Brokerage and Networks in London's Global World

The Blackwells as radicals, merchants, financiers and administrators illustrate the importance of kinship, the development of the early modern state in London and the ownership of the memory of the civil wars across a century of wars and revolutions.

David Farr is a playwright, screenwriter and stage director, whose plays have been performed all over the world. He became Artistic Director of London's Gate Theatre in 1995, then at the Bristol Old Vic in 2002, London's Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, in 2005, then Associate Director of the RSC in 2009. In recent years, he has moved into film and television, working on the long-running BBC show Spooks and completing his first feature film, Hanna, for Focus Features in 2009.

Introduction / PART 1:1594-1660 / Puritan Activists, 1594-1642 / War, 1642-1646 / Revolution, 1646-1649 / Administrator and Politician, 1645-1660 / Speculators and Agents, 1646-1660 / PART 2:1660-1691 / Survival and new opportunities, 1660-1672 / Kin and Brokerage, 1647-1693 / Blackwell in America: Massachusetts, 1684-1688 / Blackwell in America: Pennsylvania, 1688-1690 / PART 3:1691-1727 / Blackwell and Lambert Blackwell: London and Italy, 1672-1701 / Lambert Blackwell in Italy: Merchant, Consul and Envoy, 1684-1705 / Lambert Blackwell in Italy: representative of the English state at war, 1690-1705 / Lambert Blackwell: Financier, MP and landed elite, 1705-1720 / Lambert Blackwell and the South Sea Bubble, 1711-1727 / Conclusion