Eighteenth-Century Britain, 1688-1783

Jeremy Black

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN:
  9780230537507
• Edition: 2
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350306929
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

Jeremy Black sets the politics of eighteenth century Britain into the fascinating context of social, economic, cultural, religious and scientific developments. The second edition of this successful text by a leading authority in the field has now been updated and expanded to incorporate the latest research and scholarship.

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Introduction

Periodisation is always a problem in history, a subject that struggles with the complex identities and relationships of change and continuity. To choose dates is to define a period and to confer an apparent identity and thus unity on it. To periodise the past is to suggest frontiers in time that necessarily complicate issues of change and continuity by implying an apparent basis for them.

The period of this book is no exception. Why 1688 to 1783, and what might these dates suggest as opposed to other possible limits? The choice certainly reflects the importance of political divisions. The first is the date of the ‘Glorious Revolution’, the overthrow of the last Catholic ruler of the country, James II (and VII of Scotland), by William of Orange, William III (William II of Scotland). This is seen to have led to major constitutional and political changes, and to particularly important shifts in the history of Scotland and Ireland. The change was given symbolic force when statues of James were pulled down in Newcastle and Gloucester, while the staff of authority on his Whitehall statue was broken.

In some respects, the period 1688 to 1783 can be seen as one of the developments that followed in the wake of the ‘Glorious Revolution’. This was especially true in the fields of state formation, parliamentary government, political ideology, public finance, foreign and imperial policy, dynastic conflict, and religious politics, and in Scotland and Ireland. Furthermore, links have been made between the radical ideas that were encouraged by the ‘Glorious Revolution’ and those that inspired, or at least were associated with, opposition to George III in North America in the 1760s and 1770s. In 1783, Britain acknowledged the independence of the Thirteen Colonies in North America that had rebelled in 1775 and declared their independence in 1776. This end to the War of American Independence, or American Revolution, marked a major transformation in the history of the British empire.

Yet, in other respects, both 1688 and 1783 can be queried as delimiting dates. Other dates that were important in political history, for example 1660 and 1800, the restoration of Charles II after the Republican Interregnum, and the Act of Union with Ireland respectively, might seem more appropriate. As far as focusing on the fall of James II and VII in 1688 is concerned, possibly the creation of the Bank of England in 1694 was more important, as it was central to what has been seen correctly as a financial revolution in public finances, although that, and other aspects of the Revolution Settlement, can be regarded as stemming from the events of 1688. The foundation of the Bank of Scotland in 1695 is also relevant as Scottish financial instruments and developments in the eighteenth century helped underpin overseas capital development.

In addition, the value of choosing 1783 can be queried. It suggests a note of failure that was to be rapidly reversed, with the recovery of political stability during the long ministry of William Pitt the Younger (1783–1801), whose initially precarious hold on power was consolidated by victory in the general election of 1784. By the end of 1787 both public finances and Britain’s international position had appreciably improved, and by the end of 1792 the British empire was notably stronger and more extensive than in 1783. More broadly, is it appropriate to focus on political ‘turning points’? Instead, should the note be one of continuities and/or should the focus be on non-political circumstances and developments?

These questions remind us that periods are not fixed, and that continuities as well as changes play a major role. In reading what follows, it is as well to be aware of these points. They also help explain why the discussion of political changes is not put first. To do so would be to imply the dominant position of such changes in explaining developments, an approach that should be questioned.

It would be misleading not to mention the historiographical context. It is of course possible to write about a period without such a discussion, and many books do so, not least because a large number of readers find historiography uninteresting or a distraction. However, such an approach can lead to a misleading suggestion that the analysis of developments is without controversy and indeed that there is only one way to approach the subject, invariably that of the author. Such an approach is flawed. It insults the intelligence and interest of readers. They are entitled to expect not only an avoidance of simplicity but also an explanation of the major themes of debate. It is also wrong to slight the work of others by omission.

Yet, historiography is difficult to summarise. The following survey seeks to isolate the major debates and also to introduce readers both to the complexity of the period and to issues that will be revisited in the text. Although the contents of historiographical debate can date rapidly, as new works are published and new issues come to the fore, historiography as a process does display major continuities in theme. Questions as to how best to relate economic developments to social structures, or both to political changes, as to how to integrate the general with the specific, or whether (and how) to focus on change and continuity, remain of abiding concern. They also help locate more particular questions of interpretation. Furthermore, by reminding readers of the controversial nature of historical discussion and analysis, the process of historiography does not date.

The essential divide in treatments of this period has, in accordance with standard historiographical divisions, come between readings of the period that emphasise change and those that stress continuity. The former offer essentially a modernising account that places a focus on what are seen as the agencies of transformation. Emphases vary, but these classically include economic change (especially the ‘financial revolution’), ‘agricultural revolution’, the growth of oceanic trade, and industrialisation, with related social changes. Generally, these developments are related to the political and constitutional changes that stemmed from the ‘Glorious Revolution’, which is held to have freed more enterprising and liberal groups, and tendencies in English and Scottish society. More recently, moreover, there has been an emphasis on the development of a ‘public space’ in which democratising tendencies, and aspirations that previously were little heeded, particularly those of women, could jockey for expression. These are presented as doing so in a world that was far less deferential than might be suggested by a focus on the stately homes and aristocratic hegemony of the period, and moreover in one shaped by entrepreneurship and by capitalist forces that channelled the demands of many, and thus brought a measure of empowerment.

There has also been an emphasis on the development of a more effective state, sometimes termed the ‘fiscal military state’. This state is seen as devising fiscal means to tap the taxation and lending resources of society without causing economic harm. The resources were employed not for programmes of state-directed economic growth or social welfare, but rather to give force to the expansion of Britain as an imperial state.¹ Thus, shifts in her global position are directly related to her domestic political ethos and practices and to government institutions in a dynamic relationship. The domestic consequences of international competition included a concern with social harmony and this encouraged public initiatives, often at the local level, that undermine any account of government as passive. The general theme, therefore, is of change in all respects, of a society remaking its image and embracing the future. This has led to suggestions that it was Britain, and, in particular Scotland, not France, that was the real centre of the Enlightenment, the term applied to eighteenth-century progressive tendencies.²

Against this has come an emphasis on continuity, which is based on two linked approaches. The first minimises the factors cited above, for example by arguing that economic growth was limited until the nineteenth century, and that factory methods remained peripheral to much of the economy. The second focuses on particular aspects of continuity, in particular the ideological framework of the period, a subject of considerable importance but one that is not easy to evaluate. In the most prominent exposition of the theme of continuity, Jonathan Clark’s English Society, 1688–1832 (Cambridge, 1985), Anglicanism, divine right monarchy, aristocratic paternalism, and a belief in the value of stability are seen as dominant throughout the period in England, and indeed as more challenged by the need to adapt to the expulsion of James II and VII in 1688–9 than by subsequent radicalism. This interpretation was reiterated in the second edition, English Society, 1660–1832 (Cambridge, 2000).

Clark provided a theme for what had hitherto been somewhat mechanical accounts of political activity by asserting that continuity was the result of an active conservative ideology, rather than of the political calculation which had dominated the works of Sir Lewis Namier, and those influenced by his methods.³ Clark put religion at the centre stage of English conservatism, and, by seeing this conservatism as vigorous and successful, not merely reactive, he put religious faith at the centre of English stability and identity.⁴ In his book, England was presented as an Anglican church-state, an ancien régime society buttressed by the hierarchical ideology of a popular established religion: the Anglican Church, no mere religious establishment but the repository of widespread religious observance (on which see Chapter 8 of this book), supported the political system by, in particular, propagating an ideology of obedience, while the state sustained the church. Clark argued that John Locke’s role in spreading rationalism had been overstated, that there were few radicals and that the heart of radicalism was not secular notions of earthly redistribution of power, but religious heresy, specifically Socinianism, which was very much a minority position. Though stimulating, this was a work based on primary printed material – sermons, books and pamphlets – and thus provided evidence of ideology rather than practice or ‘society’. Clark was not writing about Scotland nor Ireland, and it is important to note that a majority of the population of the British Isles did not belong to the Church of England.

The active role of religion was also prominent in another influential work, Linda Colley’s study of Georgian national feeling, Britons.⁵ The stress that both Clark and Colley placed on religion reflected a move from earlier interpretations. These had been inclined to adopt a more materialist approach to people’s positioning and motivation, and a more secular attitude, and to marginalise religion because the historiographical debate had confined the Church of England to the dustbin. In its place, Clark and Colley offered a different assessment that focused on ideological stances and political divisions.

Far from presenting nations as organic, historic phenomena, characterised by cultural and ethnic homogeneity, Colley saw them as imagined communities, culturally and ethnically diverse, and as requiring artificial construction. Her account of Georgian loyalism was a study of how an idea of Great Britain was consciously created and how it was superimposed onto older alignments and loyalties. In this story, Protestant identity (along with success in war and the profits of empire) was central. Colley argued that the sense of Britain as an elect nation, and the perception of a contrast between a godly island and a Popish continent, gave eighteenth-century Britons one of their strongest self-definitions.

Where Clark’s vision was traditionalist, constantly emphasising continuations rather than origins, Colley’s idea of Protestantism was dynamic, modern and more compatible with the notion of an emerging ‘fiscal-military’ state than with Clark’s confessional society. Another important difference was that Clark had little to say about anti-Catholicism. His ‘other’ against which majority identity was defined was Protestant non-conformity, and especially Unitarianism. For Colley, in contrast, Protestantism seemed at times to be defined by little more than anti-popery. Although she did argue that the gap between differing Protestant denominations has been overstated, Colley did not demonstrate this and she underrated the challenge posed by orthodox Dissenters (Protestant Nonconformists who believed in the Trinity), and the need on the part of the national church to respond to it. Colley seriously underestimated the loathing many Anglicans had for Dissenters.

Yet, although Clark and Colley are celebrated for providing contrasting views of the eighteenth century, there are in fact structural similarities in their accounts of religion and nationality, which are shared by much of the other recent work in this field. At base, both offer views of the period centred on a sort of Zeitgeist, or spirit of the age. For each author, religion played the defining role in the Zeitgeist, was crucial to the creation and maintenance of ideology, and was both structure and agency: practice and discourse. In their work, religious faith reflected and sustained a largely unquestioned and hegemonic ideology. Faith dominated action and the possibilities of discussion, and tended to maintain the population in one particular vision of themselves.

There are methodological and empirical problems with this approach. First, the dangers of treating religion as a hegemonic ideology must be recognised. Historians may stress the power of particular sets of ideas, but, to go beyond this, to suggest that one vision became a dominant discourse, runs considerable risks. It may become self-validating; it has severe limitations in describing what was generally a diverse situation; it may neglect the complexity and compromises within discourses itself; and it may miss the extent to which supposedly hegemonic worldviews were actually divisive and polemical. For example, High and Low Churchmanship were not clear-cut monolithic parties, but, instead, tendencies and loose ideas that encompassed all sorts of inconsistencies and contributions.⁶

The Protestant-centred patriotism described in much of the literature may actually have been less effortlessly dominant than is sometimes suggested. James II and VII’s removal by William III in 1688–9 was an advance for particular views of England, Scotland and Ireland, but they did not secure these views instant dominance. Alongside praise for William as a Protestant and providential blessing on the nation, were Jacobite (supporters of the exiled James II and VII), Tory and ‘Country’ views of him as a usurper and Dissenter, and of England, Scotland and Ireland as suffering depredations under his tutelage. These views are perfectly viable and attracted considerable support in the 1690s. They were marginalised not because of any inherent absurdity but because William was able to defeat his opponents swiftly and conclusively. His military victory, won without any compromise with his opponents, enabled him to exclude them from power and to condemn the critics of his vision of nationality as disloyal.

Yet the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688 in fact led to a deep anxiety about the very character and future of the political system. This was not based on concern about the longevity of any particular ministry; nor did it relate to anxiety about the stability of the social system. Instead, dynastic conflict posed a more traditional anxiety. The legitimacy of the sovereign, and thus of the political system, was absent for many, and their continuation uncertain for all, until the crushing defeat of the Jacobites at Culloden in 1746 and the subsequent occupation by British troops and governmental reorganisation of the Scottish Highlands and the country north of the River Tay, the core area of Jacobite resistance.

The earlier military victory, for what were termed Revolution Principles, by William III coincided with a dramatic expansion of public politics. In the 1690s, the advent of annual sessions of Parliament, the ending of pre-publication censorship in 1695, and the development of a considerably more active press, meant that polemical politics began to produce more, and different, kinds of sources. As a result, the particular patriotic discourse associated with the victors of the revolution was widely disseminated and gained the highest profile in the culture of print. Over the years after 1688, this discourse displaced rivals, both in the respectable discussion of the time, and in government records, especially the most-consulted metropolitan and printed texts, which historians would use to reconstruct that discussion; although those who were defeated also poured forth in print, particularly non-jurors and those who asserted passive obedience. Indeed, even before 1695, publications widely debated the nature and origins of kingly authority and the legitimacy of a Catholic king.

However, much of the scholarship dealing with the century after 1688 has been soaked in the sort of Whiggism promoted by that event, with the result that many of the ambiguities and complexities of the period, and the coherence and potential persuasiveness of alternative views, have been obscured. Until recently, historians of the period were almost as effective as Williamite politicians in marginalising the Jacobite and ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Life and death
• 3 Agriculture
• 4 Industry
• 5 Transport and trade
• 6 Society
• 7 Towns
• 8 Faith and the churches
• 9 Enlightenment and science
• 10 Culture and the arts
• 11 Authority, the state and administration
• 12 Political worlds
• 13 Politics
• 14 Continental comparisons and links
• 15 The rise of a world power
• 16 Conclusions
• Selected further reading
• Chronology
• Index