Radical “Citizens of the World,” 1790–95: The Early Career of Henry Redhead Yorke

Abstract

AbstractThis article takes a new look at British radicalism in the 1790s and explores it within broad geographical and cultural frameworks and through the early career of Henry Redhead Yorke, a West Indian Creole who became a radical in England but frequently recanted his politics. It views radicalism within the Atlantic World and provides a broader interpretation of the excluded majority than as an English working class. It examines the radical “citizens of the world” and sheds new light on the apparent conflict within English radicalism between universalist and constitutionalist ideologies. Politicization and identity are the key themes here examined within micro- and macro-histories.