Undergraduate Course: Liberty and Scandal: Culture and Controversy in Britain and America, c.1689-1768 (HIST10446)
Course Outline
| School | School of History, Classics and Archaeology |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 4 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 40 |
ECTS Credits | 20 |
| Summary | This course brings together influential statements in political, intellectual, and cultural history, to consider the functions of "liberty" as a rallying cry and as an interpretive concept, in Britain and its American colonies, c.1689-1768. Our primary sources document attacks on "liberty", and public reactions to them, to suggest the matters at stake concerning religious dissent and personal conscience, representational government, imperial trade, indigenous and racial slavery, freedom from arbitrary arrest, and liberty of the press. We will do this by attending to the material conditions that shaped the circulation of culture and ideas during this period, and historical reception of these controversies over the past fifty years. |
| Course description |
Political historians have defined this period (from the Revolution Settlement to the wake of the Seven Years War) by the expansion of Britain's empire and its systems of government. Intellectual historians have referred to the circulation of Enlightenment ideas and the emergence of a discourse of personal and political rights. Cultural historians have looked to representations of gender and race, observed "the pleasures of imagination," and noted that English-speaking consumers expressed their tastes, and distastes, in increasingly public displays. Britons and British colonists enjoyed unprecedented access to print, and they grasped opportunities to participate in controversies by consuming it.
Indeed, this period was animated by public scandals and literary controversies, whose protagonists and antagonists adopted a language of "British liberty" and "patriotism": these included Toland and Darby's radical editions of Commonwealth tracts (1696-1700); Trenchard and Gordon's anonymous Cato's Letters (1720-23); Thomson's edition of Milton to advocate for war in Spain over its Caribbean raids (c.1728-38); the court-sanctioned torture of black men in New York over accusations of arson (1741); rioting in London over the arrest of John Wilkes (1763) - all of which generated representations in the popular press, trumpeting cries of "liberty." Over the past fifty years historians have interpreted these events, on both sides of the Atlantic, by drawing upon the same ideological vocabulary as was done during the eighteenth century. To what extent is "liberty" a useful concept for interpreting this period? What can these scandals reveal about social and intellectual conditions, and the ways historians made sense of them?
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | A pass in 40 credits of third level historical courses or equivalent.
Before enrolling students on this course, Personal Tutors are asked to contact the History Honours Admission Administrator to ensure that a place is available (Tel: 50 3780). |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- demonstrate, by way of coursework, command of cultural and social history of this period;
- demonstrate, by way of coursework, an ability to read, analyse and reflect critically upon relevant scholarship in eighteenth-century studies;
- demonstrate, by way of coursework, an ability to understand, evaluate and utilise a variety of primary source materials, including manuscripts, early-printed books, and visual illustrations;
- demonstrate, by way of coursework, the ability to develop and sustain scholarly arguments in oral and written form, by formulating appropriate questions and utilising relevant evidence;
- demonstrate independence of mind and initiative; intellectual integrity and maturity; an ability to evaluate the work of others, including peers.
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Reading List
Armitage, D., The Ideological Origins of the British Empire, (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000).
Bailyn, B. ed., Pamphlets of the American Revolution, 1750-76, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1965).
Clark, A. Scandal: The Sexual Politics of the British Constitution, (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2004).
Hunt, T. Defining John Bull: Political Caricature and National Identity in Late Georgian Britain, (London: Routledge, 2003).
Kidd, C. "North Britishness and the Nature of Eighteenth-Century Patriotisms," Historical Journal, 39 (1996): 361-82.
Lepore, J. New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan, (New York: Knopf, 2005)
Pocock, J. P. A., "Machiavelli, James Harrington, and English Political Ideologies in the Eighteenth Century," William and Mary Quarterly, 22 (October 1965): 549-83.
Robbins, C. The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1959)
Skinner, Q., Liberty before Liberalism, (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998)
Thomas, P. John Wilkes: A Friend to Liberty, (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1996)
Wilson, K. "Empire, Trade and Popular Politics in Mid-Hanoverian Britain: The Case of Admiral Vernon," Past and Present, 121 (November 1988): 74-109.
Woodfine, P. Britannia's Glories: The Walpole Ministry and the 1739 War with Spain, (Woodbridge, Boydell P, 1998). |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Adam Budd
Tel: (0131 6)50 3834
Email: adam.budd@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Lorna Berridge
Tel:
Email: Lorna.Berridge@ed.ac.uk |
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