Dr Ian W. Archer
Associate Professor in History
Keble College
01865 (2)72764
Dr Ian Archer has published on the social and political history of early modern London. He has recently completed in collaboration with Dr Paulina Kewes and Dr Felicity Heal The Oxford Handbook to Holinshed, but will be returning to metropolitan themes with a new book on London 1550-1700 for Oxford University Press. For ten years he was the Academic Editor of what is now the Bibliography of British and Irish History, a key bibliographic resource, and he also serves as Literary Director of the Royal Historical Society. He is willing to supervise postgraduates on early modern social and cultural history, and on later sixteenth century political history.
Featured Publication
The Pursuit of Stability: Social Relations in Elizabethan London (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)
This work engages in the historical debate about the reasons for London's freedom from serious unrest in the later sixteenth century, when the city's rulers faced mounting problems caused by rapid population growth, spiralling prices, impoverishment and crime. One key to the city's stability was that Londoners were locked into a matrix of overlapping communities, the livery companies, wards and parishes, all of which created claims on their loyalties and gave them a framework within which redress of grievances could be pursued. The highly developed structures of government in the capital also enjoyed considerable success in mobilising resources for poor relief, while the authorities so impotent against it, as the traditional accounts would suggest. This is the first effort at a holistic approach to interpreting early modern London society, based on the full range of London sources.
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