Synopses & Reviews
"
Empire and Revolution is a remarkable achievement. Richard Bourke combines an astonishing mastery of detail with unfailingly good judgment and clarity of argument. He does justice to every facet of Burke's extraordinarily rich intellectual and political life, and to the global reach of Burke's attention and efforts. This is a work to savor."
--Jennifer Pitts, University of Chicago"Bridging the gap between political practice and political thought has presented a major conundrum for intellectual historians, most especially for students of Edmund Burke. With massive erudition, comprehensive scholarship, and methodological subtlety, Richard Bourke triumphantly solves this problem by scrupulously tracking the principles informing Burke's interventions across his entire political life. Empire and Revolution is quite simply the best book on Burke ever written: all future work on Burke must start from here."--David Armitage, Harvard University
"Empire and Revolution is a monumental achievement. Bourke has at once given us a sensitive reading of Edmund Burke's political commitments and a bracing portrait of the later-eighteenth-century British Empire. This elegant and powerful book not only forces us to rethink Burke's politics, it compels us to rethink his age and our relationship to it."--Steven Pincus, Yale University
"Our understanding of Burke's thought as both statesman and philosopher, engaged in the many problems of his revolutionary times, is from this moment both deepened and broadened beyond measure."--J.G.A. Pocock, Johns Hopkins University
"Empire and Revolution is the best book on Edmund Burke available. It takes a scholar of singular learning to tackle a figure like Burke, and Richard Bourke is exactly that person. His writing is clear, his scholarship impeccable, and his mastery of eighteenth-century history self-evident. This is a brilliant book and a model for intellectual historians."--Richard Whatmore, University of St Andrews
"An extremely impressive piece of work."--Mark Philp, author of Reforming Ideas in Britain: Politics and Language in the Shadow of the French Revolution, 1789-1815
Synopsis
The Description for this book, Empire and Revolution: The Political Life of Edmund Burke, will be forthcoming.
Synopsis
A major new account of one of the leading philosopher-statesmen of the eighteenth century
Edmund Burke (1730-97) lived during one of the most extraordinary periods of world history. He grappled with the significance of the British Empire in India, fought for reconciliation with the American colonies, and was a vocal critic of national policy during three European wars. He also advocated reform in Britain and became a central protagonist in the great debate on the French Revolution. Drawing on the complete range of printed and manuscript sources, Empire and Revolution offers a vivid reconstruction of the major concerns of this outstanding statesman, orator, and philosopher. In restoring Burke to his original political and intellectual context, this book overturns the conventional picture of a partisan of tradition against progress and presents a multifaceted portrait of one of the most captivating figures in eighteenth-century life and thought. A boldly ambitious work of scholarship, this book challenges us to rethink the legacy of Burke and the turbulent era in which he played so pivotal a role.
Synopsis
Edmund Burke (1730-97) lived during one of the most extraordinary periods of world history. He grappled with the significance of the British Empire in India, fought for reconciliation with the American colonies, and was a vocal critic of national policy during three European wars. He also advocated reform in Britain, pressed for constitutional change in Ireland, and became a central protagonist in the great debate on the French Revolution. Drawing on the complete range of printed and manuscript sources,
Empire and Revolution offers a vivid reconstruction of the major concerns of this outstanding statesman, orator, and philosopher.
In restoring Burke to his original political and intellectual context, this book strips away the accumulated distortions that have marked the reception of his ideas. In the process, it overturns the conventional picture of a partisan of tradition against progress. In place of the image of a backward-looking opponent of popular rights, it presents a multifaceted portrait of one of the most captivating figures in eighteenth-century life and thought. While Burke was a passionately energetic statesman, he was also a deeply original thinker. Empire and Revolution depicts him as a philosopher-in-action who evaluated the political realities of the day through the lens of Enlightenment thought, variously drawing on the ideas of such figures as Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Hume.
A boldly ambitious work of scholarship, this book challenges us to rethink the legacy of Burke and the turbulent era in which he played so pivotal a role.
Synopsis
“
Empire and Revolution is the best book on Edmund Burke available. It takes a scholar of singular learning to tackle a figure like Burke, and Richard Bourke is exactly that person. His writing is clear, his scholarship impeccable, and his mastery of eighteenth-century history self-evident. This is a brilliant book and a model for intellectual historians.”
—Richard Whatmore, author of Against War and Empire: Geneva, Britain, and France in the Eighteenth Century“An extremely impressive piece of work.”—Mark Philp, author of Reforming Ideas in Britain: Politics and Language in the Shadow of the French Revolution, 1789-1815
About the Author
Richard Bourke is professor in the history of political thought and codirector of the Centre for the Study of the History of Political Thought at Queen Mary University of London. He is the author of Peace in Ireland: The War of Ideas and the coeditor of Political Judgement.