Early Modern History

Margo Todd, Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania and the Fletcher Jones Foundation Distinguished Fellow, examines the campaign of the mostly lay judiciaries of the Calvinist Scottish kirk, or church, to impose a strict and highly invasive sexual discipline on their towns in the century following the Protestant Reformation. This talk is part of the Distinguished Fellow Lecture Series at The Huntington.

Recorded Dec. 7, 2016.

Steve Hindle, W. M. Keck Foundation Director of Research at The Huntington, explains how one particular map might be used to reconstruct who did what for a living, and who lived next door to whom, in 17th-century rural society.

Recorded Nov. 9, 2016.

Carla Gardina Pestana delivers this Society of Fellows lecture at The Huntington. In 1685, after he supported the invasion of the Duke of Monmouth, who aimed to take the throne from his uncle, James II, the “Chyrurgion” (surgeon) Henry Pitman was transported to labor on the Caribbean island colony of Barbados as a convicted rebel. Four years later, Pitman returned to England to publish an account of his servitude, escape, encounters with privateers, and other “strange adventures”. "A Relation of the Great Sufferings and Strange Adventures of Henry Pitman" reveals a 17th-century English Caribbean fraught with brutality.

Carla Gardina Pestana, professor of history at UCLA, will argue for the importance of Cromwell's effort and its outcome. Oliver Cromwell got only to Jamaica despite sending a massive expeditionary force to conquer the Spanish West Indies. This is part of the Distinguished Fellow Lecture Series at The Huntington.

Andrew O’Shaughnessy, vice president of Monticello and professor of history at the University of Virginia, dispels the incompetence myth surrounding the loss of the American colonies and uncovers the real reasons that rebellious colonials were able to achieve their surprising victory. This talk was part of the Nevins Lecture series at The Huntington.

Dena Goodman, professor of history at the University of Michigan, discusses a group of young men whose passion for science guided them through the turmoil of the French Revolution and into leadership roles in the decades that followed.

Simon Winchester, author of The Map That Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology, tells the extraordinary story of British surveyor, William Smith.

Felicity Heal, emeritus fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, discusses the importance of gifts and patronage in the lethally competitive court of Henry VIII. This talk is part of the Crotty Lecture series at The Huntington.

Thomas Cogswell, professor of history at UC Riverside reconstructs the polemical campaign waged in the early 1650s by John Milton and other republicans to destroy the personal and political reputation of Charles II. This is part of the Distinguished Fellow Lecture Series at The Huntington.

Fashion historian Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell discusses one of the most exciting, controversial, and extravagant periods in the history of fashion: the reign of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette in 18th-century France. She explores the exceptionally imaginative and uninhibited styles of the period leading up to the French Revolution, as well as fashion’s surprising influence on the course of the Revolution itself. This is part of the Wark Lecture Series at The Huntington.