The Anglo-Dutch Moment: Essays on the Glorious Revolution and its World Impact

by Jonathan I. Israel (Editor)

Much new research and writing on the Glorious Revolution of 1688–91 in England, Scotland, Ireland and North America, and on the Dutch role in the Revolution, has materialized in the last few years in connection with the tercentenary celebrations of 1988 and 1989 and the various accompanying conferences, symposia, and exhibitions in Britain, the Netherlands and the United States. There has also been a spate of associated publications. This is, however, the first large-scale work to emerge from the tercentenary commemoration, and the first to attempt to bring together the main strands of the new research and writing for the general reader and for the student, placing the English Revolution of 1688–89 for the first time in its full British, European and American setting, and showing how fundamentally our picture of the Revolution itself, as well as the Revolutionary process of 1688–91 as a whole, is now being transformed.

Genres: History, British Literature

520 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Jonathan Irvine Israel is a British writer on Dutch history, the Age of Enlightenment and European Jews. Israel was appointed as Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey, in January 2001. He was previously Professor of Dutch History and Institutions at the University of London.

In recent years, Israel has focused his attention on a multi-volume history of the Age of Enlightenment. He contrasts two camps. The "radical Enlightenment" founded on a rationalist materialism first articulated by Spinoza. Standing in opposition was a "moderate Enlightenment" which he sees as profoundly weakened by its belief in God. In Israel’s highly controversial interpretation, the radical Enlightenment is the main source of the modern idea of freedom. He contends that the moderate Enlightenment, including Locke, Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau, made no real contribution to the campaign against superstition and ignorance.