Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-17T20:08:22.108Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

British Politics and the Demise of the Roman Republic: 1700–1939

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Frank M. Turner
Frank M. Turner
Affiliation:
Yale University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

During the past quarter century scholars from several disciplines have established the central metaphorical function of the demise of the ancient Roman Republic for both literary and political discourse in eighteenth century Britain. But the reverse side of that inquiry – the impact of the analogy between Britain and Rome on the modern historical interpretation of the ancient republic – has received virtually no attention. This oversight has concealed a remarkable modern British historiographical phenomenon that did not end at the close of the eighteenth century. Rather, for over two hundred years modern British political ideologies and preoccupations determined not only how the collapse of the Roman republic would be interpreted but also in large measure even whether it would receive historical examination. The various shifts of historical interpretation from the age of Queen Anne through that of Chamberlain illustrate with stunning and disturbing clarity the relentless manner in which contemporary political concerns can shape, revise, and eventually overwhelm modes of historical understanding without discovery of significant new evidence or the application of new methodology. By the twentieth century methodology itself, in the form of prosopography, in part served the ends of political commentary.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , September 1986 , pp. 577 - 599
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Robbins, Caroline, The eighteenth-century Commonwealthman studies in the transmission, development and circumstance of English liberal thought from the restoration of Charles II until the War with the Thirteen Colonies (New York, 1968, originally published, 1959)Google Scholar, Robbins, Caroline (ed), Two English republican tracts (Cambridge, 1969)Google Scholar, Kramnick, Isaac, Bolingbroke and his circle The politics of nostalgia in the age of Walpole (Cambridge, Mass, 1968)Google Scholar, Wood, Gordon, The creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (New York, 1972, originally published, 1969)Google Scholar, Bailyn, Bernard, The ideological origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass, 1967)Google Scholar, Pocock, J G A, The Machiavellian momemt Florentine political thought and the Atlantic republican tradition (Princeton, 1975)Google Scholar, Browning, Reed, Political and constitutional ideas of the court whigs (Baton Rouge and London, 1982), pp 1 34, 210–56Google Scholar, Gunn, J A W, Beyond liberty and property the process of self-recognition in eighteenth-century political thought (Kingston and Montreal, 1983), pp 1–42Google Scholar

2 Notable exceptions are Ward, Addison, ‘The tory view of Roman history,’ Studies in English literature, 1500–1900, IV (1964), 413–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Johnson, J W, The formation of English neoclassical thought (Princeton, 1967)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Weinbrot, Howard D, Augustus Caesar in ‘Augustan’ England (Princeton, 1978)Google Scholar, and Yavetz, Zwi, Julius Caesar and his public image (Ithaca, 1983)Google Scholar

3 Monthly Review, XXX (1764), 107–8Google Scholar.

4 See works cited in fn. 1 and also Dickinson, H. T., Liberty and property: political ideology in eighteenth-century Britain (London, 1977), pp. 102–18, 163–92Google Scholar.

5 Middleton, Conyers, The history of the life of Marcus Tullius Cicero (London, 1741), 1, iiiGoogle Scholar.

6 Ibid. 1, 32–4, 48–50, 152–3.

7 Ibid. I, 225. See Browning, , Political and constitutional ideas of the Court whigs, pp. 210–56Google Scholar for the explicit Ciceronianism of Walpole's supporters. Browning's views and those of the present essay in regard to Middleton dissent from Robbins, , The eighteenth-century Commonwealthman, pp. 291–3Google Scholar.

8 Blackwell, Thomas, Memoirs of the court of Augustus, 3 vols. (Edinburgh, 1753–1763), 1, 194, 166, 178, 376Google Scholar; 1, 8, II, 183. For reviews of Blackwell, , see Critical Review, 1 (1756), 66–74Google Scholar; Monthly Review, VIII (1753), 420–38Google Scholar; XIV (1756), 223–37; Literary Magazine, 1 (1756), 41–2, 239–40Google Scholar. See also Weinbrot, Augustus Caesar in ‘Augustan’ England, passim.

9 Blackwell, , Memoirs of the court of Augustus, 1, 133, 144–7, 194, 376–8Google Scholar; II, 272–3, 373–9.

10 The only extensive discussion of Hooke occurs in Ward, , ‘The Tory view of Roman history’, Studies in English Literature, 1500–190, IV (1964), 443–56Google Scholar. This little-known, excellent article is somewhat dated because it appeared before the major work on the ideological character of eighteenth-century politics.

11 Hooke, Nathaniel, The Roman history from the building of Rome to the ruin of the Commonwealth, 4 vols. (London, 1738–1771), II, 532Google Scholar.

12 Ibid. II, 534, III, 5, 223 fn, 286.

13 Ibid. iv, 4, 447. Many of Hooke's views received further diffusion in Goldsmith's, OliverThe Roman history from the foundation of the city of Rome, to the destruction of the Western Empire, 2 vols. (London, 1769)Google Scholar.

14 See J. G. A. Pocock, ‘1776: the Revolution against parliament’, Alison Gilbert Olson, ‘Parliament, empire, and parliamentary law, 1776’, and Brewer, John, ‘English radicalism in the age of George III’, in Pocock, J. G. A. (ed.), Three British revolutions: 1641, 1688, 1776 (Princeton, 1980), pp. 265–367Google Scholar.

15 There exists no substantial discussion of Ferguson as an historian. See Kettler, David, The social and political thought of Adam Ferguson (Columbus, Ohio; 1965)Google Scholar and Forbes, Duncan, ‘Introduction’, to Ferguson, Adam, An essay on the history of civil society (Edinburgh, 1966), pp. xiii–xliGoogle Scholar.

16 Ferguson, Adam, The history of the progress and termination of the Roman Republic, new edition, 5 vols. (Edinburgh, 1799), 1, 390–1, 401Google Scholar.

17 Ibid. 11, 170, 208, 209; iv. 140.

18 Ibid. iv, III, 140; 11, 369; iv, 101, 160.

19 Ibid. v, 82–3, 83, 85.

20 Turner, Frank M., The Greek heritage in Victorian Britain (New Haven, 1981), 189–204Google Scholar.

21 Arnold, Thomas, History of the later Roman Commonwealth, from the end of the Second Punic War to the death of Caesar; and of the reign of Augustus with a life of Trajan, second edition, 2 vols. (London, 1849), 1, 20, 59, 60Google Scholar.

22 Ibid. I, 109, 119, 263; 11, 37, 291, 400.

23 Mommsen, Theodore, The history of Rome, 4 vols., Dickson, William P. (tr.) (London 1862–7)Google Scholar; German publication 1854–6. Book v deals with Julius Caesar.

24 DeQuincey, Thomas, The works of Thomas DeQuincey (New York, 1878), VII, 9–64Google Scholar; Duruy, Victor, Histoire des Remains et des peuples soumis à leur domination (Paris, 1843)Google Scholar. See also Drumann, Wilhelm, Geschichte Roms in seinem Uebergange von der republikanischen zur monarchischen verfassung (Koenigsberg, 1837)Google Scholar; and Long, George (tr. and ed.), The civil wars of Rome: Select lives translated from Plutarch with notes (London, 1846), III, 259Google Scholar. Napoleon's, Louis contribution to this literature appeared as Histoire de Jules César, 2 vols. (Paris, 1865–6)Google Scholar.

25 Merivale, Charles, A history of the Romans under the Empire, second edition (London, 1852), 1, 13Google Scholar.

26 Ibid. 1, 97, 146, 143; II, 406; 1, ix, 407.

27 Ibid, III, 441, 465, 555.

28 Edinburgh Review, XCII (1850), 69–70Google Scholar; Eclectic Review, XCV (1852), 433Google Scholar; Frascr's Magazine, XLVII (1853), 662, 668–9Google Scholar

29 Merivale, A history of the Romans under the Empire, III, 547; iv, 8, 56–7; I, vii–viii.

30 Williams, John, The life of Julius Caesar (London, 1854)Google Scholar; Liddell, Henry G., A history of Rome from the earliest times to the establishment of the Empire, 2 vols. (London, 1855)Google Scholar.

31 Congreve, Richard, The Roman Empire of the West (London, 1855), pp. 7, 175Google Scholar. See also Beesly's, Edward Spencer positivist approval of Roman monarchical government in his 1865 and 1867 Fortnightly Review articles, republished as Cataline, Clodius, and Tiberius (New York, 1924)Google Scholar. For a critique of Congreve, see Smith, Goldwin, ‘Review of Mr. Congreve's “Roman Empire of the West”’, in Oxford essays: 1856, pp. 295–311Google Scholar.

32 Anderson, Olive, A liberal state at war: English politics and economics during the Crimean War (London, 1967)Google Scholar.

33 Froude, James Anthony, Caesar: a sketch (New York, 1879), pp. 10, 21, 195, 388, 526, 525Google Scholar. In the closing paragraph of the first edition which was omitted in subsequent editions, Froude compared Caesar an d Christ as founders of enduring kingdoms, pp. 549–50.

34 Semmel, Bernard, Imperialism and social reform: English social-imperial thought, 1895–1914 (London, 1960)Google Scholar; Searle, G. R., The quest for national efficiency: a study in British politics and political thought, 1899–1914 (Oxford, 1971)Google Scholar; Scally, Robert J., The origins of the Lloyd George coalition: the politics of social imperialism, 1900–1918, (Princeton, 1975)Google Scholar.

35 Coon, Raymond H., William Warde Fowler, an Oxford humanist (Oxford, 1934)Google Scholar; and for Fowler's admiration of Mommsen see Fowler, W. W., Roman essays and interpretations (Oxford, 1920), pp. 258–68Google Scholar.

36 Fowler, W. Warde, Julius Caesar and the foundation of the Roman imperial system (London and New York, 1894; originally published 1891), pp. 2, 22, 26Google Scholar.

37 Ibid. pp. 86, 91, 242, 358, 383.

38 Heitland, William, The Roman Republic (London, 1902), III, 69Google Scholar. See also Pelham, H. F., Outlines of Roman history (New York and London, 1893)Google Scholar and Taylor, T. M., A constitutional and political history of Rome from the earliest times to the reign of Domitian (London, 1899)Google Scholar. In a key passage Taylor wrote that Caesar's work of government ‘was undertaken not by a party politician for party reasons, but by the master of the Roma n Empire determined to use his power for the good of the Empire as a whole. Caesar's rule was the triumph of order. For years the Government had been falling into chaos under the short-sighted rule of an incompetent Aristocracy; in 67 B.C. the people had revolted; the demand for efficiency had resulted in the Gabinian Law and the Empire was the logical outcome of this revolt. Caesar had begun his political career as a Democrat, an d the democratic tendencies which had been growing for generations all found their expression in Caesar's monarchy. A change in the central government was necessary and experience had shown that such a change could only be effective if the strong rule of a single disinterested man was substituted for the sordid an d incapable government of the Senate’ (p. 374).

39 Forsyth, William, Life of Marcus Tullius Cicero, fifth American edition (New York, 1878; dedication date 1863)Google Scholar; Trollope, Anthony, The life of Cicero, 2 vols. (London, 1880)Google Scholar; Tyrrell, Robert Yelverton, The correspondence of M. Tullius Cicero, 5 vols. (London and Dublin, 1879–1897)Google Scholar; Strachan-Davidson, J. L., Cicero and the fall of the Roman Republic (New York and London, 1894)Google Scholar.

40 Strachan-Davidson, J. L., ‘Froude' Caesar’, Quarterly Review, CXLVIII (1879), 477Google Scholar.

41 See particularly Weinbrot, Augustus Caesar in ‘Augustan’ England, passim.

42 H. F. Pelham, ‘Augustus’, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11 th edn.

43 Mommsen, Theodor, Romisches Staatsrecht, 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1871–1888), 11, 875 ff.Google Scholar; III, 1252 ff. See also, English Historical Review, I (1886), 350–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Taylor, , A constitutional and political history of Rome, p. 473Google Scholar; Bury, J. B., A History of the Roman Empire from its foundations to the death of Marcus Aurelius, third impression (London, 1900; originally published 1893), pp. 15–17, 29–32Google Scholar; Adcock, F. D., ‘The achievement of Augustus’, Cambridge Ancient History (Cambridge, 1934), x, 583–606Google Scholar; Hammond, Mason, The Augustan Principate in theory and practice during the Julio-Claudian Period (Cambridge, Mass., 1933)Google Scholar.

44 Shuckburgh, E. S., Augustus: The life and times of the founder of the Roman Empire (B.C. 63–A.D. 14), second impression (London, 1905Google Scholar; originally published, 1902); Firth, John B., Augustus Caesar and the organization of the Empire of Rome (New York and London, 1903)Google Scholar; Francis, René, Augustus: his life and work (London: 1914)Google Scholar; Buchan, John, Augustus (London and Boston, 1937)Google Scholar.

45 Shuckburgh, , Augustus: the life and times of the founder of the Roman Empire, p.vGoogle Scholar.

46 Firth, , Augustus Caesar and the organization of the Empire of Rome, pp. 180, 364Google Scholar.

47 Syme, Ronald, The Roman Revolution (Oxford, 1979; originally published, 1939), pp. viii, vii, 130. 134Google Scholar.

48 Ibid. p. 513.