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Additional Reading > History > Britain, 1714–1815
Documentary sources of the period are gathered in D.B. Horn and Mary Ransome (eds.), English Historical Documents, 1714–1783 (1957); and A. Aspinall and E. Anthony Smith (eds.), English Historical Documents, 1783–1832 (1959). The Oxford series offers Basil Williams, The Whig Supremacy, 1714–1760, 2nd rev. ed., ed. by C.H. Stuart (1962, reprinted 1982); and J. Steven Watson, The Reign of George III, 1760–1815 (1960, reprinted 2004). The most accessible later introductions to the period include Roy Porter, English Society in the Eighteenth Century (1982); W.A. Speck, Stability and Strife: England, 1714–1760 (1977); Eric J. Evans, The Forging of the Modern State: Early Industrial Britain, 1783–1870 (1983); Paul Langford, The Eighteenth Century, 1688–1815 (1976); and John Cannon (ed.), The Whig Ascendancy: Colloquies on Hanoverian England (1981). Interesting information and strongly opinionated criticism of accepted historiographical and political thought on the period are found in J.C.D. Clark, English Society, 1688–1832: Ideology, Social Structure, and Political Practice During the Ancien Regime (1985). Surveys of Wales and Scotland in this period include Philip Jenkins, The Making of a Ruling Class: The Glamorgan Gentry, 1640–1790 (1983), a broader study than its title suggests; David J.V. Jones, Before Rebecca: Popular Protests in Wales, 1793–1835 (1973); and Bruce Lenman, Integration, Enlightenment, and Industrialization: Scotland 1746–1832 (1981). The Walpole era is examined in H.T. Dickinson, Walpole and the Whig Supremacy (1973); Jeremy Black (ed.), Britain in the Age of Walpole (1984); and, for the Opposition view, Linda Colley, In Defiance of Oligarchy: The Tory Party, 1714–60 (1982); and E.P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the Black Act (1975, reissued 1985). The Pelhams are at the centre of John B. Owen, The Rise of the Pelhams (1957, reprinted 1971); and F.J. McLynn, The Jacobite Army in England, 1745: The Final Campaign (1983). Broader developments in British society at this time are explored in John Cannon, Aristocratic Century: The Peerage of Eighteenth-Century England (1984); G.A. Cranfield, The Development of the Provincial Newspaper, 1700–1760 (1962, reprinted 1978); P.J. Corfield, The Impact of English Towns, 1700–1800 (1982); and Neil McKendrick, John Brewer, and J.H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England (1982). The poor and the obscure are treated in Douglas Hay et al., Albion's Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England (1975); and Dorothy Marshall, The English Poor in the Eighteenth Century: A Study in Social and Administrative History (1926, reprinted 1989). Developments after 1754 are studied in Richard Middleton, The Bells of Victory: The Pitt-Newcastle Ministry and the Conduct of the Seven Years' War, 1757–1762 (1985); Lewis Namier, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III, 2nd ed. (1957, reissued 1975); John Brewer, Party Ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession of George III (1976, reprinted 1981); John Cannon, Parliamentary Reform, 1640–1832 (1972); and Robert W. Tucker and David C. Hendrickson, The Fall of the First British Empire: Origins of the War of American Independence (1982), a detailed analysis of the imperial policy toward the American colonies, with a rather controversial critique of established historiographical views on the subject. Britain's recovery after the American Revolution is outlined in N.F.R. Crafts, British Economic Growth During the Industrial Revolution (1985); Linda Colley, “The Apotheosis of George III: Loyalty, Royalty, and the British Nation, 1760–1820,” in Past & Present, 102:94–129 (February 1984); and E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, 3rd ed. (2000). Britain's defeat of Napoleon and rise to world dominance is examined in Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (1987); Clive Emsley, British Society and the French Wars, 1793–1815 (1979); Ian R. Christie, Stress and Stability in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain: Reflection on the British Avoidance of Revolution (1984); and C.A. Bayly, Imperial Meridian: The British Empire and the World, 1780–1830 (1989).


Linda J. Colley
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