Thomas Paine (1737-1809) was England's greatest revolutionary: no other reformer was as actively involved in events of the scale of the American and French Revolutions, and none wrote such best-selling texts with the impact of Common Sense and Rights of Man. No one else combined the roles of activist and theorist, or did so in the "age of revolutions", fundamental as it was to the emergence of the "modern world". But his fame meant that he was taken up and reinterpreted for current use by successive later commentators and politicians, so that the "historic Paine" was too often obscured by the "usable Paine". J. C. D. Clark explains Paine against a revised background of early- and mid-eighteenth-century England. He argues that Paine knew and learned less about events in America and France than was once thought. He de-attributes a number of publications, and passages, hitherto assumed to have been Paine's own, and detaches him from a number of causes (including anti-slavery, women's emancipation, and class action) with which he was once associated. Paine's formerly obvious association with the early origin and long-term triumph of natural rights, republicanism, and democracy needs to be rethought. As a result, Professor Clark offers a picture of radical and reforming movements as more indebted to the initiatives of large numbers of men and women in fast-evolving situations than to the writings of a few individuals who framed lasting, and eventually triumphant, political discourses.

Thomas Paine: Britain, America, and France in the Age of Enlightenment and Revolution

History

Clark, J. C. D.

Americas

Oxford University Press

Thomas Paine (1737-1809) was England's greatest revolutionary: no other reformer was as actively involved in events of the scale of the American and French Revolutions, and none wrote such best-selling texts with the impact of Common Sense and Rights of Man. No one else combined the roles of activist and theorist, or did so in the 'age of revolutions', fundamental as it was to the emergence of the 'modern world'. But his fame meant that he was taken up and reinterpreted for current use by successive later commentators and politicians, so that the 'historic Paine' was too often obscured by the 'usable Paine'. J. C. D. Clark explains Paine against a revised background of early- and mid-eighteenth-century England. He argues that Paine knew and learned less about events in America and France than was once thought. He de-attributes a number of publications, and passages, hitherto assumed to have been Paine's own, and detaches him from a number of causes (including anti-slavery, women's emancipation, and class action) with which he was once associated. Paine's formerly obvious association with the early origin and long-term triumph of natural rights, republicanism, and democracy needs to be rethought. As a result, Professor Clark offers a picture of radical and reforming movements as more indebted to the initiatives of large numbers of men and women in fast-evolving situations than to the writings of a few individuals who framed lasting, and eventually triumphant, political discourses.

Enlightenment studies are currently in a state of flux, with unresolved arguments among its adherents about its dates, its locations, and the contents of the 'movement'. This book cuts the Gordian knot. There are many books claiming to explain the Enlightenment, but most assume that it was a thing. J. C. D. Clark shows what it actually was, namely a historiographical concept. Currently 'the Enlightenment' is a term widely accepted across popular culture and in a variety of academic disciplines, notably history, philosophy, political theory, political science, literary studies, and theology; Clark calls for a fundamental reconsideration in each. The Enlightenment: An Idea and Its History provides a critical historical analysis of the Enlightenment in England, Scotland, France, Germany, and the United States from c. 1650 to the present. It argues that the degree of commonality between social and intellectual movements in each--and, more broadly, between the five societies--has been overstated for polemical purposes. Clark shows that the concept of 'the Enlightenment' was not widely adopted in those societies until the mid-twentieth century; indeed, that it was unknown in the eighteenth. Without the concept, people at the time were unable to act in ways that would have created the Enlightenment as a coherent movement. Since the conventional account has held that the Enlightenment was a phenomenon, the idea could be used as a component of what has been called a 'civil religion': a summing up of the myths of origin, aims, and essential values of a society from which dissent is not permitted. An appreciation that it was instead a historiographical concept undermines, in turn, the idea that there was any great transition to what came to be called 'modernity'.

The Enlightenment: An Idea and Its History

Europe

It is often assumed that Sir Lewis Namier and Sir Herbert Butterfield demolished the 'Whig interpretation of history'. In fact, much was allowed to remain standing by their failure to offer a new synthesis of English party politics. In this book Dr Clark provides the key component for such a new synthesis by a detailed exposition of the crisis of the 1750s, which was instrumental in the destruction of the party system and the emergence of new practices in the multi-factional world. The Court v. Country analysis of the politics of c. 1714-1760, still widely current, is refuted by a demonstration of the survival of the Whig and Tory parties of Queen Anne's reign until the 1750s; the long debate about George III and the constitution is set in a new perspective; and major new insights are offered into the nature of party and party politics.

The Dynamics of Change: The Crisis of the 1750s and English Party Systems (Cambridge Studies in the History and Theory of Politics)

Cambridge University Press

This book is the first survey of the period between the Glorious Revolution and the Reform Bill to attempt to outline some general explanations of England as an ancien-regime state, dominated politically, culturally and ideologically by the three pillars of an early-modern social order: monarchy, aristocracy, church. In this schematic study, which stems from his earlier work on party-politics in these years, Dr Jonathan Clark combines techniques of analysis, historiographical review and narrative to produce a new and challenging synthesis of political ideology, religion, psephology, social structure and cultural hegemony. In its major reinterpretations of such diverse subjects as the wider impact of economic growth, the nature of the social hierarchy, Jacobitism, the Church of England, radicalism, Edmund Burke and the Reform Bill, this study has much to offer to students and senior historians alike.

English Society 1688–1832: Ideology, Social Structure and Political Practice during the Ancien Regime (Cambridge Studies in the History and Theory of Politics)

This iconoclastic and satirical book provides a radical reconstruction of the recent historiography of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It creates an alliance between those revisionist historians who have rewritten the received account of the origins of the English Civil War and those historians who have been rethinking the Hanoverian era. Revolution and Rebellion is thus a companion volume to the author's English Society 1688-1832. The book counters the Marxist interpretation of the 1640s and the 'English Revolution' by developing our new understanding of the non-revolutionary nature of the world after 1660: it challenges the appropriateness of 'revolution' as a description of events like those of 1688, 1715, 1745, the American Revolution, the Industrial Revolution or the Reform Bill, drawing attention instead to the idea of 'rebellion'. This is the first book so to link English history in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and it will be required reading for students and teachers of both eras.

Revolution and Rebellion: State and Society in England in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

This iconoclastic and satirical book provides a radical reconstruction of the recent historiography of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It creates an alliance between those revisionist historians who have rewritten the received account of the origins of the English Civil War and those historians who have been rethinking the Hanoverian era. Revolution and Rebellion is thus a companion volume to the author's English Society 1688-1832. The book counters the Marxist interpretation of the 1640s and the 'English Revolution' by developing our new understanding of the non-revolutionary nature of the world after 1660: it challenges the appropriateness of 'revolution' as a description of events like those of 1688, 1715, 1745, the American Revolution, the Industrial Revolution or the Reform Bill, drawing attention instead to the idea of 'rebellion'. This is the first book so to link English history in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and it will be required reading for students and teachers of both eras.

This book creates a new framework for the political and intellectual relations between Britain and America in a momentous period that witnessed the formation of modern states on both sides of the Atlantic and the extinction of an Anglican, aristocratic and monarchical order. It stands as part of a project aimed at revising the map of early modern English-speaking societies, which includes Dr. Clark's previous books English Society, 1688SH1832 (1985) and Revolution and Rebellion (1986). This important revisionary study will be essential reading for historians, social scientists and students of literature of the period.

The Language of Liberty 1660–1832: Political Discourse and Social Dynamics in the Anglo-American World, 1660–1832

This book creates a new framework for the political and intellectual relations between Britain and America in a momentous period that witnessed the formation of modern states on both sides of the Atlantic and the extinction of an Anglican, aristocratic and monarchical order. It stands as part of a project aimed at revising the map of early modern English-speaking societies, which includes Dr. Clark's previous books English Society, 1688SH1832 (1985) and Revolution and Rebellion (1986). This important revisionary study will be essential reading for historians, social scientists and students of literature of the period.

The Language of Liberty 1660-1832: Political Discourse and Social Dynamics in the Anglo-American World

Samuel Johnson: Literature, Religion and English Cultural Politics from the Restoration to Romanticism

This book offers an analysis of the life and thought of Samuel Johnson from a historian's viewpoint, which reverses the orthodoxy that has dominated the subject for over thirty years. J.C.D. Clark presents here a Johnson strikingly different from the apolitical, pragmatic and eccentric figure who emerges from the pages of most students of English literature. Johnson's commitments and conflicts in religion and politics are reconstructed; his role in the literary dynamics of his age is revealed against a new context for English cultural politics between the Restoration and the age of Romanticism.

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Clark, J. C. D.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Clark, J. C. D.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Clark, J. C. D.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Thomas Paine: Britain, America, and France in the Age of Enlightenment and Revolution

Thomas Paine: Britain, America, and France in the Age of Enlightenment and Revolution

The Enlightenment: An Idea and Its History

The Dynamics of Change: The Crisis of the 1750s and English Party Systems (Cambridge Studies in the History and Theory of Politics)

English Society 1688–1832: Ideology, Social Structure and Political Practice during the Ancien Regime (Cambridge Studies in the History and Theory of Politics)

Revolution and Rebellion: State and Society in England in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

Revolution and Rebellion: State and Society in England in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

The Language of Liberty 1660–1832: Political Discourse and Social Dynamics in the Anglo-American World, 1660–1832

The Language of Liberty 1660-1832: Political Discourse and Social Dynamics in the Anglo-American World

Samuel Johnson: Literature, Religion and English Cultural Politics from the Restoration to Romanticism