Politics shaped England’s socioeconomic development over 1530-1780, as the island nation alone in Europe progressed from monarchy-and-aristocracy toward the proto-bourgeois, from agricultural toward commercial and early industrial.
In the Tudor era, the Commons gained influence; in the Reformation, absolutism was undermined by conscience and education of the gentry. London’s economic power acted to unify England (if not the soon-to-be United Kingdom). Domestic policy aimed at controlling the peasantry via justices of the peace. Foreign policy, which began in medieval thrall to Rome and Spain, grew to be independent (though the country remained a 2d-line power).
1640’s destruction of the Stuart bureaucracy was the most decisive event in British history. The dynasty’s unsustainable economics – spending more than it received – led to the Civil War (see also 18th-century France). But predictable causes do not guarantee predictable outcomes: nonconforming religion (e.g., Lollards) as well as the new urban culture evinced popular opposition. When the conflict came, richer peasants aligned not with the lumpen but the gentry, which had learned to lead in the schools.
During the Interregnum and Restoration, the abolition of northern and Welsh councils unified the legal system and the economic dominance of London gathered pace, acting to radiate Puritanism. But the Restoration’s key feature was anti-democratic. Aristocrats and bishops returned; nonconformists were excluded by the Clarendon Code; enclosure accelerated, promoting agricultural productivity. In this respect, Jacobitism was an outcome not a cause: unimproving, gentry and freeholders were liquidated; the ‘new men’ were ascendant before 1745. The Navigation Acts of 1651 and 1660 marked the transition to national monopoly (i.e., to colonial mercantilism from chartered companies) and the Dutch wars. Then joint stock companies deployed capital where previously it had been in limited supply. (Ireland, after African slaves, was the principal victim of this trend.) The Restoration did not halt labor migration but favored employers. Excise and land taxes acted to shift resources from peasants to landowners and the City. Following the Toleration Act, Quakers and others saw to it that favorable legislation was enforced across England, again promoting more uniform administration and tempering the influence of JPs. Intellectually, the Newtonian revolution as well as dispersion of ‘natural hierarchy’ undermined views of social organization: men no longer were united to each other.
After the Glorious Revolution and over the 18th century the colonies supplanted Europe as England’s biggest market; 1763’s Peace of Paris converted these markets from suppliers to buyers, until the American revolution and Irish revolt shook the system. Thus there were five periods of export trade: old draperies to 1600; new draperies to 1650; colonial monopoly – entrepot – re-export to 1700; manufactures to the colonies to 1780; and afterward the industrial revolution, enabled by modernized banks and credit, facilitated worldwide export. Bacon’s aspirations for society advanced by scientific approaches advanced dissent. Freeborn men thought to enter the factor was to surrender their birthright; laborers now sought protection for Elizabethan regulations (e.g., prices, standards, apprenticeships, etc.). By 1780, rural distress was evident, though grand landowners had regained ground.
Heavily focused on structural analysis, there is no discussion of even the Whig Ascendancy or George III’s new system. Event are Whiggishly inevitable. The neo-Marxist approach also surrenders credibility in such observations as Soviet collectivization costs ‘thousands’ of lives.
England
19. Butterfield, George III and the Historians (24 September 2022)
George III’s intentions at accession have been revealing of the historian’s partisanship and methodological preferences. Primarily narrating the historiographical turns of the succeeding two centuries, Butterfield points up the novelty of party in 18th-century England: the great minds of Bolingbroke, Hume, and Burke were innovating. Therefore to claim the king broke rules of constitutional monarchy which were not so well established in 1760 as in 1860 indicates anachronism. Further, both Whigs (Rockinghams) and court parties were necessary to conflict and resolution; one should not write history as if conflict should not have occurred. The role of independent MPs, not to mention the Wilkes saga, brings politics back into relief. Where Whiggish historians have seen partisan views (e.g., in parliamentary debates) as automatically leading to voting outcomes, Namierites have seen socioeconomic classification as determinative. (As an analogue, see historical treatment of assembly debates early in the early French Revolution.) Yet individuals acted on particular influences or preferences. No amount of scholarship can remedy insufficient imagination in interrogating and reconstructing the past. Equally, the historian who recovers structure and process is not obliged to defend it. The professional is to be diligent in search of evidence, responsible to it, and fair-minded in judgement and presentation. Narrative encompasses both analysis and structure most fully. Put more colloquially, the reader should not be able to guess the outcome.
24. Prest, William Blackstone (27 Dec 2015)
A narrative life of 18th-century jurist William Blackstone, renowned for distilling dense English common law into a more readily understood framework. The fatherless son of minor gentry, Blackstone rose through diligent classical studies to a place at Oxford’s All Souls, where postgraduate and administrative energies led to intra-university political activity. His initial foray as a London barrister was unsuccessful; his lectures on the common law made him a name; but his taking most of the income of newly endowed chair earned Blackstone a whiff of odium. Or was it more simply undignified ambition in Hanoverian and Georgian England? The future George III was a fan, Jeremy Bentham was not. The author’s counterbalances his own opinion. Later an MP, Blackstone was only modestly effective because of his back-bench independence and also a diffident speaking style: he failed notably during the rough-and-tumble of the Wilkes affair. But his practice grew, and some years after leaving Oxford for good, he won the judgeship he sought. Again opinions were divided, between churlish, high-church Tory and diligent national treasure. In fact he was something of a rationalist modernizer. Like Everitt’s
- Cicero
, the book could spend a bit more time elucidating the kernel of Blackstone’s thinking itself.
5. Stanlis, Edmund Burke (10 Apr 2016)
Burke’s understanding of natural law — the spirit of equity — as reflected in English common law is the cornerstone of his largely uncodified body of thought: so Stanlis has contended since his groundbreaking Edmund Burke and the Natural Law. In this monograph, he reiterates and elaborates the basis of those views, while demonstrating he was not a utilitarian. Subsequently he shows Burke’s opposition to the rationalist views of the Enlightenment, particularly the French philosophe Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose conception of ‘sensibility’, or abstract moral empathy, which paves the wave for theoretical innovation; Burke preferred an empirical approach to limited reform, in order to preserve the best elements of society. This contrast between revolution and reform is demonstrated in Burke’s view of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, a revolution ‘not made but prevented’.
11. Trevelyan, English Revolution, 1688-1689 (30 May 2020)
The Glorious Revolution settled the two-part question of supremacy in English political and religious matters by compromising: Whiggish views of the monarchy and Tory high church preferences prevailed. The ultimate winner was Coke and Selden’s view that the king is chief servant but not master of the law. Like 1660’s restoration of Charles II, the revolution of 1688 ended lawless rule by restoring time-honored customs. Had James II submitted to Parliament, the scope of legal change would have been greater, for the monarch would have been circumscribed, but the hierarchy would have been less clear cut. (The subsequent independence of judges themselves was one of the broadest formal changes.) Writing with verve, Trevelyan shows it to be the decisive event in English constitutional history through the 20th century. Economic prosperity and geopolitical hegemony consequently followed. Although compromise prevailed in England, the victory was one-sided in Scotland and Ireland. To the north of the border, Catholics became Jacobites while Cavaliers opposed the Argyles and Whiggish ministers, especially after Holyrood acceded to Westminster. Across the sea, Protestants dependent on England emasculated native leaders save for Catholic priests, choking off the possibility of reform. Indeed, although the 18th-century English understandably favored institutional conservatism, and did effectively channel working-class and Radical sentiment into a system headed by Parliament, it was late in responding to the industrial economy and delivering the Reform Act.
8. Pangle, Montesquieu’s Philosophy of Liberalism (26 Apr 2020)
Montesquieu’s Esprit des Lois simultaneously rejects Aristotelian virtue and universal (i.e., Lockean) liberalism by asserting that moral vices and sociocultural particularisms determine the best mankind can hope for. Man’s nature is a source of justice in the Hobbesian sense of self-preservation, but only as refracted through custom and circumstance. History not teleology holds the key to political comity.
Like Aristotle, Montesquieu studies political regimes; however, whereas for the former the goal of a republic is the best use of freedom (i.e., virtue), for the latter it’s freedom itself. Anticipating Hegel, in a regime where freedom is less than ne plus ultra, some will oppress others simply to avoid oppression. Montesquieu also denies Aristotle’s exultation of the philosophic gentlemen or the statesman. Through private vice such as building wealth, which leads to superabundance, public virtue emerges and thence to patriotism. Religious (e.g., Christian) virtue unacceptably contests the state’s ends. Pangle shows Montesquieu’s definition creates an egalitarian politics with no definite end, only relative characteristics and lack of oppression.
The political sphere is not the source of society’s way of life. Statecraft is less important than the past, subconsciously carried forward. In emphasizing history as revealing social mores, Montesquieu can be seen as the progenitor of sociology, and more obviously foreshadowing Kant, Hegel, and Marx. Cool climates promote restlessness and more specifically scrutiny of government, revealing man’s passion for security, since liberty is an opinion of security. Also in the future, Burke would emphasize custom and Rousseau set aside the ancient emphasis on excellence in favor of base equality and freedom.
A republic (whether aristocratic or democratic) is more easily achieved in small, agrarian units. Montesquieu makes the case for separation of powers, moderate (limited) criminal law, and commerce as harnessing man’s passions to the general welfare. He favored competition between aristocrats and commoners, mediated by monarchy, to check tyranny and also to promote excellence as against mediocrity. As a formula: balance of power and separation of power promotes efficiency (i.e., minimum of friction) in reaching civic ends. In Montesquieu’s treatment of law, one foresees utilitarianism: restraints are to provide universalization of liberty and security, not the promotion of higher ends. Economic superabundance provides for social goods, such as freedom to philosophize. The English system provides an example. It lacks politesse but evidences morals. The English are not worldly but usefully focused on commerce. Consequently their political liberties are well balanced, exemplary. Yet Montesquieu overlooks the Tory institutional loyalties which are the foundation of social opinion, Pangle writes.
The legislator is to be prudent, not high minded, working through man’s passions. To understand a law, Montesquieu says, we have to view its intent, what’s it’s trying to solve. He is modern in espousing a system of institutional balance and competing interests, and preeminently insists on the applicability of circumstance as manifest through historic custom. His views failed to foresee or provide for defense against the French Revolution, Pangle observes, and paradoxically underestimated the durability of English liberty. The author asks: is formulaic security yet to be overwhelmed by man’s intrinsic nature? But Montesquieu, in bringing the principles of political thought down to the realm of current events, calls us to a contemporary accountability.
12. Hexter, Reappraisals in History (9 Jun 2020)
Evaluates shortcomings of mid-20th century historiography using examples from early modern England and Europe. Contemporary professional work has been too clever by half, failing the twin tests of common sense and explaining what happened and why on the past’s own terms. The historian may use a framework to study events, but not to determine their nature: history cannot be discovered or elucidated by rules. Particularly in times of convulsion – when history is most interesting – the narrative supersedes the analytic.
The Scientific Revolution marked a turning point in Western trajectory. Sixteenth-century aristocrats could no longer rise only by martial prowess, no more felt able to ignore the liberal arts. It was the reconstruction of a social class. By contrast, the myth of the contemporary English middle class muddles social change by misunderstanding the extent of the upper classes. Merchants buying in was an ancient habit; Tudor policy protected established groups even while promoting new ones; hierarchy was as important as ever. Economic change, absolutism, and Calvinism were more catalytic.
In the famous essay ‘Storm over the Gentry’, Hexter shows the gentry and peers were of the same class, so statistics are unhelpful. Political claims during the first half of the 17th century were grounded in ancient rights, not class interest; that is, classes do not inevitably pursue selfish ends. Religion may have been the prime mover, but politics was the medium. To get to the bottom of the Interregnum, the historian must ask what the Commons thought it was doing?
In fact, in an enduring conflict between the Stuarts and Parliament, the latter sought to husband its rights to legislate, to tax and supply, and to judge; but did not mean to topple the monarchy. The Petition of Right fell within the civic tradition. It was an effort to rebalance liberty and law, and after the Restoration politicians and notables cluster around the grandees as before.
See http://www.oeler.us/2021/06/22/the-historiography-of-the-english-civil-war/