Rachel Carnell – författare

A country bitterly divided between two political parties. Populist mobs rising in support of a reactionary rabble-rouser. Foreign interference in the political process. Strained relations between Britain and Europe. These are not recent headlines—they are from the year 1710, when Queen Anne ruled Britain.

In her engagingly written Backlash, Rachel Carnell tells the fascinating and entertaining account of the reign of Queen Anne and the true story behind the fall of the Whig government imaginatively depicted in the 2018 film The Favourite. As Carnell shows, the truth was significantly different—and in many ways more interesting—than what the film depicted.

The backlash began in 1709 when the Whigs arrested a popular female Tory political satirist and then impeached a provocative High Church clergyman for preaching a sermon repudiating the ideals of parliamentary monarchy and religious tolerance. The impeachment trial backfired, and mobs surged in the streets supporting the Tory preacher and threatening religious minorities. With charges dropped against the satirist, by 1710 she had written a best-selling sequel.

Queen Anne was careful and diligent in her monarchical duties. She tried to run a government balanced between the parties, but finally torn between the Whigs (including her longtime friends the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough) and the proto-Brexiteer Tories, she dissolved Parliament and called for elections. This brought in a majority for the Tories, who swiftly began passing reactionary legislation. While the Whigs would return to power after Anne’s death in 1714 and reverse the Tory policies, this little-known era offers an important historical perspective on the populist backlashes in the United States and United Kingdom today.

This volume examines historical views of stewardship that have sometimes allowed humans to ravage the earth as well as contemporary and futuristic visions of stewardship that will be necessary to achieve pragmatic progress to save life on earth as we know it.

The idea of stewardship – human responsibility to tend the Earth – has been central to human cultures throughout history, as evident in the Judeo-Christian Genesis story of the Garden of Eden and in a diverse range of parallel tales from other traditions around the world. Despite such foundational hortatory stories about preserving the earth on which we live, humanity in the Anthropocene is nevertheless currently destroying the planet with breathtaking speed.

Much research on stewardship today – in the disciplines of geography, urban studies, oceans research, and green business practice – offers insights that should help address the ecological challenges facing the planet. Simultaneous scholarship in the humanities and other fields reminds us that the damage done to the planet has often been carried out in the name of tending the land. In order to make progress in environmental stewardship, scholars must speak to each other across the disciplinary boundaries, as they do in this volume.

This volume examines historical views of stewardship that have sometimes allowed humans to ravage the earth as well as contemporary and futuristic visions of stewardship that will be necessary to achieve pragmatic progress to save life on earth as we know it.

The idea of stewardship – human responsibility to tend the Earth – has been central to human cultures throughout history, as evident in the Judeo-Christian Genesis story of the Garden of Eden and in a diverse range of parallel tales from other traditions around the world. Despite such foundational hortatory stories about preserving the earth on which we live, humanity in the Anthropocene is nevertheless currently destroying the planet with breathtaking speed.

Much research on stewardship today – in the disciplines of geography, urban studies, oceans research, and green business practice – offers insights that should help address the ecological challenges facing the planet. Simultaneous scholarship in the humanities and other fields reminds us that the damage done to the planet has often been carried out in the name of tending the land. In order to make progress in environmental stewardship, scholars must speak to each other across the disciplinary boundaries, as they do in this volume.