Books in the The Lewis Walpole Series in Eighteenth-Century Culture and History series

The captivating story of two British brothers whose attempts to reform an empire helped to incite rebellion and revolution in America and insurgency and reform in Ireland

A bold transatlantic history of American independence revealing that 1776 was about far more than taxation without representation

More than 12,000 soldiers from the Highlands of Scotland were recruited to serve in Great Britain's colonies in the Americas in the middle to the late decades of the eighteenth century. In this compelling history, Matthew P. Dziennik corrects the mythologized image of the Highland soldier as a noble savage, a primitive if courageous relic of clanship, revealing instead how the Gaels used their military service to further their own interests and, in doing so, transformed the most maligned region of the British Isles into an important center of the British Empire.

This fascinating book explores Benjamin Franklins social and political thought. Although Franklin is often considered the first American, his intellectual world was cosmopolitan. An active participant in eighteenth-century Atlantic debates over the modern commercial republic, Franklin combined abstract analyses with practical proposals. Houston treats Franklin as shrewd, creative, and engageda lively thinker who joined both learned controversies and political conflicts at home and abroad.Drawing on meticulous archival research, Houston examines such tantalizing themes as trade and commerce, voluntary associations and civic militias, population growth and immigration policy, political union and electoral institutions, freedom and slavery. In each case, he shows how Franklin urged the improvement of self and society.Engagingly written and richly illustrated, this book provides a compelling portrait of Franklin, a fresh perspective on American identity, and a vital account of what it means to be practical.

An eye-opening, meticulously researched new perspective on the influences that shaped the Founders as well as the nation's founding document From one election cycle to the next, a defining question continues to divide the country's political parties: Should the government play a major or a minor role in the lives of American citizens? The Declaration of Independence has long been invoked as a philosophical treatise in favor of limited government. Yet the bulk of the document is a discussion of policy, in which the Founders outlined the failures of the British imperial government. Above all, they declared, the British state since 1760 had done too little to promote the prosperity of its American subjects. Looking beyond the Declaration's frequently cited opening paragraphs, Steve Pincus reveals how the document is actually a blueprint for a government with extensive powers to promote and protect the people's welfare. By examining the Declaration in the context of British imperial debates, Pincus offers a nuanced portrait of the Founders' intentions with profound political implications for today.

In the Enlightenments it was often argued that moral conduct, rather than adherence to theological doctrine, was the true measure of religious belief. The author argues that this "enlightened" emphasis on conduct in religion relied less on arguments from reason alone than has been believed.

In 1798 Robert Morris-"e;financier of the American Revolution,"e; confidant of George Washington, former U.S. senator-plunged from the peaks of wealth and prestige into debtors' prison and public contempt. How could one of the richest men in the United States, one of only two founders who signed the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution, suffer such a downfall? This book examines for the first time the extravagant Philadelphia town house Robert Morris built and its role in bringing about his ruin. Part biography, part architectural history, the book recounts Morris's wild successes as a merchant, his recklessness as a land speculator, and his unrestrained passion in building his palatial, doomed mansion, once hailed as the most expensive private building in the United States but later known as "e;Morris's Folly."e; Setting Morris's tale in the context of the nation's founding, this volume refocuses attention on an essential yet nearly forgotten American figure while also illuminating the origins of America's ongoing, ambivalent attitudes toward the superwealthy and their sensational excesses.

A clothier and a deeply religious man, Joseph Ryder faithfully kept a diary from 1733 until his death in 1768. The author interprets Ryder's diary, which provides a real-life perspective on the relationship between capitalism and Protestantism at a time when Britain was rapidly changing from a traditional to a modern society.

Shows how civil society was first invented as an idea of renewed community for the provincial and defeated elites in the provinces of the British Empire and how this innovation allowed them to enjoy liberty without directly participating in the empire's governance, until the limits of the concept were revealed.

Features stories of plots, sham plots, and the citizen-informers who discovered them are at the centre of author's study of the turbulent decade following the Revolution of 1688.

Examines the moral and religious revival led by the Church of England before and after the Glorious Revolution, and shows how that revival laid the groundwork for a burgeoning civil society in Britain.

Novelists, artists, and philosophers of the eighteenth century understood pleasure as a virtuea gift to be shared with ones companion, with a reader, or with the public.In this daring new book, Thomas Kavanagh overturns the prevailing scholarly tradition that views eighteenth-century France primarily as the incubator of the Revolution. Instead, Kavanagh demonstrates how the art and literature of the era put the experience of pleasure at the center of the cultural agenda, leadingto advances in both ethics and aesthetics.Kavanagh shows that pleasure is not necessarily hedonistic or opposed to Enlightenment ideals in general; rather, he argues that the pleasure of individuals is necessary for the welfare of theircommunity.

A groundbreaking study of the development of form in eighteenth-century aesthetics

For two hundred years historians have viewed Englands Glorious Revolution of 16881689 as an un-revolutionary revolutionbloodless, consensual, aristocratic, and above all, sensible. In this brilliant new interpretation Steve Pincus refutes this traditional view.By expanding the interpretive lens to include a broader geographical and chronological frame, Pincus demonstrates that Englands revolution was a European event, that it took place over a number of years, not months, and that it had repercussions in India, North America, the West Indies, and throughout continental Europe. His rich historical narrative, based on masses of new archival research, traces the transformation of English foreign policy, religious culture, and political economy that, he argues, was the intended consequence of the revolutionaries of 16881689.James II developed a modernization program that emphasized centralized control, repression of dissidents, and territorial empire. The revolutionaries, by contrast, took advantage of the new economic possibilities to create a bureaucratic but participatory state. The postrevolutionary English state emphasized its ideological break with the past and envisioned itself as continuing to evolve. All of this, argues Pincus, makes the Glorious Revolutionnot the French Revolutionthe first truly modern revolution. This wide-ranging book reenvisions the nature of the Glorious Revolution and of revolutions in general, the causes and consequences of commercialization, the nature of liberalism, and ultimately the origins and contours of modernity itself.