Paul Langford, ed. The Eighteenth Century, 1688-1815. Short Oxford History of the British Isles. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. xiii + 287 pp. $45.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-19-873131-3; $55.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-873132-0.
Reviewed by Susan Mitchell Sommers (Department of History, Saint Vincent College)
Published on H-Albion (March, 2003)
The Long Century in Review
The Long Century in Review
As both the General Editor of the Short Oxford History of the British Isles, and editor of The Eighteenth Century, 1688-1815, Paul Langford skillfully brings together a number of outstanding historians to reexamine key aspects of British history that continue to intrigue and trouble contemporary historians. In this particular volume, Langford is joined by David Hayton, David Hempton, Joanna Innes, Martin Dauton, Peter Borsay, and Michael Duffy, each contributing chapters in his or her own field of expertise. These names should all be familiar to those condemned to haunt the shelves of libraries in search of the latest in eighteenth-century scholarship.
The purpose of the entire series, and in our case particularly The Eighteenth Century, is to present a thematic history of the period that both provides analysis of major events and movements, and offers the authors the opportunity to summarize recent discoveries and historiographic developments. While The Eighteenth Century is intended for a broad audience, it is of necessity brief and offers a sweeping analysis of trends, rather than spending time on detailed descriptions. Thus it is most appropriate for an advanced undergraduate- or graduate-level reader who is already familiar with most of the basic facts of the eighteenth century, and is seeking guidance in how to make sense of them.
Across the chapters, much of the analysis is distinctly revisionist, working both against common nineteenth-century perceptions of the immediate past, and against the judgement of contemporary nineteenth-century historians, who continue to find a stable eighteenth century a pleasing backdrop for the dramatic changes they chronicle in the 1800s. Langford's introduction sets the tone for the remainder of the book, arguing that the long eighteenth century was a tumultuous one for the nations of the British Isles. Notwithstanding, the contributors do indeed chronicle stabilities within the century. Most clearly, Dauton examines the consistent British enthusiasm for commerce that led, in the eighteenth century, from scientific agriculture to empire building. Similarly, Borsay argues in "The Culture of Improvement" that the multifaceted notion of "improvement," though defying a single definition, comes close to encompassing all things eighteenth-century Britons held to be most noble. Applied indiscriminately to agriculture and religion, science and commerce, society and marriage, "improvement" implied progress and British superiority. If there was a Spirit of the Age, he argues, it was the creed of improvement.
Despite the consistency with which such themes appear and reappear throughout both the century and this volume, the writers place even greater emphasis on the complexities and changes that characterized the overlapping nations and societies of the British Isles. Particularly in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, but even throughout England itself, the century was marked by critical and even violent internal conflicts tied to national identity and political loyalties, as described by Hayton in the chapter titled "Contested Kingdoms, 1688-1756," and Innes in "Governing Diverse Societies." While these chapters examine the frequently painful birth of a more-or-less unified British nation, Hempton argues that there were continuing and significant divisions of class, religion, and culture that remained sources of tension and even potential revolution as the century drew to a close. His chapter, "Enlightenment and Faith," focuses on the deep splits between polite and popular culture, enlightened and enthusiastic religion, that became more noticeable even as national distinctions grew less problematic. In addition, the authors argue, Britain's nearly constant involvement in wars of competition and imperialism placed heavy and frequently unpopular demands on all segments of society. This was not, Langford and friends point out, a placid and progressive century, or at least neither solely nor predominately so.
Langford and his contributors demonstrate, then, that the emergence by 1815 or so of a much more closely integrated polity of British peoples, coupled with a uniquely diverse empire, meant that much of the foundation for the dominant Britain of the nineteenth century was actually established by transformations in the eighteenth.
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Citation:
Susan Mitchell Sommers. Review of Langford, Paul, ed., The Eighteenth Century, 1688-1815.
H-Albion, H-Net Reviews.
March, 2003.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=7303
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