Politics and the Nation: Britain in the Mid-Eighteenth Century

Written in a clear, accessible style, the author reconstructs a political world and culture very different from the images of stability with which the mid eighteenth century has often been associated.
The author presents a new picture of political life in mid-18th century Britain. Written in a clear, accessible style, and drawing on much original material, this book argues that British politics and political culture in the mid-18th-century have often been poorly understood through over-emphasis on "stability". Using a thematic approach, it reconstructs a political world in which vital issues continued to exercise the minds and emotions of those who made up the contemporary "political nation", a group which included far more than the handful of politicans who competed for national political office. This is a book which interprets its subject broadly, and which seeks to tell the stories of politics in this period through the words and projects, hopes and fears, of contemporaries. It also represents an important contribution to the difficult, but important, project of writing the history of the British Isles. Developments in Scotland and Ireland are given careful attention along with those of England.