David R. Como Receives John Ben Snow Prize at the North American Conference on British Studies (NACBS)

Professor David Como’s Radical Parliamentarians and the English Civil War (Oxford University Press, 2018) has received the John Ben Snow Prize by the North American Conference (NACBS) on British Studies for the best book in pre-1800 British Studies.

Radical Parliamentarians and the English Civil War charts the way the English civil war of the 1640s mutated into a revolution, in turn paving the way for the later execution of King Charles I and the abolition of the monarchy. Focusing on parliament's most militant supporters, David Como reconstructs the origins and nature of the most radical forms of political and religious agitation that erupted during the war, tracing the process by which these forms gradually spread and gained broader acceptance. Drawing on a wide range of manuscript and print sources, the study situates these developments within a revised narrative of the period, revealing the emergence of new practices and structures for the conduct of politics. In the process, David Como provides a new history of the English civil war, enhancing our understanding of the dramatic events of the 1640s, and shedding light on the long-term political and religious consequences of the conflict.

John Ben Snow Prize is awarded annually to a North American scholar in any field of British Studies dealing with the period from the Middle Ages through the eighteenth century. The North American Conference on British Studies (NACBS) is a scholarly society dedicated to all aspects of the study of British civilization. While the largest single group of its members teach British history in colleges and universities in the United States and Canada, the NACBS has significant representation among specialists in literature, art history, politics, law, sociology, and economics.