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Book review of Patrick Griffin's The Townshend Moment: The Making of Empire in the Eighteenth Century

journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-23, 01:42 authored by Anthony PageAnthony Page
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 Studies

Volume

58

Pagination

406-407

ISSN

0021-9371

Department/School

School of Humanities

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Place of publication

Chicago, USA

Repository Status

  • Restricted

Socio-economic Objectives

Expanding knowledge in history, heritage and archaeology

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