Debating Britain and Europe, 1688-1815

Abstract

Books are like buses. On many topics, nothing appears to happen for a while, and then several books appear at once. Such is the case for Britain’s relationship with Europe in the eighteenth century. The topic had been overshadowed during the 1990s and early 2000s by Atlantic history, and its argument that Britain had an Atlantic destiny and that this trans-oceanic activity and imperialism was its most significant geopolitical contribution. This thesis dominated attention for several reasons: it served to pull together many themes, including trade, migration, and intellectual engagement with the outside world; it could be anchored in longerterm trajectories of British development and significance; and because it accorded with a more general interest in Atlanticism.1 In contrast, over the last two years, a number of works have argued the case for Britain’s European identity in the eighteenth century and for the values of interventionist diplomatic and military policies. The works in question are Andrew Thompson’s Britain, Hanover and the Protestant Interest, 1688-1756 (2006), Tony Claydon’s Europe and the Making of England, 1660-1760 (2007), Brendan Simms’ Three Victories and a Defeat: The Rise and Fall of the First British Empire, 1714-1783 (2007), Nick Harding’s Hanover and the British Empire 1700-1837 (2007), Stephen Conway’s ‘Continental Connections: Britain and Europe in the Eighteenth