Political History

The loss of the greater part of the British Empire in North America, along with the independence of the former thirteen colonies and the creation of a new British territorial empire in eastern India, are conventionally interpreted as unconnected events. American independence has long been seen as marking the end of a ‘first’, largely trading, Atlantic empire of white settlement, while the extension of British rule over Bengal signalled the creation of a new ‘second’ empire of rule over non-European peoples that was to spread over India and into south-east Asia and Africa during the nineteenth century. This book contests that view, arguing that both losses in America and gains in India were part of a single phase of British imperial history in the later eighteenth century. In the face of worldwide competition from France, Britain sought to consolidate her imperial possessions and maximise their contribution to her wealth and security. Policies directed to these ends seemed to threaten the autonomy of the elites in British America and drove them to resistance, for which they were able to win widespread popular support. By contrast, in Bengal in particular, the British were able to achieve accommodations with landowning and commercial interests in India, which enabled their empire to survive and later to grow.

This book offers a detailed account of the genesis and development of Isaiah Berlin’s political thought, philosophical views, and historical understanding, locating his evolving intellectual interests and political positions in the context of the events and trends of inter-war and post-war intellectual and political life. Special emphasis is placed on the roots of Berlin’s later pluralism in philosophical and cultural debates of the inter-war period, and on his evolving account of liberty. The latter is shown to have been shaped by a response to the liberal confrontation with totalitarianism in the inter-war period and the political and ethical dilemmas of the early Cold War era; and to what Berlin saw as a dangerous embrace of an elitist, technocratic, scientistic, and ‘managerial’ intellectual and political stance by liberals themselves. It is also shown that Berlin’s attitude towards what he called ‘positive liberty’ was from the start more complicated and ambivalent than is often realized. The book reveals the multiplicity of Berlin’s influences and interlocutors, the shifts in his thinking, and the striking consistency of his concerns and commitments. In doing so it sheds new light on Berlin’s thought, and offers a better understanding of his place in the political thought of the twentieth century, and, particularly, his contribution to the emergence of a particular strain of liberal thought.

This book describes the evolution of the English parliament from its earliest origins in the late Anglo‐Saxon period. Starting with the national assemblies which began to meet in the reign of King Æthelstan (924–39), it carries the story of those assemblies through to the fully‐fledged parliament of lords and commons which sanctioned the deposition of Edward II in 1327. It argues that parliament developed by a continuous process from the ‘witan’ of the Anglo‐Saxons, but that its development was also shaped and drastically transformed by a series of unforeseen events and episodes, among them the Norman Conquest, the wars of Richard I and John, and, most crucially, Magna Carta, which made national taxation subject to assembly consent. It shows that throughout this process the lesser landholders of the countryside played a larger part in the assembly's work than has usually been assumed, even before they appeared as the knights of the shire, elected representatives of their localities. It emphasizes that at most times the assembly could be viewed as a representative body. It was, however, only in the thirteenth century that ideas of representation derived from legal theory came together with the need for direct representation occasioned by more regular tax demands to promote local elections. It concludes by making some extended comparisons with other European assemblies, especially those of France and Spain, and argues that local circumstances made the English parliament a very different body from most of its overseas counterparts.

The Assembly of Notables which met between 22 February and 25 May 1787 was a major turning point in French, even world history: it was the first link in an unbroken chain which led to the French Revolution which itself formed the template for the modern world. The reform programme which finance minister Calonne, with the full backing of Louis XVI, presented to a hand picked Assembly of Notables, had it been accepted, would have transformed France but not in an obvious way. For embedded in the origins of the French Revolution is this double paradox, that a process which ultimately delivered equality began with the defence of inequality by the Notables, who nevertheless by resisting the king's attempt to increase his power by introducing that same uniform equality started a process which culminated, for a short time at least, in greater liberty. The Notables were able to defeat Calonne because in 1787 (unlike 1789) liberty was prized higher than equality. Also they were united and disciplined whereas the government was divided. Moreover, Calonne's enemies in the ministry formed links with the Notables: Miromesnil, keeper of the seals, with the parlementaire Notables, Castries, the naval minister, with Necker's powerful faction. And the differences in the ministry were not simply factional (as is often assumed) but ideological and it was this which undermined the royal government as it entered its last crisis. For few ministers still believed in absolute monarchy: Castries, for example, advocated an aristocratic constitutionalism like England's, which was also the view of many Notables. In the light of modern scholarship and the latest archival information, the various facets of this seminal event which are often considered in isolation (the king, the royal council, the Notables, Necker and the public) are integrated into an analytical narrative interspersed with the Notables' critique of Calonne's measures as they were successively presented to them.