The chapter discusses The Hollow Crown, a two-season television series, produced by Sam Mendes and broadcast on BBC2 in 2012 and 2016, placed in the context of earlier adaptations of the history plays. It argues that the series exemplifies a number of the central controversies surrounding contemporary Shakespeare adaptation, including political agendas, screen and stage traditions of acting and textual interpretation, together with the changing awareness of the viewing public of Shakespeare as a (high or pop) cultural phenomenon. The series also illustrates diverse responses to a number of critical debates, from the representation of female, non-English or non-British voices and accents, colour-blind or colour-conscious casting, set against the demands of historical realism expected from the contemporary screen. In this way, it offers a perfect case study for the Shakespearean history play on British television in the twenty-first century.

Economic developments have long shaped what we think of as the main themes of global as well as national history, from the story of capitalism and the industrial revolution, to the age of empires-cum-nations. Yet peacemaking at the end of the Napoleonic wars brought onto the international scene financiers, rentiers, and bankers, funding the future of Europe. Their presence was indicative of the emergence of a new capitalist economic order shaped by industrialisation and imperialism. This chapter uses a focus on this rising class as a lens through which to survey the social and ideological influence of shifting economic relations, practices and identities on the politics of peacemaking and on political agendas, from their impact on foreign policies and questions of ‘security’, to the proposals for political consideration brought to the peacemakers by Benjamin Constant, Saint-Simon, and Robert Owen.