British Evangelicals and the United States of America, c. 1775-c.1820

Just as British political attitudes towards the United States of America combined an ambivalent mix of admiration and mystification, so British Evangelical attitudes combined respect and a deep desire to associate and cooperate with American Evangelicals, with criticisms of American toleration of slavery, and some discomfort with the levels of religious and political diversity and disorder apparent in the new republic. Evangelicals were therefore to be found adding their voices to the conservative, liberal and radical positions in the British debate on the new United States of America. But their most distinctive contribution was their enthusiasm for cooperation with Americans in missionary enterprises inside and outside the United States. In this they added weight to the stance of those liberal politicians who viewed the United States as a force for good in the world and a natural ally for Britain, and who favoured a close Anglo-American relationship on the basis of shared values, despite their differences

The independent man: Citizenship and gender politics in Georgian England by Matthew McCormack

Output Type: Book Revie

The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, vol 2, 1540-1840

Output Type: Book Revie

Civil Liberties and Baptists: William Winterbotham of Plymouth in prison and thinking of America

Winterbotham, a Baptist minister imprisoned in the 1790s for radical preaching on political and religious liberty, wrote a four-volume work on the new American republic, explaining its political, social and religious advantages, and promoting it as an example to other nations, as an asylum for political refugees, and as a good prospect for economic migrants

Radicalism, Reform and National Identity in Scotland, 1820-1833

Output Type: Book Revie

William Pulteney, A 'Proper Reply to a Late Scurrilous Libel, Intitled, Sedition and Defamation Display'd' (1731)

Output Type: Book Revie

The problem of the active citizen: conservative reactions to the French Revolution in Britain

Abstract. This paper seeks to summarize and comment on the main writings in English over the last two decades on conservative reactions in Britain to the French Revolution. Since the 1980s, scholars working on British conservatives in the 1790s have responded to E.P. Thompson’s call, previously taken up by students of British reformers and radicals, to pay attention to members of the middling and lower orders as participants in the political arena and not simply as objects of elite political discussion. This has led historians to discuss the problem of the active loyal citizen for late eighteenth-century Britain. That is, scholars have generally shown much more interest in loyalists below the level of the political and social elite than was the case until the 1980s; these men and women have been treated not just as objects of elite discussion, but as participants in the political process, pace Edmund Burke; Burke himself has consequently, despite the publication of major works of scholarship discussing his life and editing his writings, had his place in the political process of the 1790s queried and even reduced; and, finally, historians have been interested in the paradox of how the British state allowed and even encouraged the lower and middle orders to defend its elitist constitution. As Kevin Gilmartin put it, ‘how was public opinion mobilized in defense of a regime committed to limiting the political force of public opinion?’ While these enquiries have resulted in the mining of a great wealth of new detail about Britain in the revolutionary decade in many respects, research on the Scottish experience has only very recently begun to gather speed

Conservative reaction, c.1792-1820: the case for rejection

Conservative writers in Britain articulated a largely hostile attitude towards the United States of America between 1792 and 1820. Having earlier been convinced that an American republic was not viable, they now admitted that there were some reasons to admire its achievements. However, their dominant responses were resentment and contempt. They also felt some apprehension that the United States might prove a stronger and more difficult element in international affairs than they had hitherto expectedStirling University staff and students can access this book in the Library Catalogue: http://libcat.stir.ac.uk/record=b2153040~S

The Scottish People and the French Revolution

Output Type: Book Revie