18th century England, the Enlightenment and the birth of liberty

Introduction : general context

"If one looks at all closely at the middle of our own century, the events that occupy us, our customs, our achievements and even our topics of conversation, it is difficult not to see that a very remarkable change in several respects has come into our ideas; a change which, by its rapidity, seems to us to foreshadow

another still greater. Time alone will tell the aim, the nature and limits of this revolution, whose inconveniences and advantages our posterity will recognize better than we can".

Jean Le Rond d’Alembert

Introduction : general context

a) the age of Enlightenment : a general description

b) Reason as the cornerstone of human development

c) Progress in sciences, philosophy and ideas

- Liberty, knowledge and empiricism- The scientific method applied to all forms of knowledge- Criticism as the most effective weapon against credulity- Optimism and Progress

a) the age of Enlightenment : a general description

Immanuel Kant: What is Enlightenment?

b) Reason as the cornerstone of human development

The Queen of the Night, embodying

irrationality and obscurantism in

Mozart’s opera « The Magic flute »

c) Progress in sciences, philosophy and ideas

- Liberty, knowledge and empiricism

- The scientific method applied to all forms of knowledge

- Criticism as the most effective weapon against credulity

- Optimism and Progress

Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

John Locke (1632-1704)

I. Political liberty : end of autocratic rule, individual liberties and equality

a) How and why did the 1688 Glorious Revolution (among others) take place?The Glorious Revolution : a brief summary

John Locke, the notion of liberty, the Glorious Revolution and Parliamentary power

b) The claim for individual liberties : the example of John Wilkes

c) Emergence of the notion of equality : Thomas Paine's Rights of ManWomen's fate

Slavery and the situation of Black slaves

Pocket and rotten boroughs : inequality in the right to vote

d) Territorial liberty and national sovereignty : the Napoleonic Wars

a) How and why did the 1688 Glorious Revolution (among others) take place?

The Glorious Revolution : a brief summary

John Locke, the notion of liberty, the Glorious Revolution and Parliamentary power

b) The claim for individual liberties : the example of John Wilkes

John Wilkes by William Hogarth, 1763.

c) Emergence of the notion of equality : Thomas Paine's Rights of Man

- Women's fate

- Slavery and the situation of Black slaves

- Pocket and rotten boroughs : inequality in the right to vote

Early feminists

• Mary Astell, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (1697): « The vilest slavery »and Reflections upon Marriage (1700) : « If all men are born free, how is it that all women are born slaves ? »

• Catherine Macaulay, Letters on Education (1790)• Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights

of Woman (1790)

Pocket and rotten boroughs

• rotten borough : a parliamentary constituency with a very small population yet which returned one or two MPs to Parliament

• pocket borough : a parliamentary constituency with a very small electorate under the control of a landowner

Joseph Priestley

• Essay on the Principles of Government (1768)• Priestley criticised the Test Acts (1673 and 78)

which denied civil rights to the non-Anglicans (=Non-Conformists/Dissenters)

• Priestley’s action triggered the creation of radical movements whose aim was to enfranchise a larger part of the population

• 1832, 1867, 1884, 1918 and 1928 reform Acts

d) Territorial liberty and national sovereignty : the Napoleonic Wars

II. Economic liberty : free trade, political economy and the industrial

revolution a) The Laissez-faire theory and the notion of economic liberty

b) Adam Smith (1723-1790) and the development of political economy

c) David Ricardo (1772-1823) and the further development of political economy

d) The industrial revolution

e) Appearance of a free and industrious class: the middle class

a) The Laissez-faire theory and the notion of economic liberty

Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot

(1727-1781)

Laissez-faire : a French slogan

• Vincent de Gournay and the school of physiocrats : « laissez faire et laissez passer, le monde va de lui-même »

• Mercantilism : economic theory based on the notion that state interventions and monopoly are essential

• Economic liberalism : the opposite of mercantilism

b) Adam Smith (1723-1790) and the development of political economy

Adam Smith

Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776)

• « Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition »

• « Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfecly free to pursue his own interest his own way »

• Division of labour

• « Invisible hand »

c) David Ricardo (1772-1823) and the further development of political economy

David Ricardo

• On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817)

d) The industrial revolution

Industrial Revolution(s)

• First Industrial Revolution : late 18th century

• Second Industrial Revolution : mid-19th century

Inventions of the late 18th century

• In 1764 James Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny

• In the late 1780s the steam engine was invented• In 1756 concrete was re-discovered by John

Smeaton• John Harris’s Lexicon Technicum or a Universal

English Dictionary of Arts and Sciences

Late 18th century

• The rapid growth of such towns as Birmingham or Liverpool owed them the nickname « Mushroom towns ».

• Manchester, whose economy and development were based on cotton, was called « cottonopolis »

e) Appearance of a free and industrious class: the middle class

Robert Owen (the New Lanark Mills) and Josiah Wedgwood

Josiah Wedgwood’s cameo : « Am I not a man and a brother? »

III. Liberty in aesthetics and arts

a) Reflections on taste

b) Romanticism as the triumph of liberty in art

c) The re-discovery of Nature and the rise of the Sublime

a) Reflections on taste

Francis Hutcheson Joshua Reynolds

b) Romanticism as the triumph of liberty in art

Wordsworth’s sonnet in the memory of Toussaint L'Ouverture, a black rebel who led the insurrection in Saint-Domingue in 1791 and died in France in 1803 :

Though fallen thyself, never to rise

again,

Live and take comfort. Thou hast left

behind

Powers that will work for thee; air,

earth, skies;

There's not breath of the common wind

That will forget thee; thou hast great

allies;

Thy friends are exultations, agonies,

And Love, and man's unconquerable

mind.

William Blake illustrated a book by John Gabriel Stedman, a British-Dutch soldier, published in 1796, entitled The Narrative of a Five Years’

Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam.

c) The re-discovery of Nature and the rise of the Sublime

The re-discovery of Nature and the rise of the Sublime : Joseph Mallord William Turner's "The Devil's Bridge »and "Fishermen at

sea"

The rise of the Sublime

« The Night-mare », Henry Fuseli

General Conclusion