscal policies and institutions under the reigns of Charles II and James II visa a vis William and Mary’s relationship with Parliament in 1688. Despite this initial focus, Deringer does not discuss why relations between the crown and parliament changed after the Dutch ‘invasion’ nor are the efforts and ideals of the royal’s discussed. Each subsequent chapter details a major event and financial debate that took place after 1688 and the evolution of numbers and calculations use in English (and then British) politics.

The first few chapters deal with the ‘introduction’ of calculating and numbers into English political debate. Chapter one focuses on Parliament’s efforts to figure out where England’s revenues came from and where they went in spite of traditions that kept royal affairs such as the payment of crown officials (and bribes of parliament members) under wraps as well as the public conception of calculation and numbers in general as a form of sorcery (a sentiment that continues to thrive in the modern day). Chapter two discusses the financial wizardry that was involved in determining how much Scotland should be pre-emptively compensated for English national debt and other considerations of the Act of Union (the unification of England and Scotland into Great Britain). Deringer mentions some incidents relevant to his financial focus that prompted the Act of Union such as the Darien fiasco and the desires of Scottish imperialists but does not delve deeply into the motivations or effects behind this momentous event in British history. Chapter three details the rise of two-party politics in Britain (again without going into how and why these parties formed), their conflict over the perceived trade deficit with France and the solidification of attitudes towards numbers and calculations as political tools useful in proving one’s position while denigrating one’s opponent.

Chapter four departs from the pattern established in previous chapters by focusing primarily on the influential figures that created and promoted financial theories during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. While Deringer has incorporated individual narratives in his work to highlight the origins of certain calculations and arguments into previous chapters, it is in this chapter that Deringer argues that the arguments and calculations advanced by these individuals were often far more influential (and long lasting) than the people who created them. Of more import however is Deringers argument that the questions/arguments raised by these calculations could be more impactful on how people perceived financial matters and England/Britain’s financial status than responses and rebuttals. Chapter five is largely a demonstration of how real-world events could vindicate certain arguments, as the bursting of a financial ‘bubble’ surrounding a particular English company resulted in praise for those whose financial calculations had predicted the event and greater acceptance of the importance on numbers in political discussions.

Returning to the typical layout in this book, chapters six deals with the use of ‘political arithmetic’ to predict future economic or societal developments. Chapter seven ends the ‘meat’ of the book by showing how some in Britain had begun to discuss the problems and dangers in trusting numbers and calculations inherently, demonstrating how thoroughly the initial skepticism surrounding the use of calculations in political arguments had been supplanted by (in some people’s eyes) uncritical acceptance of any numbers presented to the public by their political opponents. While the subject of chapter six is arguably more ‘important’ to the development of our modern understanding of calculation’s place in political discussions, chapter seven does more neatly bookend Deringers discussion on how the societal view of ‘calculating’ changed dramatically in the decades after 1688.

While I cannot fault Deringer’s use of sources or his inclusion of direct narratives throughout his book, I similarly cannot deny that this book was very difficult to get through for me. The choice of subject, falling under the much-maligned category of ‘Math’, perhaps doomed Deringer’s attempts at engaging this reader from the start as I found myself largely ignoring the graphical and statistical evidence presented throughout the book. While Deringer would occasionally bring up how the common people interacted with numbers and calculations in their daily lives and even argued that it would be reductive to say the adoption of calculating was a ‘top-down’ affair or that it diffused from London and the cities into the countryside, I still feel that something is missing in the discussion of why and how numbers became such an integral part of daily life despite Deringer using over 300 pages to ostensibly show how this occurred.

[1] https://sts-program.mit.edu/people/sts-faculty/william-deringer/

Jacobitism and Anti-Jacobitism in the British Atlantic World, 1688-1727: Free Choice

David Parrish

 

Jacobitism and Anti-Jacobitism in the British Atlantic World, 1688-1727 

 

Boydell & Brewer

 

199 pp. $99.00 US

 

Publication Date: 2017

 

Jacobitism and Anti-Jacobitism in the British Atlantic World, 1688-1727 was published in 2017 by David Parrish. Dr. Parrish is an Associate Professor of Humanities and Director of Academic Assessment at the College of the Ozarks. His teaching focus varies in topic, he has taught British History, American History, and World Regional Geography. Although, both of his publications are about the British Atlantic World so you can assume that his specialty is on the British Atlantic. 

 

Let me start off by saying why I decided to pick this book. I saw it on our Zotero list of potential books and it caught my eye because I have read Outlander and watched the show and a plot point is the Jacobite rebellion and the Stewart King. I wanted to see the historical side of it, not the dramatized version I’ve read and watched. David Parrish breaks his book into two parts, with 3 different sections inside of each part. I feel the way that Dr. Parrish breaks his book up and is effective given the topics of each section, the way that he’s formatted his book suits the two parts, context and cases. When you’re reading, you’re able to pinpoint what his argument is and the flow of the book is easy to follow along with, something that some books this semester I had issues with. 

 

Chapter 1 or Part 1, as mentioned previously, is broken up into 3 different parts that help to frame Parrish’s thesis statement. Part 1 covers the context of the book, what is this book about and how it fits into the historiography. Parrish starts Part 1.1 by telling the reader the outline of the chapter. “This chapter seeks to outline the significance of Jacobitism and the rage of party in the British Atlantic and suggests that both Jacobitism and antiJacobitism, part of the cultural totality of the British Atlantic and an integral facet of Whig and Tory divisions, acted as linking elements joining disparate political cultures in the British Atlantic world to a divided British body politic.” (14) Parrish backs up his claims with evidence that British leaders struggled to keep settlers in line and these settlers would go around British laws such as the Navigation Acts to get goods and services at a cheaper rate. The crown tried to regain control of the situation in the New World but problems back at home made it harder and in some states, royal appointees were removed in a series of revolts. Part 1.2 talks about how religion played a role in the British Atlantic World. Religion was a huge factor in Jacobitism “Roman Catholics, members of the Church of England and Scottish Episcopalians each in their own manner held to notions of loyalty which helped to perpetuate Stuart claims to the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland, and the empire throughout the Atlantic.” (38) Parrish would continue to explain how religious decisions impacted the greater British Atlantic World forty years after the Glorious Revolution. “The threat of a Stuart restoration, especially in the years between 1689 and 1745, meant that theology became a politicised battleground as religious controversies contributed to a growing High Church attachment to Jacobitism. Throughout the early eighteenth century, debates about the jure divino nature of episcopacy brought Scottish Episcopalians into the confessional culture of the Church of England, but similar debates also encouraged Anglican schemes for a possible union with the Gallican Church in France.” (48) Jacobitism had transnational repercussions that showed that through religious discourse, some were sympathetic to the exile Stewarts and that this discourse created a divide within the Church that identified and signified the ideology of the Jacobites and the Anti-Jacobites. 1.3 discussed Jacobitism in the Atlantic public sphere. “Religious controversies, the operation of imperial politics and the appointments system provided a mechanism for public and private expressions of both Jacobitism and anti-Jacobitism. Moreover, these religious and governmental systems served as institutional networks of communication, connecting colonists to the religious controversies and party politics of mainland Britain.” (66) David Parrish in this part explained in detail how both Jacobitism and anti-Jacobitism was influenced by the public sphere and by the end of the chapter, you believe his argument. That the colonists directly engaged in the exchange of information regarding religious controversies and political discourse. Newspapers became a significant source of information for the colonists and Parrish states that despite this the public sphere did not create a homogenous political culture.

 

Part 2 is titled ‘Cases’ and this is where Parrish adds to the knowledge and sources that he’s already presented. Part 2.1, titled Occasional conformity in miniature: the rage of party, Jacobitism and anti-Jacobitism in South Carolina, c. 1702–1716 discusses how Jacobitism in South Carolina didn’t fit into the historiography despite there being a number of cases, he goes on to state that “evidence of a Jacobite political culture and accusations of Jacobitism against the governors and Anglican clergymen during periods of intense political conflict reflect elements of a contested, transatlantic language of party politics shared among Britons in the Atlantic world.” (98) Parrish would spend the chapter discussing why South Carolina was important and how the political discourse impacted the British Atlantic world, by the end of the chapter, he concludes that “Although party rivalries in South Carolina’s legislature cooled after the debates surrounding the passage of the establishment acts, religious disputes continued to inspire party affiliation. The establishment of the Church of England in the colony and the High Church Tory ascendancy in Britain from 1710 to 1714 nurtured the development of a High Church Tory interest in South Carolina, which in turn fostered elements of a Jacobite political culture, although just how prevalent Jacobite sympathies really were in South Carolina remains an unsolved problem.” (117). Part 2.2 ‘An echo to that on the other side’: Jacobitism and anti-Jacobitism in the mid-Atlantic colonies, c. 1710-1717 takes what you learned from South Carolina and moves it up to the Mid-Atlantic colonies. Jacobitism and anti-Jacobitism were a part of everyday political, religious and print discourse in the mid-Atlantic. By the end of the chapter, Parrish has listed a number of cases in which this political discourse surrounding the jacobite cause in the mid atlantic and how religion affected that discourse, Parrish writes that “The informal alliances of the High Church party in the mid-Atlantic colonies with High Church Tories in Britain fairly or unfairly associated them with a suspected Tory/Jacobite conspiracy, realised in the rising of 1715–16, which resulted in the political defeat of the High Church interests in the mid-Atlantic by the end of 1716.” (138). The final part 2.3 titled ‘Now the mask is taken off’: Jacobitism and anti-Jacobitism in colonial New England, 1702–1727 is a good finish to a surprisingly good book. Parrish in his second paragraph states the purpose of his chapter, something that he has been good at doing in his book, “This chapter argues that Jacobitism and anti-Jacobitism were fundamental elements in religious controversies and in the transatlantic political culture of colonial New England from 1702 to 1727.” (139) Parrish added to the information that he already presented, that this hot topic was woven into the discourse of the mid-atlantic, particularly through the High Church “The rise of a High Church Anglicanism in New England may not seem a credible Jacobite threat in the same manner as the rebellions of 1715 and 1745, but for Congregationalists the presence and espousal of crypto-Jacobite principles in New England associated with a High Church Tory party masked the first step towards disaffection to the Protestant succession.” (165).

 

In conclusion, Jacobitism and Anti-Jacobitism in the British Atlantic World, 1688-1727 by David Parrish offers a new insight into the Jacobite and Anti-Jacobite discussion. He views the subject not from the standpoint of the British Isles but instead on the British Atlantic World, primarily the New World. Parrish came to several conclusions but the most significant in my opinion was that “Although it is true that Jacobites were not actively plotting colonial rebellions or participating in transatlantic conspiracies to restore the exiled Stuarts, Jacobitism – and therefore anti-Jacobitism – was part and parcel of a transatlantic British culture because it was an enduring feature of British political and religious discourse throughout the first half of the eighteenth century.” (166) The prevalence in the colonies surrounding the Jacobite’s led to people being accused of being disloyal to the crown and caused animosity towards the British among the colonists. 

Book Review By Vincent Cervone, Graduate Student at George Mason University.

With Mornefull Musique: Funeral Elegies in Early Modern England

K. Dawn Grapes

With Mornefull Musique: Funeral Elegies in Early Modern England

Boydell & Brewer

278 pp, £19.99, ISBN: 9781787443242

Publication date: 2018

K. Dawn Grapes is an associate professor of Music History in the School of Music, Theatre, and Dance and has a Ph.D. in Historical Musicology from the University of Colorado at Boulder with specialization in music of Early Modern England, music history pedagogy, and flute history. In her book With Mornefull Musique: Funeral Elegies in Early Modern England published in 2018, Dr. Grapes brings an interesting intersection of music theory and social history to the early modern scholarship. She shows scholarship has previously only looked at each piece individually, but not comparing them directly to show how society had changed and reacted quite differently to the death of each monarch from Elizabeth I, James I, and Charles I. 

The layout of the chapters are a bit confusing but have beautiful titles from a elegy mentioned in the chapter to signify the contents. Throughout this review I will be looking at the context these chapters are put in. The composers and pieces that Dr. Grapes writes of are fascinating however. Looking at chapters one through five, they have a bit of a chronological sense as they seem music specific to each of the monarchs from the mid-1500s to 1612 when King James I dies. She does discuss the legacy these composers and their work leaves behind towards the end as well. These chapters do take a social history perspective to examine why specific elegies began during this era.

Dr. Grapes begins by defining an elegy as “a song or poem of lamentation, esp. for the dead; a memorial poem” (p 5). She makes a point to explain that this word comes from ancient Greece and does not seem to appear in the English vocabulary until about 1521, when death had become more of a regular occurrence for the people of the early modern time, especially if they lived in the cities. The English Reformation may have attributed to this need for services when the Catholic Church was no longer available, people in England needed to understand their grief and loss. 

In chapter two, Dr. Grapes does a musical analyses that is quite interesting. She shows the readers that there were only a few accepted key changes at the time. This was explained in between the stories of two great composers, William Byrd and Thomas Watson. The deaths they were writing for were noticed by everyone from commoners to nobility so these elegies were significant and held in the highest regards. 

Chapters three and four take the idea of elegies adding to the monarchs persona with Elizabeth I. Her reign was so large when she was alive and well after her death. Every decision she made was a reflection of the court and herself, what she wanted England to be. Every monarch begins to question how the rest of society would view certain colors, like Mary and Philip using the color purple, but Elizabeth saw the growth of elegies and decided the musicians and composers chosen were also a consideration of her persona. Like her father, Henry VIII, she attempted to be larger than life and used music at this time to do that. Elizabeth used this growth to bring religion back with many pieces that followed Protestant thinking or “gave credence to Elizabeth’s goddess-like persona” (p 81). It because another political tool for the rulers of England.

Chapter five consists of the fascination that society takes in Prince Henry when James I dies. There was a hope that the Prince could bring England back together after the schism. Dr. Grapes highlights that there was so much focus on Henry that there was even a section of an elegy dedicated to honoring Henry. There seemed to be no personal connection between the two so there is no solid reasoning as to why it happened other that the fact that the tribute was public (p 134-135). There seemed to be a more personal, as opposed to monarchal, view of Prince Henry. Plus with the growth and regularity of this elegy tradition, these musicians and composers could attempt more grandiose statements to gain attention from nobility and higher. This shows how much has changed socially due to shifting monarchs and leading up to the English Civil Wars. 

Following that shifting in societal thinking, chapters six through eight talk about pieces and composers of the era that stand out. Chapters six and seven talk about elegies to honor women. These were mostly women who were deemed as socially significant and their elegies were found in manuscripts. Dr. Grape states that “deceased females represented in Paston’s collection include Queen Mary I, Queen Elizabeth I, Lady Magdalen Dacre Montague, and Mary Queen of Scots…A comparison of each of the “queen elegies” shows not only a similar approach in musical setting, but also a common textual voice, though neither composer nor poet is acknowledged” (p 155). Here it can be seen that composers and poets were willing to show themselves close (maybe closer than they were) with Prince Henry and other male monarchs, but the death of a significant woman was held in quite a different regard. There was still space made for these women and held with a different, maybe more sober, sense of loss.

Finally, chapter eight looks at elegies written to honor composers and musicians. This section is a different style of analysis than the rest of the book. Dr. Grape takes more of a musician and composer breakdown of how the word choice and music construction showed connection to the deceased. Each phase shows a view of not just the relationship of the two composers, but how the deceased left society a hole that needed to be filled, a need to express emotions. On page 207, she states “though the plaque is now gone, due to the church’s destruction in 1711, the words of this extended epitaph… revealing an ongoing remembrance of Tallis and his works.” The work these composers did was larger than themselves.

I did not expect to like this book, music is not normally my forte. But this is an extremely interesting way to view the shifting thinking of early modern English society, especially from dynasty to dynasty. When it came to structure, this book reminded me of Black Tudors by Miranda Kaufman. It is centered around stories of composers and their work, but adds context to the time. It created an otherwise interesting social and gender study of the time that I would have never thought of before. It includes snippets of the original music score and most of her sources seem to be a wide range. Some early 2000s and 2010s for most recent, but also ranging from the 1960-90. Overall, a really interesting way to see the early modern period.