Eighteenth-Century English Politics: Recent Work

Extract

This article is intended as a sequel to that written in 1992 and published in Albion the following year (vol. 23, 2 [Fall 1993]: 419–41). It reflects the wealth of scholarship published in recent years, evidence, if any is needed, that the eighteenth century is far from dead; however, it is more than an update or appendix. One of the major problems with review articles and historiographical surveys is that they can range so far back in time that they seem to repeat the controversies of the past rather than to take sufficient note of those of the present or to point the way to those that may be imminent.

Too much historiographical work relates to long-published scholarship. Though this older work was important, surely less emphasis should be placed today on Butterfield and Namier. Not only do their studies appear dated or superseded; they are of interest from the point of how we have got to where we are, while no longer throwing much light on matters. The same is true of works that caused a splash when they appeared, but now seem very much of their time, such as John Brewer's Party Ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession of George III (1976).

We are all devoured by time. One of the great pleasures of scholarship is that others come along and build on, revise, or reject our work. Thus, one of the advantages of writing a sequel is that adopting the historiographical longue durée is not necessary and going for the here and now is possible. As with my former essay, there is a powerful element of choice and subjectivity.