Reforming Ideas in Britain Politics and Language in the Shadow of the French Revolution, 1789–1815

Between 1789 and 1815, Britain faced a surge of challenges brought about by the French Revolution. Growing tensions with France, then the outbreak of war, exacerbated domestic political controversy, giving rise to new forms of political protest, to which the government responded with ever-increasing severity. Reforming Ideas in Britain brings together a series of essays to provide a vibrant historiography of Britain's political thought and movements during the 1790s and beyond. Challenging traditional perceptions of the period, Philp prompts us to reconsider the weight of various ideas, interpretations and explanations of British politics and language, showing us instead that this dynamic world of popular politics was at once more chaotic, innovative and open-minded than historians have typically perceived it to be. This is an essential interdisciplinary text for scholars of history, political theory and romanticism that offers a fresh perspective on radicalism, loyalism and republicanism in Britain during the French Revolution.

Introduction; 1. The fragmented ideology of reform; 2. Vulgar conservatism; 3. Disconcerting ideas: explaining popular radicalism and popular loyalism in the 1790s; 4. English republicanism in the 1790s; 5. Failing the republic: political virtues and vices in the late eighteenth century; 6. Paine's experiments; 7. Revolutionaries in Paris: Paine, Jefferson and democracy; 8. Godwin, Thelwall and the means of progress; 9. Politics and memory: Nelson and Trafalgar in popular song; 10. The elusive principle: collective self-determination in the late eighteenth century; 11. Time to talk.

Mark Philp is Fellow and Tutor in Politics at Oriel College and University Lecturer in Political Theory at the University of Oxford. He has written extensively on political thought and political movements in Britain at the time of the French Revolution. He is the author of books on Paine and William Godwin, is the General Editor of The Collected Writings of William Godwin and directed the Leverhulme-funded project digitising and editing Godwin's diary (available at: http://godwindiary.bodleian.ox.ac.uk). He has also written widely on political theory, specialising on political realism, methods, political corruption and political conduct. He is the co-founder of the research network 'Re-imagining Democracy 1750–1850'. He teaches and supervises widely in political theory and political sociology. He is a member of learned societies in history and in politics, held a BA/Leverhulme Senior Research Fellowship from 1999 to 2000, and is an Officier des Palmes Académiques. From 2000 to 2005 he was the first head of the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford. He has been the chair of the Research Advisory Board to the Committee on Standards in Public Life since 2007.