The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III
The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III was a book written by Lewis Namier. At the time of its first publication in 1929 it caused a historiographical revolution in understanding the 18th century by challenging the Whig view that English politics had always been dominated by two parties.
Subject
The book covers the composition of the Parliament of Great Britain in the 1760s particularly covering English politics, an area Namier was considered to be particularly authoritative.[1] His principal conclusion of that decade was that British politics in the mid-1860s was very loosely partisan and governed more by a set of personal alliances within the wider power structure, which was a direct repudiation of the Whig view that English politics had always been dominated by two parties.[2] By way of its very detailed study of individuals, this course of study caused substantial revision to accounts based on a party system.
Thesis
Namier argued against the prevailing if declining
Structure
The book consisted of nine chapters, the first two were surveys of the backgrounds of people who became MPs looking at particular types of MPs while studiously avoiding parties. There is then a chapter detailing the differing electoral structures within English constituencies in 1760. There are then two essays on more specific nation topics, a consciously revisionist essay on the
A second volume looks at specific boroughs looking first at politics in the relatively independent and uncorrupted county of
Method
Namier used
"What Namier's minutely detailed studies revealed was the fact that politics in 1760 consisted mainly in the jockeying for position and influence by individuals within the political elite" rather than ideas such as liberty or democracy, or rivalry with foreign kings, or social effects of industrial and technological change. Richard J. Evans wrote that "spending many years himself, off and on, in psychoanalysis, [Namier] believed that the "deep-seated drives and emotions" of the individual were what explained politics."[6]
Similar Works
In 1930, a year after first publishing The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III Namier published England in the Age of the American Revolution which developed his structural analysis and in the 1930s they were often treated together.[7] The second book aimed to refute the idea that George III was set on undermining American liberties.[2] A number of Namier's students published similar works using structural analysis to analyse eighteenth century English politics, such as John Brooke's biography of Charles Townshend.[7]
In 1931, shortly after first publishing Structure of Politics and England in the Age of the American Revolution he became a professor at
Controversy
Namier used sources such as wills and tax records to reveal the interests of the MPs. In his time, his methods were new and quite controversial. His obsession with collecting facts such as club membership of various MPs and then attempting to correlate them with voting patterns led his critics to accuse him of "taking ideas out of history".[9] Namier has been described by the historian Lawrence Stone as a member of an 'elitist school' with a 'deeply pessimistic attitude toward human affairs'.[10]
His biographer John Cannon concludes:
- Namier's achievements were greatly praised during his lifetime and unduly disparaged subsequently. On his chosen ground, the accession of George III, he made important and probably irreversible corrections to the traditional whiggish account....Later on Namier was not so much repudiated as outflanked, by critics who pointed to the narrowness of his concerns, and his lack of interest in anything but political history. The technique of structural analysis, with which his name was inextricably linked as 'Namierism', offered, in his view, an escape from voluminous narrative....[but] its limitations are very evident. There are great swathes of history where, for lack of evidence, structural analysis can hardly be applied. Even where it can, there is no guarantee that it will, in itself, generate interesting and important questions.[7]
Critical reception
Structure and Politics has been regarded by many as a departure from the previous historiography on George III with one historian saying that Namier's work "mark the beginning of the modern period".
References
- S2CID 143485484.
- ^ a b c David Cannadine, "The History of Parliament: Past, Present – and Future?", Parliamentary History, Vol 26, 2007, pp. 366–386.
- ^ "The Ordeal of Sir Lewis Namier: The Man, the Historian, the Jew". March 1962.
- ^ Page xi, Structure of Politics, Namier, 1957
- ^ Page xii, Structure of Politics, Namier, 1957
- History of Parliament project). "Geniuses don't have to be nice".
- ^ a b c John Cannon, 'Namier, Sir Lewis Bernstein (1888–1960)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004) accessed 8 Oct 2017
- ^ Page 3, England in the Age of the American Revolution, quoted in Note 11 Page 370, David Cannadine, "The History of Parliament: Past, Present – and Future?", Parliamentary History, Vol 26, 2007, pp. 366–386.
- ^ Malin Dahlstrom (2011), The Life and Thought of Herbert Butterfield (book review). Namier's characterisation has been wrongly attributed to Herbert Butterfield, but was actually written by A. J. P. Taylor. Reviews in History.
- ISBN 978-1136879265.
- Reitan, E. A., ed. (1964). George III, Tyrant Or Constitutional Monarch?. Boston: D. C. Heath and Company. A compilation of essays encompassing the major assessments of George III up to 1964
- ^ H. Butterfield, ‘George III and the constitution’, History, new ser., 43 (1958), 14–33