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Book review of Patrick Griffin's The Townshend Moment: The Making of Empire in the Eighteenth Century
In the twenty-first century, empire has loomed increasingly large in scholarship—as Richard Price argued in this journal in 2006, it is the “one big thing” at the heart of modern British history. A scattered Atlantic English empire that emerged from the seventeenth century gave way to a global British empire that dramatically expanded during the mid-eighteenth-century wars, and was debated and shaped in the revolutionary era. This complex and influential historical development is the subject of a growing body of scholarship, such as Peter Marshall’s outstanding The Making and Unmaking of Empires: Britain, India and America, c. 1750–1783 (2005). Overwhelmingly, the “new imperial history” focuses on study of social and cultural history. The study of “high politics” has been neglected, left moldering in Namierite tomes written more than a few decades ago. With developments such as the “new diplomatic history,” Andrew O’Shaughnessy’s The Men Who Lost America (2013), and the Georgian Papers Project, however, there are signs that the study of eighteenth-century politicians is being revived and embedded in our increasingly nuanced understanding of Georgian culture.
History
Publication title
Journal of British StudiesVolume
58Pagination
406-407ISSN
0021-9371Department/School
School of HumanitiesPublisher
University of Chicago PressPlace of publication
Chicago, USARepository Status
- Restricted