Series: The Lewis Walpole Series in Eighteenth-Century Culture and History

A new look at the origins of humanitarian intervention We are encouraged to empathise with the suffering of distant strangers every day, from ads for UNICEF to the outcry over Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But where did this type of politics come from? Historian and practising barrister Catherine Arnold locates the religious origins of humanitarian politics in early eighteenth-century Britain...

Based on new archival information, this book upends two hundred years of scholarship on England’s Glorious Revolution to claim that it—not the French Revolution—was the first truly modern revolution. For two hundred years, historians have viewed England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688–1689 as an un-revolutionary revolution—bloodless, consensual, aristocratic, and above all, sensible. In this brilliant new interpretation, Steve Pincus refutes this...

An extraordinary work, decades in the making: the first atlas to illustrate the entire scope of the transatlantic slave trade Winner of the Association of American Publishers' 2010 R.R. Hawkins Award and PROSE Award “A monumental chronicle of this historical tragedy.” —Dwight Garner, New York Times Between 1501 and 1867, the transatlantic slave trade claimed an estimated 12.5 million Africans...

How colonialism shaped the Scottish Enlightenment's conception of race and humanity In the decades after 1750, an increasing number of former medical students from the University of Edinburgh construed humanity as a subject of both intellectual curiosity and colonial interest. They drew on a shared educational background, blending medicine with natural history and moral philosophy, in a range of encounters...

How did creating the British Empire change politics in England itself? After 1660, English governments aimed to convert scattered overseas dominions into a coordinated territorial power base. Stuart monarchs encouraged schemes for expansion in America, Africa, and Asia, imposed closer control over existing territories, and endorsed systems of slave labour to boost colonial prosperity. However, English power was precarious, and...

An exquisite appreciation of the distinctive rewards of historical research and a classic guide to the personal yet disciplined craft of discovery, now in its first English translation. Arlette Farge’s Le Goût de l’archive is widely regarded as a historiographical classic. While combing through two-hundred-year-old judicial records from the Archives of the Bastille, historian Farge was struck by the extraordinarily...

How modern data-driven government originated in the creation and use of administrative archives in the British Empire Over the span of two hundred years, Great Britain established, governed, lost, and reconstructed an empire that embraced three continents and two oceanic worlds. The British ruled this empire by correlating incoming information about the conduct of subjects and aliens in imperial spaces...

An important revisionist history that casts eighteenth-century British politics and imperial expansion in a new light “An important book . . . . Vaughn has greatly added to our understanding of Britain’s empire and politics.”—Journal of Modern History In this bold debut work, historian James M. Vaughn challenges the scholarly consensus that British India and the Second Empire were founded...

A portrait of empire through the biographies of a Native American, a Pacific Islander, and the British artist who painted them both Three interconnected eighteenth-century lives offer a fresh account of the British empire and its intrusion into Indigenous societies. This engaging history brings together the stories of Joshua Reynolds and two Indigenous men, the Cherokee Ostenaco and the Ra‘iatean...

How debates over secrecy and transparency in politics during the eighteenth century shaped modern democracy Does democracy die in darkness, as the saying suggests? Democracy in Darkness, set in the Age of Revolutions, reveals that modern democracy was born in secrecy—despite the widespread conviction that transparency was key to self-government. Using extensive archival research in the United States, France, and...

The first book-length study of Horace Walpole’s scandalous The Mysterious Mother, including critical essays, an abridged script, and a facsimile edition. Horace Walpole’s five-act tragedy The Mysterious Mother (1768), a sensational tale of incest and intrigue, was initially circulated only among the author’s friends. Walpole never permitted it to be performed during his lifetime except as a private theatrical. He...

A moving, intimate portrait of the Enlightenment philosophers as they faced the end of their lives and their historical moment. What would the Enlightenment look like if we viewed it through the eyes of the philosophers as they were facing death? Joanna Stalnaker turns our habitual perspective on the Enlightenment on its head, bringing to light a set of works...

A monumental cartographic history of the African slave trade, updated and expanded in a new edition In the first edition of Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, two leading historians explored the details of the 350-year history of African slave traffic to the New World. They showed, with nearly 200 original maps, where the captives came from, how long the...