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BRITISH ATTITUDES TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 August 2007

EMMA VINCENT MACLEOD*
Affiliation:
University of Stirling
*
Department of History, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LAe.v.macleod@stir.ac.uk

Abstract

The study of British attitudes to the French Revolution continues to attract substantial scholarly attention. In recent years, this has resulted not only in the excavation of a substantial volume of new detail, but also in increasing attention being paid to the political experiences of members of the middling and lower orders during the revolutionary and Napoleonic decades. While historians have been interested in radicals and reformers from these social strata since the publication of E. P. Thompson's The making of the English working class in 1963, it is only more recently that their loyalist and less partisan counterparts have been examined by scholars to the same extent. This article begins by summarizing the recent publication of large collections of primary sources and of major biographies in this area. It then discusses recent historiographical advances and debates in the following areas: the British debate over the French Revolution; the political participation of members of the middle and working classes in patriotic and loyalist activities; the culture of popular politics; and the question of national identity.

Type
Historiographical Reviews
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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References

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2 The two volumes relevant to this article are L. G. Mitchell, ed., The writings and speeches of Edmund Burke, viii: The French Revolution (Oxford, 1989), and R. B. McDowell, ed., The writings and speeches of Edmund Burke, ix: Part 1. The revolutionary war, 1794–1797; Part 2. Ireland (Oxford, 1991).

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34 Ibid., p. 104.

35 Ian R. Christie, Stress and stability in late eighteenth-century Britain: reflections on the British avoidance of revolution (Oxford, 1984); see also Christie, ‘Conservatism and stability in British society’, in Mark Philp, ed., The French Revolution and British popular politics (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 169–87; Thomas Philip Schofield, ‘English conservative thought and opinion in response to the French Revolution’ (Ph.D. thesis, London, 1984); idem, ‘Conservative political thought in Britain in response to the French Revolution’, Historical Journal, 29 (1986), pp. 601–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; J. C. D. Clark, English society, 1688–1832 (Cambridge, 1985).

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38 Stella M. Ní Ghallchóir Cottrell, ‘English views of France and the French, 1789–1815’ (D.Phil. thesis, Oxford, 1991); idem, ‘The devil on two sticks: franco-phobia in 1803’, in Raphael Samuel, ed., Patriotism: the making and unmaking of British national identity, i: History and politics (London, 1991), pp. 259–74.

39 Dinwiddy, ‘Interpretations of anti-Jacobinism’, pp. 45–6, 48–9.

40 See particularly J. G. A. Pocock, The ancient constitution and the feudal law (Cambridge, 1970); idem, The Machiavellian moment (Princeton, 1975); idem, Virtue, commerce and history (Cambridge, 1985).

41 See Isaac Kramnick, Republicanism and bourgeois radicalism: political ideology in late eighteenth-century England and America (Ithaca, NY, 1990); and Dickinson, Politics of the people, p. 179.

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45 Jon Mee and Mark Crosby, ‘“This soldierlike danger”: the trial of William Blake for sedition’, in Mark Philp, ed., Resisting Napoleon: the British response to the threat of invasion, 1797–1815 (Aldershot, 2006), p. 122. See also Jon Mee, Dangerous enthusiasm: William Blake and the culture of enthusiasm in the 1790s (Oxford, 1992).

46 Philip Harling, ‘A tale of two conflicts: critiques of the British war effort, 1793–1815’, in Philp, ed., Resisting Napoleon, pp. 36–7.

47 Ibid., pp. 30–1.

48 Simon Burrows, ‘Britain and the black legend: the genesis of the anti-Napoleonic myth’, in Philip, ed., Resisting Napoleon, pp. 141–57.

49 Philp, ‘Vulgar conservatism’, pp. 42–69; Gilmartin, Kevin, ‘In the theater of counterrevolution: Loyalist Association and conservative opinion in the 1790s’, Journal of British Studies, 41 (2002), pp. 291328CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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51 See n. 27.

52 Booth, Alan, ‘English popular loyalism and the French Revolution’, Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History, 54 (1989), p. 27Google Scholar.

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54 David Eastwood, ‘Patriotism and the English state in the 1790s’, in Philp, ed., French Revolution and British popular politics, esp. p. 150. For an earlier recognition of this problem, see Robert R. Dozier, For king, constitution and country: the English loyalists and the French Revolution (Lexington, 1983), pp. 54–5.

55 Wykes, David L., ‘“The spirit of persecutors exemplified”: the Priestley riots and the victims of the church and king mobs’, Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society, 20 (1991–2), pp. 1739Google Scholar. See also idem, ‘“A finished monster of the true Birmingham breed”: Birmingham, Unitarians and the 1791 Priestley riots’, in Alan P. F. Sell, ed., Protestant nonconformists and the West Midlands of England: papers presented at the first conference of the Association of Denominational Historical Societies and Cognate Libraries (Keele, 1996), pp. 43–69; and Ditchfield, G. M., ‘Priestley riots in historical perspective’, Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society, 20 (1991–2), pp. 316Google Scholar.

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57 Philp, ‘Vulgar conservatism’, pp. 42–69; Gilmartin, ‘In the theater of counterrevolution’, p. 295.

58 Gilmartin, ‘In the theater of counterrevolution’, p. 328. The reference is to William Paley, Reasons for contentment: addressed to the labouring part of the British public (Carlisle, 1792).

59 Austin Gee, The British Volunteer movement, 1794–1814 (Oxford, 2003).

60 See Emma Vincent Macleod, A war of ideas: British attitudes to the war against revolutionary France, 1792–1802 (Aldershot, 1998), pp. 187–95.

61 Western, J. R., ‘The Volunteer movement as an anti-revolutionary force, 1793–1801’, English Historical Review, 71 (1956), pp. 603–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dozier, For king, constitution and country, pp. 138–9, 154; Dickinson, Politics of the people, p. 282; see also Macleod, A war of ideas, pp. 70–2.

62 Eastwood, ‘Patriotism and the English state’, pp. 158–61; J. E. Cookson, The British armed nation, 1793–1815 (Oxford, 1997), ch. 3.

63 Eastwood, ‘Patriotism and the English state’, p. 159.

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66 Gee, British Volunteer movement, quotation from p. 264.

67 Nicholas Rogers, ‘The sea Fencibles, loyalism and the reach of the state’, in Philp, ed., Resisting Napoleon, pp. 41–59; Katrina Navickas, ‘The defence of Manchester and Liverpool in 1803: conflicts of loyalism, patriotism and the middle classes’, in Philp, ed., Resisting Napoleon, pp. 61–71.

68 Clive Emsley, British society and the French wars, 1793–1815 (London, 1979), p. 102.

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76 Michael Scrivener, ed., Poetry and reform: periodical verse from the English democratic press, 1792–1824 (Detroit, 1992); John Barrell, ed., Exhibition extraordinary!! Radical broadsides of the mid 1790s (Nottingham, 2001); A. V. Beedell and A. D. Harvey, eds., The prison diary of John Horne Tooke (Leeds, 1995); Michael T. Davis, Iain McCalman, and Christina Parolin, eds., Newgate in revolution: an anthology of radical prison literature in the age of revolution (London, 2005); Robert Rix, ed., ‘A political dictionary explaining the true meaning of words’ by Charles Pigott (Aldershot, 2004).

77 Kevin Gilmartin, Print politics: the press and radical opposition in early nineteenth-century England (Cambridge, 1996).

78 Edward Larkin, Thomas Paine and the literature of revolution (Cambridge, 2005).

79 Mary Dorothy George, ed., Catalogue of political and personal satires preserved in the department of prints and drawings in the British Museum (7 vols., London, 1935–54); idem, ‘Pictorial propaganda, 1793–1815: Gillray and Canning’, History, 31 (1946), pp. 925CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘America in English satirical prints’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 10 (1953), pp. 511–37; idem, English political caricature (2 vols., London, 1959). The Chadwyck-Healey volumes relevant to this discussion are Michael Duffy, The Englishman and the foreigner (Cambridge, 1986); H. T. Dickinson, Caricatures and the constitution (Cambridge, 1986). See also Herbert M. Atherton, ‘The British defend their constitution in political cartoons and literature’, in Harry C. Payne, ed., Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, 11 (1982), pp. 3–31.

80 Robert L. Patten, George Cruikshank's life, times and art (2 vols., London, 1992, 1996); David Alexander, Richard Newton and English caricature in the 1790s (Manchester, 1998); Richard Godfrey, James Gillray and the art of caricature (London, 2001); Robinson, Edmund Burke: a life in caricature; Vincent Carretta, George III and the satirists from Hogarth to Byron (London, 1990).

81 Tamara L. Hunt, Defining John Bull: political caricature and national identity in late Georgian England (Aldershot, 2003).

82 Diana Donald, The age of caricature: satirical prints in the age of George III (London, 1996), pp. 147–57; David Bindman, ‘Introduction’, in David Bindman with Aileen Dawson and Mark Jones, eds., The shadow of the guillotine: Britain and the French Revolution (London, 1989), pp. 33–4.

83 Alexandra Franklin and Mark Philp, Napoleon and the invasion of Britain (Oxford, 2003). See also Franklin, ‘John Bull in a dream: fear and fantasy in the visual satires of 1803’ in Philp, ed., Resisting Napoleon, pp. 125–39.

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86 Holger Hoock, ‘“The cheap defence of nations”: monuments and propaganda’, in Philp, ed., Resisting Napoleon, pp. 159–71.

87 Mark Philp, Roz Southey, Caroline Jackson-Houlston, and Susan Wollenberg, ‘Music and politics, 1793–1815’, in Philp, ed., Resisting Napoleon, pp. 173, 175.

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90 Vincent, Emma, ‘The responses of Scottish churchmen to the French Revolution, 1789–1802’, Scottish Historical Review, 73 (1994), p. 205CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Macleod, A war of ideas, ch. 6.

91 Davis, ‘Le radicalisme anglais et la Révolution française’, p. 92.

92 Iain McCalman, Radical underworld: prophets, revolutionaries and pornographers in London, 1795–1840 (Cambridge, 1988).

93 David Worrall, Radical culture: discourse, resistance and surveillance, 1790–1820 (Hemel Hempstead, 1992); John Barrell, The spirit of despotism: invasions of privacy in the 1790s (Oxford, 2006).

94 Chris Evans, Debating the Revolution: Britain in the 1790s (London, 2006).

95 John Barrell, Imagining the king's death: figurative treason, fantasies of regicide, 1793–1796 (Oxford, 2000). See also Alan Wharam, The treason trials of 1794 (Leicester, 1992); and Michael T. Davis's forthcoming book on the Scottish political martyrs of the 1790s, to be published by Palgrave.

96 James Epstein, ‘“Our real constitution”: trial defence and radical memory in the age of revolution’, in James Vernon, ed., Re-reading the constitution: new narratives in the political history of England's long nineteenth century (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 22–51.

97 Mark Philp, ‘The fragmented ideology of reform’, in Philp, ed., French Revolution and British popular politics, p. 70.

98 A contemporary, Foxite charge conclusively laid to rest by Clive Emsley in the early 1980s in two articles: ‘An aspect of Pitt's Terror: prosecutions for sedition during the 1790s’, Social History, 6 (1981), pp. 155–84; idem, ‘Repression, “terror” and the rule of law in England during the decade of the French Revolution’, English Historical Review, 100 (1985), pp. 801–25Google Scholar. See also Mori, Jennifer, ‘Responses to revolution: the November crisis of 1792’, Historical Research, 69 (1996), pp. 284305CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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100 Edward Royle, Revolutionary Britannia? Reflections on the threat of revolution in Britain, 1789–1848 (Manchester, 2000), p. 10; Graham, The nation, the law and the king.

101 Christie, ‘Conservatism and stability in British society’; cf. Christie, Stress and stability.

102 Roger Wells, ‘English society and revolutionary politics in the 1790s: the case for insurrection’, in Philp, ed., French Revolution and British popular politics, pp. 188–226; cf. Roger Wells, Wretched faces: famine in wartime England, 1793–1801 (Gloucester, 1988); and idem, Insurrection: the British experience, 1798–1803 (Gloucester, 1983).

103 Nicholas Rogers, Crowds, culture and politics in Georgian Britain (Oxford, 1998); Steve Poole, The politics of regicide in England, 1760–1850 (Manchester, 2000); Frank Prochaska, The republic of Britain, 1760–2000 (London, 2000); Anthony Taylor, ‘Down with the crown’: British anti-monarchism and debates about royalty since 1790 (London, 1999); McCalman, Radical underworld.

104 N. A. M. Rodger, The command of the ocean: a naval history of Britain, 1649–1815 (New York, 2005), ch. 29.

105 Eastwood, ‘Patriotism and the English state’, pp. 162–5.

106 See Macleod, A war of ideas, ch. 8.

107 Hampsher-Monk, Iain, ‘Edmund Burke's changing justification for intervention’, Historical Journal, 48 (2005), pp. 65100CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tom Furniss, ‘Cementing the nation: Burke's Reflections on nationalism and national identity’, in Whale, ed., Burke's Reflections, pp. 115–44.

108 Colley, Britons; for discussion see, for instance, A. Grant and K. J. Stringer, eds., Uniting the kingdom? The making of British history (London, 1995); Alexander Murdoch, British history, 1660–1832: national identity and local culture (Basingstoke, 1998); Koditschek, Theodore, ‘The making of British nationality’, Victorian Studies, 44 (2002), pp. 389–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Terry Brotherstone, Anna Clark, and Kevin Whelan, eds., These fissured isles: Ireland, Scotland and British history, 1798–1848 (Edinburgh, 2005).

109 Semmel, Napoleon and the British, p. 16.

110 S. J. Connolly, ‘Varieties of Britishness: Ireland, Scotland, Wales and the Hanoverian state’, in Grant and Stringer, eds., Uniting the kingdom?, pp. 193–207; Brotherstone, Clark, and Whelan, eds., These fissured isles.

111 Clark, J. C. D., ‘Protestantism, nationalism, and national identity, 1660–1832’, Historical Journal, 43 (2000), pp. 249–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

112 See, for example, Pocock, J. G. A., ‘The limits and divisions of British history: in search of the unknown subject’, American Historical Review, 87 (1982), pp. 311–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘The new British history in Atlantic perspective: an Antipodean commentary’, American Historical Review, 104 (1999), pp. 490500CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

113 Cookson, British armed nation; Gee, British Volunteer movement.

114 John Brims, ‘The Scottish democratic movement in the age of the French Revolution’ (Ph.D. thesis, Edinburgh, 1983), which has some interesting material on conservatives as well; idem, ‘The Scottish “Jacobins”, Scottish nationalism and the British union’, in Roger A. Mason, ed., Scotland and England, 1286–1815 (Edinburgh, 1987), pp. 247–65; idem, ‘The Covenanting tradition and Scottish radicalism in the 1790s’, in Terry A. Brotherstone, ed., Covenant, Charter and party. Traditions of revolt and protest in modern Scottish history (Aberdeen, 1989), pp. 50–62; idem, ‘From reformers to Jacobins: the Scottish Association of the Friends of the People’, in T. M. Devine, ed., Conflict and stability in Scottish society, 1700–1850 (Edinburgh, 1990), pp. 31–50; idem, ‘Scottish radicalism and the United Irishmen’, in David Dickson, Dáire Keogh, and Kevin Whelan, eds., The United Irishmen: republicanism, radicalism and rebellion (Dublin, 1993). See also Elaine W. McFarland, Ireland and Scotland in the age of revolution: planting the green bough (Edinburgh, 1994).

115 David J. Brown, ‘Henry Dundas and the government of Scotland’ (Ph.D. thesis, Edinburgh, 1989); idem, ‘The government of Scotland under Henry Dundas and William Pitt’, History, 83 (1998), pp. 265–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘The government response to Scottish radicalism, 1792–1802’, in Harris, ed., Scotland in the age of the French Revolution, pp. 99–124; Fry, The Dundas despotism; Atle Libaek Wold, ‘The Scottish government and the French threat, 1792–1802’ (Ph.D. thesis, Edinburgh, 2003); idem, ‘Scottish attitudes to military mobilisation and war in the 1790s’, in Harris, ed., Scotland in the age of the French Revolution, pp. 140–63.

116 Andrew Mackillop, ‘More fruitful than the soil’: army, empire and the Scottish Highlands, 1715–1815 (East Linton, 2000), ch. 7; Macleod, Emma Vincent, ‘A city invincible? Edinburgh and the war against revolutionary France’, British Journal of Eighteenth-Century Studies, 23 (2000), pp. 153–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

117 Harris, ed., Scotland in the age of the French Revolution, p. 17.

118 Marianne Elliott, Partners in revolution: the United Irishmen and France (London, 1982); idem, Wolfe Tone: prophet of Irish independence (London, 1989).

119 Thomas Bartlett, The fall and rise of the Irish nation: the Catholic question, 1690–1830 (Dublin, 1992); T. W. Moody and W. E. Vaughan, eds., A new history of Ireland, iv: Eighteenth-century Ireland, 1691–1800 (Oxford, 1986); W. E. Vaughan, A new history of Ireland, v: Ireland under the Union, I, 1801–1870 (Oxford, 1989).

120 Nancy J. Curtin, The United Irishmen: popular politics in Ulster and Dublin, 1791–1798 (Oxford, 1994); Stephen Small, Political thought in Ireland, 1776–1798: republicanism, patriotism and radicalism (Oxford, 2002); Stella Tillyard, Citizen lord: Edward Fitzgerald, 1763–1798 (London, 1997); Dickson, Keogh, and Whelan, eds., The United Irishmen.

121 Thomas Bartlett, David Dickson, Dáire Keogh and Kevin Whelan, 1798: a bicentenary perspective (Dublin, 2003).

122 Jim Smyth, The men of no property: Irish radicals and popular politics in the late eighteenth century (Basingstoke, 1992); Kevin Whelan, The tree of liberty: radicalism, Catholicism and the construction of Irish identity, 1760–1830 (Cork, 1996); Dáire Keogh, ‘The French disease’: the Catholic church and radicalism in Ireland, 1790–1800 (Dublin, 1993).

123 Dáire Keogh and Nicholas Furlong, eds., The mighty wave: the 1798 rebellion in Wexford (Dublin, 1996); Daniel Gahan, The people's rising: Wexford, 1798 (Dublin, 1995); A. T. Q. Stewart, The summer soldiers: the 1798 rebellion in Antrim and Down (Belfast, 1995).

124 McFarland, Ireland and Scotland in the age of revolution.

125 Philp, Mark, ‘The role of America in the “debate on France” 1791–1795: Thomas Paine's insertion’, Utilitas, 5 (1993), pp. 221–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goodrich, Debating England's aristocracy, passim.

126 J. C. D. Clark, ‘Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in America (1777); or, how did the American Revolution relate to the French?’, in Crowe, ed., An imaginative Whig, pp. 71–92.

127 Stephen Conway, The war of American Independence, 1775–1783 (London, 1995), ch. 2.