Professor John Miller
Professor of History
email: j.l.miller@qmul.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7882 8365
Office: Arts 2.32
Professor John Miller took his first degree at Cambridge, where he was a research fellow at Gonville and Caius College before coming to QM as a lecturer in 1975. He has been a professor since 1989.
Research interests:
Professor Miller’s original area of research was English politics in the reigns of Charles II and James II, with an additional interest in Ireland and France in the same period. Comparing the workings of government and politics in England and France, he became interested in the nature of ‘governance’, in how government worked at the grass roots level, looking not only at institutions but also at power relationships.
The fact that so many quite humble people were involved in government in England meant that they could help to shape how it worked, which in turn made them more likely to submit to it, or co-operate with it. This helps to explain why, although government, at the level of nation or town, had pitifully weak means of coercion, it was generally able to keep the peace.
While researching on towns between 1660 and 1722, he became interested in the few brief periods when the army was used to coerce civilians, and his latest project is on the relationship between the military and civilians, in England and Ireland, under George I. The comparison with Ireland should prove instructive, as the army in Ireland, which was supposed to consist of Englishmen and Scots, was widely seen as a foreign army of occupation.
Postgraduate supervision:
Religion and society in Hertford, 1660-c 1700
The Irish revenue under William III
The politics of the New Model Army to June 1647
Ceremony at the court of Charles II
Religious radicals in the New Model Army 1653-60
Women in Independent congregations, 1660-1720
Publications:
James II (first published 1978; republished Yale University Press, 2000)
After the Civil Wars: English Government and Politics in the Reign of Charles II (Longman, 2000)
Cities Divided: Politics and Religion in English Provincial Towns, 1660-1722 (Oxford University Press)
Undergraduate teaching:
Society and the State in Britain, 1450-1720 (Level 1)
English Society 1580-1720 (Level 2)
The English Civil War, 1640-49 (Level 2)
Republic and Restoration: Britain 1649-63 (Level 2)
Ireland Under The Stuarts 1603-c 1722 (Level 2)