Just Before Revolution

Historiography

Party Ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession of George III

John Brewer, 1976

After reading this through briefly, I decided I need to buy the book and read it thoroughly. This synopsis may be replaced with a more detailed one later.

The introduction is, to some extent, a dialog with J.H. Plumb, author of The Growth of Political Stability in England 1675-1725 (1967), which I should probably take a look at. Brewer’s thesis seemed to be that the political stability of the first two George’s reigns was based on whig solidarity, which George III had no intention of continuing. The weak whig coalition fractured as its members scrambled to find ways of engaging with the new King.

Brewer told another story as well, of “out-of-doors” political life in provincial cities and especially in London. Political participation decreased in the the first half of the 18th century. Brewer said “in 1705 65% of the counties...went to the poll; in 1747 only 7.5% were the scene of a contest.” The Septennial Act of 1716 and general “aristocratization” of British social life were partly to blame; in response “an indigenous popular political culture flourished in the metropolis even while the forces of political constraint were at their height.” For my purposes, the question may be, how widespread was this resistance? Was it at all effective (and how do I judge effectiveness)? And, did it contribute to or participate in an ongoing British radical/dissenting tradition?

The whigs who found themselves out of power at the beginning of George III’s reign “regarded themselves as natural rulers” and thus were “unfamiliar with the tactics and unused to the ideology of opposition.” Rockingham’s strategy was to insist on “ideological purity” rather than “the kind of compromise that would have obtained office and power.” Brewer continued, “This narrower view of party was espoused by the party’s greatest ideologue, Edmund Burke.” This is interesting, not only for its resonance with contemporary American politics. To what degree did the whigs try “to win the support of the ‘Publick’”? Did they do anything substantial to woo this support? Was support for the colonies part of their opposition strategy? What effect did the Seven Years War have on all this?

Brewer saw the 1760s as the beginning of serious partisanship in Britain. “Prior to 1760,” he said, “all the arguments used to justify opposition, even those employed by the country-party ideologues, condemned party in the same breath that they condoned opposition.” Edmund Burke’s opposition in Thoughts was “an opposition to defend not destroy party.” Did acceptance of partisanship gain momentum, when political outsiders were able to use it to sustain their activities? “There were strikes, machine-breaking, and crowd activity” throughout the 1760s, as well as “rural price-fixing.” Brewer said, “it is no mere coincidence that London coal-heavers were organized by a group of forty-five men who modeled their organization on a Wilkite club.”

To warn the reader against seeing these events as “thumb-nail sketches” of 19th century radicalism, Brewer defined the radical as “not what approximates some notional political scheme, but any position which, if fulfilled, would undermine or overturn existing political authority. It has, in other words, to be defined contextually, and particularly with regard to the ideology and institutions that support prevailing authority.” In this sense, frequent elections and removal of “placemen” from parliament were every bit as radical as redistribution of seats and extending the franchise, because they would have overturned the existing power structure.

Brewer’s conclusion stressed the point that throughout the 18th century, “whenever a political crisis occurred, the scope and scale of [the out-of-doors] alternative political nation increased.” Newspapermen, cartoonists, tavern-keepers and merchants saw their political influence increasing, especially in the 1760s “thanks to Wilkes.” Even after the crisis abated, “the press, the local debating societies, the coffee houses and tavern politicians all persisted.”

Party Ideology was widely acclaimed an important contribution to an already well-covered period. J.M. Beattie saw it as “taking dead aim at some of Namier’s central positions [in The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III and England in the Age of the American Revolution]. It’s unclear to me at this point if Beattie saw Brewer as opposing Namier’s “demolition of the excesses of whig historiography” or as challenging specific claims, like the “continuities and similarities between George II and his successor.” So I guess I’ll have to add Namier to the list. Paul Langford, writing in the English Historical Review, questioned the importance Brewer attributed to the press and to the general impact of Wilkes. These conclusions conflict with those of scholars Langford said Brewer gave short shrift. Langford was most impressed with Brewer’s discussion of transatlantic “ideological contamination” of British politics by the American colonists’ demands regarding taxation and representation. Carla H. Hay began and ended a review essay on Party Ideology and Colin Bonwick’s English Radicals and the American Revolution (1977) by noting both books’ debt to Bernard Bailyn’s work on transatlantic political ideas. A good reminder to me to put Bailyn (and Bonwick) on my list.

There were a lot of interesting references; really too numerous to mention. Forty pages of bibliography. Another reason I’m buying this book. A couple of primary sources I’ll check out very soon: Burke, Observations on the Late State of the Nation (1767) and Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770).