Thom Pritchard
Thesis title: The Bellicose Days: News, Memory and the Culture of the Stuart Intervention into the Thirty Years War 1624-1630
Background
Having earned a distinction at the interdisciplinary Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies at the University of York, I arrived at Edinburgh to pursue my AHRC funded PhD project reconstructing a cultural history of the Stuart Kingdoms during the Thirty Years War during the Autumn of 2018. Based at the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures and the Edinburgh College of Art, my multidisciplinary project is supervised by Prof James Loxley and Dr Catriona Murray.
Prior to the onset of the pandemic, I was fortunate to travel to the Continent for two spells as a visting researcher at the Institute for History at Leiden University under the temporary supervision of Prof Judith Pollmann in 2019, as well as the department of History at the European University Institute in Florence with Prof Ann Thomson in 2020. At Edinburgh, I founded the Edinburgh Early Modern Network which has blossomed into an international and interdisciplinary platform for early modern studies. As part of the network, I co-organised the launch conference of the Northern Early Modern Network for postgraduates across Scotland and the North of England, and was the lead organiser of the four-day international Enemies in the Early Modern World Conference. For this work, I was awarded the Collaboration Award at the Edinburgh University Student Award’s 2022. With the PhD awaiting its viva, I am currently working as a photographer for the Medical Humanities Network also at the university, assembling a medical panorama of the city's medical heritage as well as in event photography.
I have been published in the Journal for the Northern Renaissance on a sectarian slaughter in the Italian Alps, have a publication in an edited collection on news, exploring the movement of European news during the Little Ice Age and chapter on transnational drama forthcoming. In addition, together with Dr Sonja Kleij and Dr Anke Fischer Kattner, I am co-editing a collection on Crisis in the Early Modern World, to be published by Amsterdam University Press.
Undergraduate teaching
Taught on undergraduate modules ranging from introduction to literary genres, to a period module which provided a panorama of culture from the late Medieval period through the Renaissance and to the Restoration.
Research summary
My PhD project is a cultural history of what I define as the bellicose days: the pamphlets, plays, paintings, poems, maps, letters, proclamations and testimonies of the brief and disastrous Stuart entry into the Thirty Years War. Whilst the cultural constructions of Caroline peace have been richly explored, the cultural constructions of Caroline war have not. The thesis argues that like the Halcyon days, the understudied culture of Jacobean and Caroline war, 1624-1630, must be studied as a unique period. Though anachronistic in terminology, and not suggestive of a unified cultural operation, this study affords a tantalising window into the seemingly protean period of fragile alliances, dynastic and apocalyptic preoccupations when the Stuart kingdoms entered the Thirty Years War. Whilst at least 50,000 Stuart subjects fought on the Continent in the disastrous expeditions to Breda, Cadiz and La Rochelle, many more indirectly experienced the conflict through the medium of Europe’s fledgling news publications.
During these years, the polemic of Dutch, Venetian, French and German authors merged to form an anti-Habsburg exchange, of the shared perception that a ‘’necessarie league’’ was required to halt the Habsburg pursuit of ‘’universal monarchy’’ and halt the European combustion. The context to the bellicose days is therefore not only Kairostic, from the ancient Greek denoting the opportune moment for pivital action,but was fundamentally a trans-cultural corpus of words and images. Borrowing Subrahmanyam’s theory of a connected history, therefore, I look to how the movement of European events, information, ideas and people, dramatically influenced perceptions, foreign policy, and the lives of millions.
Current research interests
As a cultural historian, I am fascinated by how previous communities and societies comprehended war and past climate change. The savage cooling of the Grindelwald Fluctuation, part of what has been defined as a Little Ice Age, produced turbulent storms, erratic weather, drought, flooding on a global scale and as such profoundly affected how early modern contemporaries saw their momentous present and how war was waged. During our own period of climate crisis, the necessity of reconstructing how previous societies navigated, suffered from and comprehended their changing climate cannot be more pertinent.Knowledge exchange
Alongside disseminating my research through both publications and twenty research talks across Europe, in the Autumn of 2018 I founded the Edinburgh Early Modern Network, an multidisciplinary platform for some of the best researchers from across the world, at every stage of their academic journey to share their research to a broad audience, both inside and outside of the academy. Between 2018 and 2022 I was the network's chair, working with a passionate team of PhD researchers to organise many research events.
Alongside our regular international seminar series where we organised events independently for our community, and collaboratively alongside Gent University Group for Early Modern Studies, the Society for Renaissance Studies, the Visual and Material Culture Working Group at the European University Institute Florence, the Cambridge University Workshop for Early Modern Studies, Gateway to Early Modern Manuscript Sermons at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada and the Disasters, Communication and Politics in Southwestern Europe: the Making of Emergency Response Policies in the Early Modern Age (DisComPoSE) at the University of Naples Federico II. The network is still thriving in its 5th year.
Together with my one time co-chair of the Edinburgh Early Modern Network, Dr Julia Smith, we launched a sister network, the Northern Early Modern Network, which is also flourishing as a platform for postgraduate researchers in Scotland and the north of England.
Current project grants
AHRC funding through the Scottish Graduate School for the Arts and Humanities (2018-2022)
Conference details
'Decoronation and Decapitation of That Image Which I Know Our blessed lady the Queen of Bohemia Hates’’: Memory and Materiality During the Thirty Years War’, at The Material Culture of War and Emergency in the Early Modern World UCL and Oxford University 19-20/04/2023
'The Tragedies that are acted upon the Theatre of this World”: Reconstructing the Thirty Years War in European Drama' at Transnational Drama within and beyond Europe, 1450-1750, Amsterdam University, 1-2/09/2022
'For our Eliza's Crowne with her to fight”: the apocalyptic and dynastic fashioning of Princess, Electress and Queen Elizabeth Stuart, 1613 – 1625', at Politics and People in the British Isles, Durham University, 13-14/04/2022
'Woeful Weather and The Thirty Years War' at the Second Northern Early Modern Network Conference, Newcastle University 20-21/01/2022
‘Strangers to Their Nation and Religion’: The Divided Loyalties of Irish and English Catholics at the Siege of Breda, 1625’’, at Catholicism and Literary Culture in Scotland, Ireland, and England: Comparative Perspectives, University of Glasgow, 1-2/06/2021
‘Jesuits Under the Bed: The Thirty Years War and Fears of Fifth Columnists’, at Enemies in the Early Modern World: Conflict, Culture and Control 1453-1789, The University of Edinburgh, 26-29/03/2021
‘An Autopsy in Ink: The Pan-European Race to Find the Truth of the 1625 Raid Upon Cadiz’, at EXCITING NEWS! Event, Narration and Impact from Past to Present, University College Cork/Euro News Project Florence, 15-16/03/2021
‘A Spaniard is not so hateful to a Dutch-man, as a Londoner to a Country-man’: How the Siege of Breda Shaped Thomas Dekker’s Perception of Plague in London, at Durham University Medieval and Early Modern Student Association, 07/12/20
'Mystic Chord of Memory: Genre and Remembering European Martyrs in the Stuart Kingdoms', Northern Early Modern Network Inaugural Conference 2020, The University of Edinburgh, 26-27/11/20
'To know whether she shall attain to the Monarchy of the World’’: Pan European Anti-Spanish Polemic in 1620s England’ at Transcultural Conversations: 1st European University Institute Graduate Conference in Intellectual History, Florence, Italy, 23-24/01/20
‘From Hostilities to the Halcyon Days: Bellicose Polemic during the onset of Charles I’s reign’ at Performing Power in the Premodern World, University of Warwick, 9/11/19
‘Trouble in the Valtellina: The Persecution of Grison Protestants Within the Polemic of 1620s and 1630s England and Scotland’ at Religion and Conflict in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods’, Nottingham Trent University, 9-11/07/19
‘Persecution and Plot: Representations of France in Caroline England during the Thirty Years War’ at the CREMS Cabinet of Curiosities Spring Colloquium, University of York, 25/02/19
‘The Fissured Masque: News of the Thirty Years War and the Fashioned Image of Charles I’, at Pamphleteering Culture, University of Edinburgh, 30/09/17
‘His Sword Shall like a Fierie Piller Stand’: Gustavus Adolphus and The Reactions of 1630s England to the Specter of the Thirty Years War’, at Bringing Conflict Home, University of York, 11-12/05/17
‘Iconoclasm with Urgent Intent: Apocalyptic preoccupation behind Iconoclasm in Reformation Europe’, at Marginal in the Early Modern: Student Renaissance Conference, University of Sheffield, 04/06/16
Organiser
In addition to the international seminar series for the Edinburgh Early Modern Network, I was co-organiser of the two-day inaugural Northern Early Modern Network Conference in late 2020, bringing together and launching a network for postgraduate and early career researchers in Scotland and the North of England.
In 2021, I was the lead organiser for the four-day international conference Enemies in the Early Modern World: Conflict, Culture and Control 1453-1789, an event which featured 250 delegates.
Papers delivered
‘Mourning Magdeburg: Remembering the Fall of Cities in the Thirty Years War,’ at Early Modern and Reformation Seminar University of St Andrews, 06/10/2022
'Ragguagli e Bugiardi: News of War, Disaster, and the Unbelievable from Italia”, A Fluctuating Sea: People and Things in the Early Modern Mediterranean, Part One, Symposium at the Edinburgh Early Modern Network and Visual and Material History Working Group of the European University Institute Florence (EUI) 8/04/2022
'Seas of News: Reconstructing the Movement of People and Information Between the Americas and East Indies During the Thirty Years War', Workshop for the Early Modern Period (WEMP) Cambridge University, 17/01/2022
Peter Paul Rubens and the Walls of Breda, Material Cultures Cluster Workshop, The University of Edinburgh 15/02/2021
Glorious 88, Ignominious 25: The Manipulation of Elizabethan Memory at the Onset of Charles I’s Entry Into the Thirty Years War, at Material and Visual Culture of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, The University of Edinburgh, 26/09/2020
''The Handmaidens of War: Pestilence, Climate Change and Crisis at the Siege of Breda 1624-1625'' in Anke Fischer Kattner, Sonja Kleij and Thom Pritchard eds, Crisis in the Early Modern World: Warfare, Memory, Identity (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, forthcoming)
''Introduction'' in Anke Fischer Kattner, Sonja Kleij and Thom Pritchard eds, Crisis in the Early Modern World
''Tragedies that are Acted Upon the Theatre of this World’: News and Violence Upon the Stuart Stage During the Thirty Years War'', in Jan Bloemendal and Dinah Wouters eds, Transnational Drama in Early Modern Europe (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming)
''Information Shadows: News, Climate and Calamity at Cadiz in 1625’', in Brendan Dooley and Sandy Wilkinson eds, EXCITING NEWS! Event Narration and Impact from Past to Present (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming)
‘Vengeance from God for the blood of Innocents’: The Cultural Afterlife of the Valtellina Crisis in the Early Stuart Imagination, in Issue 11. 2020: Imagineering Violence, edited by Karel Vanhaesebrouck and Cornelis van der Haven, Journal for the Northern Renaissance.