BRITAIN IN TURMOIL

Dr Clare Jackson discusses why Britain was viewed as a 'failed state' during the Stuart period of instability

- Dr Clare Jackson

Why was Stuart England seen as a 'failed state' by its European counterparts?

One argument that attracted particular attention in my recent book, Devil-Land: England Under Siege 1588-1688, was the claim that "to contemporaries and foreigners alike, 17th century England was a failed state: a discomfiting byword for seditious rebellion, religious extremism and regime change." It was part of the book's emphasis on Stuart England's characteristic insecurity, instability and vulnerability, which is also reflected in its title. The nickname ‘Duyvel-Landt’, or ‘Devil-Land’ was applied to mid-17th century England by an anonymous Dutch pamphleteer in 1652, who had been outraged by the English Parliament’s decision to put on trial and publicly execute its divinely ordained king, Charles I, while the successor republican regime seemed to declare war on the Dutch Republic as commercial rivals.

In this context, it was a deliberately polemical and provocative claim, and anachronistic or insensitive parallels with current affairs are unhelpful. Today, there are clear metrics and databased policy tools deployed to measure ‘failed states’. But, in 1652, when that Dutch pamphleteer described England as ‘Devil-Land’, the country had been bitterly divided by civil war for over a decade; brothers had taken up arms against one another for either King or Parliament; countless wartime atrocities had occurred, including premeditated massacres; and, in Ireland, extensive ethnic cleansing had occurred. After Charles I’s regicide in January 1649, England underwent no less than five major regime changes in a decade with more minor revolutions and constitutional experiments before Charles II was restored in 1660.