This chapter examines Kerouac in the context of 1950s literary culture in the United States, with particular emphasis on the Cold War. The 1950s was the decade Kerouac became famous overnight with the publication of On the Road, and the decade he produced the bulk of his most significant writing, including Visions of Cody, Doctor Sax, The Subterraneans, The Dharma Bums, and Mexico City Blues, among others. This chapter explores the relationship between Kerouac’s literary production during the 1950s and the multilayered cultural imperatives of the Cold War.

This chapter focuses on Kerouac’s last major novel, Vanity of Duluoz in the context of the 1960s. This novel was composed under fraught conditions as Kerouac labored under intense financial pressure to earn money to pay for his mother’s debilitating illnesses. Not only was it a struggle for Kerouac to complete it, the novel also powerfully documents Kerouac’s struggle with reconciling his traditional, “conservative” upbringing with the nascent “Beat” rebellious energies – born in the forties and continuing into the sixties – a conflict which this chapter explores.

The introductory chapter argues that the near universal rise of the radical Right is more than a series of national coincidences and that despite differences in their ideas and policies, a globally connected Right is emerging. One indication of this is the emergence of global networks and events such as the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the NatCon Conferences, and the Madrid Forum. However, the globality of today’s radical Right goes beyond mere transnational networks, and requires a wider rethinking of its relationship to the global in two ways. First, the radical Right is constituted by transnational interactions operating at multiple scales. Second, it defines itself and is co-constituted by its relation to the global, not just to the national. The chapter also discusses the vexed issue of defining the Right and the difficulties of studying the Right.

This chapter tracks the changes to the American conservative movement that have unfolded since the heyday of William F. Buckley, who founded the conservative magazine National Review in 1955. Centered on Buckley’s defiance of all things left wing and on his provocative writings on welfare, critiques of the New Deal, and Cold War anxieties, this chapter shows the conflicted relationship many contemporary American conservatives have with his legacy. "Serious conservatives" who place themselves in Buckley’s lineage find themselves alienated in the contemporary media landscape, which, although displaying the same incendiary spirit as Buckley’s essays and his television show Firing Line, lacks the intellectual seriousness that many found in his writings. More generally, this chapter identifies the recurrent themes in conservative writing and dwells on the agitational poetics of conservative essayism.

The conclusions discuss the historiographical preference shown to the Trojan and biblical origin stories, and the motif of Merovingian decline following the death of Dagobert as a consequence of the Dionysian influence on the historiographical tradition. It discusses the different solutions proposed forthe transfer of royal power in AD 751, and the need to contend with the charged legacy of this event. Different responses to Carolingian ascent began to emerge in the tenth century, as Carolingian power diminished and then was supplanted by the Capetians. The chapter concludes with a discussion of genre and its effects on our understanding of the sources and the intent of the authors.

This chapter argues that the presidency of Lyndon Johnson remade Cold War conservatism in the mid to late 1960s. Rather than a movement defined by the political candidacy of Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, the right cut its political teeth in opposition to President Johnson, growing savvier, more politically effective, and more ideological complex as it defined itself against the Great Society and the revitalized Cold War liberalism of the Johnson administration. In particular, Cold War conservatism took a populist turn, as the right navigated the majoritarian politics of the civil rights era and the popularity of more heterodox conservative figures like Alabama Governor George Wallace, who, while not a movement conservative, appealed to the same base that the right hoped to harness in national politics. After examining the emergence of Cold War conservatism and Senator Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign, the chapter then focuses on the ways conservative activists sought to counter, coopt, and contain Johnson’s presidency, ultimately developing the political coalition that would lead to the election of Ronald Reagan.

This chapter sketches the history of movement conservatism’s impact on American literature from the 1950s to the present. Midcentury conservatives, in their war against an intelligentsia that they perceived as dominated by liberal voices, evolved a model of counter-expertise that continues to inform right-wing intellectual practice today. This model was influenced by midcentury disciplinary conflicts between literature and the social sciences, with conservatives affirming a literary model of truth against the rationalism of social scientific discourse. Focusing on writers who published in the book review section of National Review, this chapter shows how the idea of conservative counter-expertise attracted critics and fiction writers such as Joan Didion, Hugh Kenner, Guy Davenport, and Garry Wills. However, the conservative critique of the liberal intelligentsia was in the process of turning into a critique of expertise as such; this critique pushed many of these writers away from the magazine and helped fashion the version of the left/eight divide that defines American politics today.

This chapter presents moderation as an alternative to ideology and relies on the definition of politics given by Michael Oakeshott, according to which politics is and must remain a limited activity providing the general rules of conduct. It makes a distinction between ideological and political thinking and comments on the overlap and differences between moderation and conservatism.

This chapter explores the ways in which conservative politics and patriotic sentiment circulated in the literary culture of the 1890s, tracing the reactionary and jingoistic positions of a range of writers. From the counter-decadence of Marie Corelli and Hugh E. M. Stutfield, to the conservative critiques of modernity by Arthur Machen and Lionel Johnson, the chapter demonstrates how literary radicalism and political reactionaryism coexisted in the 1890s. It explores debates around patriotism, looking at the passionate support for imperialism in Michael Field, Algernon Charles Swinburne and John Davidson, alongside George Gissing’s conservative critique of the emerging jingoism of the period, and argues that responses to the Second Anglo-Boer War should be placed front and center in literary histories of the 1890s to ensure attention is paid to the conservatism that became ever more pervasive after the Wilde trials. It notes the variety of conservatisms that circulated in the 1890s and the necessity for literary critics to read these responses with care to better understand the complex cultural politics of the decade.

The anticolonial career of Philippine newspaper editor, diplomat, and UN fixture Carlos P. Romulo (1899–1985) provides a unique and useful entry point into the anticolonial transnationals of the twentieth century. Pro-American, anti-communist, economically and politically liberal, Romulo is the kind of anticolonial internationalist who often gets left out of the recent scholarly turn to the international thought, practices, and implications of anticolonialism. However, through his early writings, newspaper columns, and personal papers, Romulo’s anticolonial vision of the international emerges, even if it was not a radical vision. Through his membership of the Rotary Club and his admiration for Wilsonian internationalism, Romulo developed a vision of the international as “club,” which he applied throughout his career, from the 1930s to the 1950s.

The British constitution is typically seen as not only a unique, but a uniquely conservative, set of political arrangements among the constitutions of the world. This characterisation stems from the constitution’s pre-modern origins and continuity over time, and its unwritten, traditional, and organic nature. This historical experience has been far from free of crises, fundamental changes (and reversals), or violent conflict. But the distinguishing feature of British constitutional history is the absence of a modern moment of revolutionary rupture, marking the shift of the state’s foundations from traditional rule to constitutional modernity and documentary constitutionalism.

It is a commonplace in discussions of Anne Lister to identify her as a self-proclaimed Tory, and eventually a Tory landowner. But the Lister of the diaries also fancied herself a Rousseauvian individualist and something of a Byronic hero, a champion of Romantic individualism that sits somewhat oddly with her sense of social entitlement. I have argued elsewhere that Lister’s conservatism may have been compensatory, a form of normalisation and possibly of protection. In this chapter I complicate those arguments by looking more closely and more broadly at Lister’s politics - and politics with both a capital and a small ’p’. Lister lived during an age of revolution and reaction, of Napoleonic wars, of abolitionist agitation, of the first major Reform Act, of colonial expansion, of early industrialisation and rail travel. What were her attitudes to these major phenomena that do not necessarily line up neatly with a single party? What issues did she care about, and what did being a (non-voting, because female) Tory mean to her? Were there chinks in her conservative political philosophy? Did her views change over time? And is it possible that Lister’s conservatism was not compensatory at all, but rather part and parcel of her self-fashioning as a lesbian?

The 1980s saw a revival of infrastructure as a theme in American politics. This reflected a decline in federal investment and inspired concerns about decline in the fate of America’s future. Soon after Ronald Reagan took office, politicians and experts took to the stage to make the case for renewed infrastructure investment. In the midst of our perennial debates over fiscal politics, many have looked to the New Deal as a source of inspiration, a reminder of the possibilities that lie in concerted government action in the public good. Infrastructure’s best centrist case as an object of public investment lies in economic growth and development, supplying a foundation or precursor to other activities that are considered valuable, such as innovation, trade, jobs, etc. social liberals will want to broaden the category of infrastructure in ways that fit within their vision of good government as an agent of advance. Fiscal conservatives, on the other hand, may worry that infrastructure is just a “gobbledygook” term for pork barrel, tax-and-spend politics, and a displacement of the private sector by government. The recent debate over President Biden’s infrastructure legislation reflects these dynamics.