Latest model
John Kenyon
Party Ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession of George Ill John Brewer (Cambridge University Press £10.50) The decade of the I 760s was one of the most confused in English history. Ministry succeeded ministry in harassed succession, five in ten years, each less effectual than the one before, while policy on such vital questions as peace with France and American taxation went first forward, then into reverse, then forward again. All this was accompanied by a thunderous and distracting background noise from the American colonists and John Wilkes, both of them raising basic constitutional questions of a kind which had not been aired for at least forty years.
Contemporaries were urgently aware that they had a problem on their hands, and eager to explain it. Before the end of George Ill's long reign the historians had begun to weigh in, and interest in the matter was sustained by the fact that this was the seminal period of the American Revolution, when the Stamp Act, the Declaratory Act and the Townshend Duties set the colonies and the mother country on a collision course. Sir Lewis Namier himself was originally inspired to study the politics of this period as a prelude to explaining the dissolution of the First British Empire.
Namier's Structure of Politics at the Accession ofGeorge III, great as was its contribution to understanding of the political technology of the eighteenth century, so to speak, imposed an unreal peace on the scene by playing down the importance of the conflicting ideological explanations put forward by the king and the politicians. These explanations were of long standing, and not easily reconciled one with another. George III argued, furiously, that he was faced by
a conspiracy on the part of the aristocratic establishment and the machine politicians left over from the Walpole and Pelham era to restrict his choice of ministers and therefore his freedom of action as chief executive. This was the Tory view, and it was ultimately left to Lord North to play Perseus to a most unlikely Andromeda, rescuing that conventional eighteenth-century political figure, a 'king in toils', chained helpless to the rock of Parliament, and threatened by the serpent faction.
The Whig view was that King George, with the help of extra-political figures like Lord Bute, was trying to subvert the constitution by building up his own party (not a government party) of 'king's friends', which he could use to frustrate or nullify the licensed participation of the nobility and gentry in political decision-making, and even threaten basic English liberties, as in the case of Wilkes and general warrants. This argument, advanced with compelling rhetoric by Burke in his Thoughts on the Causes of the Present Discontents, in 1770, established a firm hold on the minds of subsequent historians, especially since Burke's prophecies of doom and destruction were amply fulfilled by the loss of the American colonies, crushing military defeat by France, and confusion in the Indian sub-continent. But as John Brewer points out, these conflicting ideologies, since they were concerned with unvoiced conventions governing the operation of an unwritten constitution, were neither of them provable. However, this does not mean to say they could be, or can be, ignored; each interpretation was recognised at the time, even by its opponents, and therefore each acquired a certain status, which could be important in that difficult area of interpretation in which we consider whether politicians were really acting in the manner their ideologists said they were, and whether their actions were undertaken in conformity with their chosen or supposed ideology, or whether that ideology was framed, and subsequently altered, to fit their policy.
It is an important and challenging book, which will establish an immediate reputation in this crowded field. It is reminiscent of Namier's Structure of Politics, and not only in its title (which is, incidentally, misleading; Namier did confine himself to the years 1760-61, whereas Brewer ranges over the whole decade). Like The Structure of Politics, it is not so much a coherent book as a collection of essays which often lack any obvious connective link ; this is particularly noticeable in chapters 9 and 10, on 'Wilkes and the Wilkites' and 'American Ideology'. However, they are bound together by an important introduction, and by a concluding section entitled 'Two Political Nations', which together convey the 'meat' of the book.
There is also a sharp contrast here between two types of historical investigation. In the first part Brewer contributes a number of essays in which he explores the conflicting ideologies held by various elements amongst the ruling classes, including the king. Here he is mainly re-working evidence which is sufficiently well known, and criticising, very cogently, the interpretations put forward by contemporaries and by subsequent historians down to the present day. In the second part, drawing upon new evidence, he explores 'An Alternative Structure of Politics'. He demonstrates that the press, in the form of pamphlets as well as newspapers and journals, enjoyed a much wider circulation k in the 1760s than we have supposed, and he argues that there was a large, thinking political public whose point of view politicians Iliad to keep in mind, much as they pretended not to. He also studies the Wilkite riots and demonstrations as part of a deliberate campaign against the establishment which he calls 'focused radicalism'. He also explores the disturbing effects of American criticism on the Englishman's view of his own constitution.
To an older, more conservative historian like myself his study of Wilkes is not enhanced by reference to modish models drawn from this year's or last year's sociology and anthropology; but this does not detract from its evident value. In fact, his whole argument for a kind of public political presence in the 1760s puts the events of the decade in a new perspective. At the same time his lucid analysis of the apprehensions and prejudices of the ruling classes, particularly in a brilliant chapter on 'The Present Discontents', does much to impose order on the previous confusion. It is, perhaps, an uneven book, but at its best it is brilliant, at its worst it is interesting, informative and stimulating; not only on the decade under review, but on eighteenth-century politics in general.
Previous page
