I reread this book both to brush up on English history in the eighteenth century and also to review the English backdrop to the American Revolution. While it is dated in both years (first published in 1950) and, in many respects, tone, it is a succinct, interesting and, to my mind, authoritative history of the period. Although it is a slim volume, it is packed with information covering the years 1714-1815. As any good history should, it not only instructs but also sensitizes the reader to the contingencies of history. For example, if George III had not dismissed Chatham as Prime Minister and undercut Chatham’s wartime achievements in the peace treaty ending the Seven Years War, would the American Revolution have occurred at all or been successful? The book also feeds a desire to dig deeper into the many topics it covers.

Even though it is an introduction, it does take some knowledge for granted, for example, that William Pitt the Elder and Lord Chatham were the same person. While I found myself looking at Wikipedia to understand some references, I also think Professor J.H. Plumb’s approach enabled him to write a more thought-provoking and in-depth book than if he had taken no knowledge for granted.

He breaks the period down into three “ages”: the Age of Walpole, the Age of Chatham and the Age of Pitt (i.e., Pitt the Younger). For each age, he covers general governmental, social, economic, artistic, scientific and cultural developments before turning to the narrative of political developments relating to his three principals. We get both a snapshot of English society in three succeeding periods and an understanding of the changes that took place over those three periods. Some readers might find it easier going to start with the narrative chapters in each section and then go back to the thematic background chapters.

The Age of Walpole (1714-1742)

The Age of Walpole covers the ascendancy of the Whigs following the decline of the Tories into a group of rural gentry grievance and supporter of Stuart pretenders (thereby alienating the new Hanoverian dynasty). The age is characterized by the perfection of the patronage system by which the King and his ministers allocate offices within the country to leading families in the parliamentary majority controlling the government. The relationship of King and Parliament evolved as Robert Walpole and King George II developed a small inner cabinet of the chief officers of the realm. The pre-existing Privy Council and Cabinet Council ceased to play much of a role in politics. Robert Walpole emerged as the first Prime Minister, the minister who carried the most weight in the cabinet and who acted as the principal intermediary between the cabinet and the King. The Court remained the heart of social and political life, and all decisions and appointments had to be discussed with the King. However, supreme power remained not with the King but with Parliament, on whom the King depended for revenue and to whom the ministers were also responsible.

The Age of Walpole is also characterized by Robert Walpole’s careful management of the government’s finances (including the creation of the Sinking Fund, a percentage of taxes that were set aside to pay off debts of previous wars), pursuit of economic prosperity and efforts to avoid expensive new wars. Walpole’s successful management of the consequences of the South Sea Bubble market crash made him the leader of the Whigs (who were not yet a formal political party) and gave him the dominant role in the government. Walpole reduced tariffs to encourage trade while continuing to protect key English industries. New technologies emerged to serve the textile industry and iron and coal production. French Huguenots brought new industrial processes to England, and in 1716 the Englishman John Lombe stole from Italy the secret of machine manufacture of silk yarn. The factory system began to develop. However, the growth of English industry was still held back by factors such as the monopolies of the great chartered companies, the influence of Tudor-era guilds, the lack of adequate capital and the “appalling” state of transport in England.

In the 1730’s, the country began to lose patience with Walpole’s prudent running of the country, and after he resigned in 1742, William Pitt the Elder eventually emerged as Prime Minister intent upon expansion of Great Britain’s economic and global power -- through war as necessary. In Plumb’s words:

England has never known a prime minister more adroit in handling men than Walpole, but he was too rooted in reality, too sensitive to the everyday world to be a great statesman. It was Chatham, ignorant of men, ignorant of politics, who knew with utter certainty England’s destiny and showed her the way to it.

The Age of Chatham (1742-1784)

Around 1760, the tempo of the Industrial Revolution began to speed up. Revolutionary changes began to take place, and it became clear that there were two worlds, the old and the new. The continued expansion of markets, the availability of adequate capital and a growing labor force made the Industrial Revolution possible. Completion of the enclosure of common lands enabled farmers to become more independent and thus agricultural improvements became feasible. Roads were improved and banks developed in the countryside. Technological change became a constant factor. The problems of the Industrial Revolution also intensified such as cruel factory conditions and child labor. However, there was a general improvement in urban conditions that caused the death rate to decline “until the wholesale introduction of the water closet forced it up. Instead of being carried away to the country, excrement was swept in the Thames which provided London’s drinking water. Typhoid returned.” (p. 87)

The Anglican Church failed to meet the spiritual needs of the inhabitants of industrial villages and suburbs. John Wesley was an Anglican who tried to serve the new industrial workingman through the established church, which closed its doors to him. As a result, he created the Methodist Church and established 356 chapels in locations where there were no traditional churches. Wesley was the boss of his church, and his enemies called him Pope John. He was a conservative who opposed John Wilkes and saw the French Revolution as the work of Satan. In Methodism,” the Puritan ideal was reborn shorn of its political radicalism.” It achieved material success at the price of losing spiritual fervor. Wesley did not support primary education for children but rather thought they should work, and he hated Catholics and Jews. Plumb describes him as follows:

Wesley himself was a great and complex character, a man in some ways comparable to Luther, Lenin, Gandhi or even Napoleon. Few men have had his transcendental capacity to stir the heart; none has combined this with his genius for organization. (p. 90)

This period also saw significant developments in the arts and sciences. In the theater, Goldsmith and Sheridan; in painting, Joshua Reynolds, who influenced Gainsborough, Romney and Ramsey, and William Hogarth; in architecture, James Gibb, William Kent and Robert Adams. In science, Henry Cavendish was the greatest scientist of the time, although he kept most of his discoveries relating to gases and electricity to himself. (Faraday later had to discover independently much of what Cavendish had discovered.) Joseph Priestly isolated oxygen from air in 1774 but tried to fit it into the phlogiston theory (according to which metals were composed of compounds of metallic earth and phlogiston). “Although [the phlogiston] theory did not by any means meet all the known facts, its adherents clung to it with the tenacity of martyrs” and Priestly “refused to believe his own experiments and elaborated the most extraordinary reasons to make the facts fit the phlogiston theory. “(p. 103) In dining with Priestly, Antoine Lavoisier realized the significance of Priestly’s discoveries. After completing his own experiments, Lavoisier destroyed the phlogiston theory once and for all and declared the existence of oxygen, without acknowledging Priestly, who continued to believe in the phlogiston theory. Following these discoveries in his seclusion, Cavendish broke down water into oxygen and hydrogen and isolated argon.

The political machine Robert Walpole had established did not fall with him, despite the complaints of the opposition to his government. The City, which under that system lacked influence in Parliament, relied on William Pitt (later Lord Chatham) to protect its interests. As the City prospered, it thought it could ignore the corruption of Parliament. The new post-Walpole government, with Carteret in charge of foreign affairs, returned to a policy of full involvement in Continental wars. Pitt had criticized Carteret’s policy, but was brought into the government in 1746 after England suffered defeats in 1745. Pitt lacked Walpole’s warmth in personal relations but “could create a sense in all who listened to him that he was the mouthpiece of destiny.” (p. 108.) Pitt saw France as England’s only rival, and he thought England should aim at supremacy at sea and the capture of all French trading posts and French Canada. By 1756, Pitt had risen to leadership of the House of Commons and direction of the war. His victories over France were decisive: England captured France’s Canadian trade by taking Québec and Montréal; it captured Guadeloupe and Martinique in the West Indies and Dakar in Africa. Clive’s victories in India established English dominance. The only English defeat was at Mauritius. The attack on Manila in the Philippines brought control of the China tea trade. The French fleets were destroyed.

Pitt intended to follow up on these successes by attacking Spain’s foreign holdings. But King George II died in 1760, and the new King, George III, did not favor his grandfather’s servants. King George III rejected an attack on Spain and drove Pitt out of the government. The peace treaty of 1763 ending the Seven Year’s War “enraged” Pitt and his friends because of the return of Guadeloupe, Martinique and Dakar to France and of fishing rights off of the coast of Newfoundland. Pitt’s main objective in capturing Canada was to gain control of those fishing rights. The peace treaty ended Pitt’s dream of crushing France as a rival. The City, which had the most to gain in the capture of trade from the French, lost out because it lacked political power in the Commons to support Pitt’s aims. These developments caused the City to turn to politics. “The day of the bourgeois radical dawned.” (p. 115)

George III had made other changes to foreign policy. He took a harsh approach towards Hanover, broke the treaty with Frederick the Great and made peace with France. He tore down the system of patronage which had benefited the Pelham family under King George II, but it was difficult to build another stable ruling group. He was forced to shift from one ministry to another until cohesion was finally achieved under Lord North. George III’s clashes with John Wilkes in Parliament demonstrated Parliament’s unrepresentative nature, its dependence on the Crown, and its corruption and prejudice, and showed Parliament to be a threat to personal liberty. Because of the worsening situation in America, the government was becoming increasingly unpopular, and organized public opinion began to play a significant role in politics.

The efforts of William Wilberforce and the Clapham Sect made up largely of Members of Parliament to abolish the slave trade made significant progress in this period. In Somerset’s case (1772), Lord Mansfield made his famous judgment declaring slavery illegal in England. The Clapham Sect was also responsible for the foundation of Freetown in Sierra Leone, imtended as a haven for freed slaves. As discussed below, the slave trade was finally abolished effective in 1808.

The American colonists appealed to the same principles of liberty that were propounded by Wilkes and his allies. Lords Rockingham and Chatham and Edmund Burke became leaders of reform as well as showing sympathy to the American’s position. Lord North’s ministry disintegrated in 1782; Rockingham came to power and make peace with America. It appeared that reform would occur in Parliament as well. The Walpole system of political patronage could no longer work in an increasingly complex and growing society. William Pitt the Younger would emerge as the next important Prime Minister.

The Age of Pitt (1784-1815)

The Age of Pitt saw further advances in the Industrial Revolution, the impact of the French Revolution on English society and politics and the wars with France. England’s first census in 1801 showed an increasing population and by 1811 London was the largest city in the Western world with over a million people. Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh were also growing rapidly, and there was a general population shift from the south and east to the north and west. Construction of canals, road improvements and growth of ports all enhanced England’s transportation network. However, the naval war with France disrupted overseas trade, caused depressions and made it harder to feed the growing population.

The French Revolution made the middle classes aware of the power of the lower classes and the risk of social revolution. English radicalism split, a left-wing consisting of workingmen and middle-class leaders favoring the goals of the French Revolution and a right wing of Whigs under the leadership of Charles James Fox continuing to pursue the cause of parliamentary reform and wanting peace with France. Edmund Burke, for whom the French Revolution was a European catastrophe, turned against both wings and wanted to use force against the French. Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France met Thomas Paine’s reply in The Rights of Man. As Prime Minister, Pitt cracked down on radical clubs and societies including obtaining passage of treason and sedition acts.

In literature, writers like the Defoe, Fielding, Sterne, Smollett and Richardson broke with the restraints and formal attitudes of poetry and were forerunners of the Romantics. Wordsworth and Coleridge made a conscious effort to break with the immediate past which led to the cultivation of the art and culture of the Middle Ages at the price of the loss of confidence in contemporary taste. Printing of newspapers and books boomed, and encyclopedias became popular. There was a huge expansion in scientific research and study and important advances in chemistry by Sir Humphrey Davy and John Dalton. Science had become woven into the nation’s life.

At this point, Plumb devotes two chapters to the sorry tale of the British in India and Ireland during the eighteenth century. Following Clive’s defeat of the French, India entered a period of political instability, and the East India Company lacked the resources to manage the situation. Warren Hastings stabilized the situation by implementing a systematic policy of war and imperial expansion in the country. Burke and the Whigs objected to Britain’s Indian policy on grounds of morality and expediency. To protect the Indian peasantry from the effects of opium, Hastings insisted on the export of opium products to China. In Harding’s view, ”the end justified the means: without the China trade there was a danger of the whole British rule in India collapsing, and the collapse of British rule would mean a return to anarchy and civil war.” (p. 177)

England was also responsible for the sorry state of Ireland, whose economy was intertwined with that of England to the advantage of the English. The concentration on sheep and cattle raising imposed famine on the peasantry and the introduction of the potato in Ireland helped to save lives. Famines in 1730 and 1741 led to rebellions which were harshly put down. The English took land away from the Irish in retribution and each rebellion led to harsher laws against Catholics. This harsh system worked from 1714 to 1760 but then both Catholics and Protestants in Ireland began to develop a sense of common destiny and Dublin became a real capital. Reformers wanted to free the Irish economy from English control. During the American Revolution, Henry Grattan and the Earl of Charlesmont took charge of the reform movement. Irish prosperity was threatened by the loss of American markets. England made concessions, and in 1785 Pitt sought to make the British Isles a single physical unit permitting trade between the islands and the rest of the Empire. The Irish Parliament approved this reform but the House of Commons rejected it, and Pitt took no further action. Reform having failed, the Irish turned to rebellion and French support. In the end, England maintained its supremacy but at the price of renewing the old tradition of brutality, destruction and massacre in Ireland. Pitt’s last effort was to seek to merge the Irish Parliament and the British Parliament, but George III blocked this proposal and Pitt resigned (temporarily).

As noted above, the old political system of the King’s patronage and rule by prominent families who coalesced around a leader had broken down with the collapse of Lord North’s government in 1782. There were four contenders to lead the government: Charles James Fox, the leader of the younger Whigs who was close to the Prince of Wales; Lord Shelburne, a more capable administrator than Fox but lacking leadership skills; Edmund Burke, the philosopher of the Rockingham Whigs who lacked wealth and a pedigree of birth; and William Pitt, the younger son of Lord Chatham. After the general election of 1784, Pitt emerged as the new leader and succeeded in creating an enduring system of political stability, despite being unable to achieve all his desired political reforms. He became the Prime Minister at age 24 and apart from one short break remained the Prime Minister for the rest of his life. Importantly, he had the support of the City.

Pitt was “inept” in foreign affairs. At first, he sought to avoid war with France in connection with the French Revolution, and failed to prepare Britain for war when it came. He tried to maintain neutrality but this policy failed when France declared war on England in February 1793. Pitt continued to make misjudgments, insisting on conditions for peace that France could never afford to accept. Plumb devotes two chapters to the wars with France, first the war at sea from 1793 to 1802 and then the want land from 1802 to 1815.

Pitt died on January 23, 1806, at the age of 46. Plumb sums him up as follows:

He was a great orator; a dexterous and astute parliamentary politician, but without Walpole’s humanity; his approach to the critical problems of his time was always narrowly rational, and frequently mistaken; a sound administrator, atrociously bad in all questions of strategy, with astonishing strength and persistence of will; a drunkard. Yet his nature and abilities are so twisted into the fabric of our history that this age of war is truly his more than any other man, far more than Burke, he riveted the new, emerging world of nineteenth century England to the country’s past, to its tradition and to its history. (p. 208)

Fox, who was close to death himself, succeeded Pitt as Prime Minister. He had two objectives: peace and the abolition of the slave trade. As of January 1808, he succeeded in the latter. The war continued. Plumb sums up the situation in 1815. On the one hand, Great Britain had emerged as the strongest, richest and most powerful country in the world and after a century of war had defeated France in the struggle for commercial empire. On the other hand, it faced huge difficulties: it was on the edge of bankruptcy and social revolution and to many the future looked dark. “In 1815, at the end of long endurance, there was fear, and envy, and greed, but little hope.” (p. 214) ( )

Wonderful. I should read more survey books of this kind. It left me wanting to read more about British politics in the period as well as about the Napoleonic wars. ( )

Written in 1950, this is an introduction to the period for educated people. So names are used as if you should know who they are. I think when it was written that would have been alright, today it isn't, sadly. Having said that I did learn things so it was worth reading and it's only 224 pages long. ( )

I think this short book is very good. It is interesting, it highlights important developments and it contains the author's thoughtful judgments on the key personalities and institutions. ( )

I read this book for a general overview of the eighteenth century before I launched into my reading for my qualifying exams, which spanned 1780 to 1925. Some specific background knowledge on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries seemed like it would be worthwhile. This book was maybe not all that I hoped; Plumb seemed to assume a level of general knowledge with the era's politics that I simply did not possess, as the whole book was organized around three principal prime ministers who were referred to as though I was already an expert. So it was okay, but I find that I've already forgotten much of the knowledge it contained. (Maybe I should have taken notes as I read?)