Devil-Land: England Under Siege, 1588-1688

"The UK’s most important history book prize is the Wolfson History Prize . Books are selected for their readability, but the books shortlisted represent serious—rather than popular—history. This year’s winner was Devil-Land: England Under Siege, 1588-1688 by Cambridge historian Clare Jackson , who presents this era as a time when England was something of a failed state. All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family’s Keepsake by Harvard historian Tiya Miles won the Cundill History Prize, which often brings to light very interesting, international books (previous winners include Blood on the River , about a 1763 slave revolt in Guyana and Fifth Sun , about the Aztecs). The Cundill History Prize is run by McGill University and any history book in English—or translated into English—is eligible. All That She Carried is the story of three generations of women, told using the very little evidence that remains of their lives: a bag with a beautiful inscription sewed into it. In the US the Pulitzer Prize for History went to two books. One is Cuba: An American History by Ada Ferrer, which covers 500 years of history, from just before the arrival of Christopher Columbus to the death of Fidel Castro in 2016. The book opens with Ferrer’s own departure from Cuba to New York as a baby. The other book is Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America by Nicole Eustace and focuses on a single year, 1722. The Pulitzer jury describes it as “A gripping account of Indigenous justice in early America, and how the aftermath of a settler’s murder of a Native American man led to the oldest continuously recognized treaty in the United States.” Both authors are history professors at NYU."

"It is a highly original account of perhaps the most turbulent, and radical era of English history—if I can be that daring. It tells the story of a nation in a state of near-continual crisis and it will change our views of the 17th century. It is also extremely well written. It provides fresh insights by looking at England through European eyes. The author emphasizes that foreigners called England ‘devil-land’, a diabolical country, seriously damaged by religious extremism, royal collapse, civil war, and what I would describe as rabble-rousing disturbances. The book examines the complexity of England’s geopolitical involvements, and the perpetually anxious nature of life in Stuart times. The author paints England as a failed state, and its precarity is presented in great detail. During these 100 years, many of the chaotic events described by Jackson were triggered by England’s ‘quarrelsome relationship’ with Europe. Her book presents England as having a siege mentality. It is a country ill at ease with the idea of foreign influence and always at odds with itself. And, at a time when English was a peripheral language in Europe, the Stuart establishment was populated by multilingual, worldly cosmopolitans. Jackson writes about them wittily. She really brings Stuart England alive. However, despite her deep scholarship, her book is clearly accessible to interested general readers as well as specialist historians. All in all, it is a remarkable achievement."