From Greece to Babylon: The political thought of Andrew Michael Ramsay (1686–1743)

This paper explores the political thought of Andrew Michael Ramsay with particular reference to his highly acclaimed book called A New Cyropaedia, or the Travels of Cyrus (1727). Dedicated to Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender, to whom he was tutor, this work has been hitherto viewed as a Jacobite imitation of the Telemachus, Son of Ulysses (1699) of his eminent teacher archbishop Fénelon of Cambrai. By tracing the dual legacy of the first Persian Emperor Cyrus in Western thought, I demonstrate that Ramsay was as much indebted to Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet's Discourse on Universal History (1681) as he was to Fénelon's political romance. Ramsay took advantage of Xenophon's silence about the eponymous hero's adolescent education in his Cyropaedia, or the Education of Cyrus (c. 380 B.C.), but he was equally inspired by the Book of Daniel, where the same Persian prince was eulogised as the liberator of the Jewish people from their captivity in Babylon. The main thrust of Ramsay's adaptation was not only to revamp the Humanist-cum-Christian theory and practice of virtuous kingship for a restored Jacobite regime, but on a more fundamental level, to tie in secular history with biblical history. In this respect, Ramsay's New Cyropaedia, or the Travels of Cyrus, was not just another Fénelonian political novel but more essentially a work of universal history. In addition to his Jacobite model of aristocratic constitutional monarchy, it was this Bossuetian motive for universal history, which was first propounded by the German reformer Philipp Melanchthon in his Chronicon Carionis (1532), that most decisively separated Ramsay from Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, author of another famous advice book for princes of the period, The Idea of a Patriot King (written in late 1738 for the education of Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales, but officially published in 1749).     

“There are thousands who will claim to have been ‘out’ during Easter Week.”: recognising military service in the 1916 Easter Rising

ABSTRACT

Using recently released archives from the Military Service Pensions Collection (MSPC), this article assesses the archival evidence available for assessing how many rebels are recognised as having military service in the Easter Rising of 1916. It argues that while the MSPC contributes towards a more accurate estimation of the number who participated in the Rising, especially in the regions outside Dublin, it does not constitute a definitive figure for rebels active in Easter week. Through an examination of the assessment criteria for military service pensions, it shows how the decision to grant recognised pensionable service for the Rising was affected by geography, politics, legal challenges, the timing of an application, and the subjective assessment of individual assessors.     

FROM BREXIT TO HEGEL

British idealism has led an ambiguous existence in any overview of British historical and political thought in the twentieth century. Seen partly as an alien Continental intrusion into presumably typical British priorities of empiricism, positivism, and utilitarianism, it was badly damaged by its putative associations with the military enemy of two world wars. Admir Skodo's meticulous study of British “idealist revisionists” during the postwar period 1945–1980 repairs this damage by showing the extended influence of that idealism as funneled through the “new idealism” of the interwar period represented mainly by the philosophers R. G. Collingwood and Michael Oakeshott. Skodo demonstrates how these idealist revisionists deeply influenced postwar British historiography by underscoring qualities of humanism, pluralism, and variety not characteristically associated with idealism, reinterpreted a range of important topics in British history from the Tudors through the English civil wars to the Victorian period, and came up with political theorizing that celebrated the postwar welfare state while indicating its vulnerabilities to an increasingly technologized society. Just as Skodo's protagonists negotiated the 1970s transition in Britain's turn to Europe, so his account proves stimulating for contemporary concerns regarding a post‐Brexit Britain. The final part of the essay therefore looks at some suggested models, such as the “Anglosphere” or a “Singapore in the Atlantic” for Britain, before concluding with reflections on the importance according to a Hegelian reading of the modern “rational state” of the continued influence of Oxbridge intellectuals on the evolution of British directions and goals since the Victorian age.     

Joyce Family Values: Treason,Nationality and the Case of ‘Lord Haw-Haw’s’ Irish Cousin

The conviction and execution of William Joyce (‘Lord Haw-Haw’) for treason to the British crown remains controversial to the present day. He was not, however, the only wartime traitor in the Joyce family. His first cousin, the Irish-born Sergeant Michael Joyce, RAF, also volunteered his services to the Nazis while a prisoner of war in Germany, and arguably compromised himself even more seriously than his more notorious relative. In contrast to the avidity with which William Joyce was pursued, however, Michael Joyce’s crimes — which came to light as the trial of ‘Lord Haw-Haw’ opened at the Old Bailey — were efficiently concealed by prosecutors. The difference in the treatment of the cases of the two Joyce cousins not only sheds new light on the determination of the British authorities to secure a conviction against ‘Lord Haw-Haw’ at all costs, but also reveals the ambiguity and instability of ‘Britishness’ at a moment when, paradoxically, patriotism and national self-confidence were at their twentieth-century zenith.     

Political economy and social legislation in Germany,ca 1870–1890

Summary

This article examines the nature of academic political theory in Britain in the post-war period, examining in particular the degree to which theorists were able to mount normative theoretical arguments. Traditionally, commentators such as Brian Barry and Perry Anderson have argued that political theory in this period was largely dead between 1945 and 1970 due to the impact of positivism, but I argue this is mistaken for two main reasons. First, it fails to distinguish between the different forms that positivism took in the post-war era. Thus although it is true many theorists tended to claim that moral and political values could (or should) not be discussed rationally, their reasons for doing so varied considerably. For while theorists such as A. J. Ayer and T. D. Weldon justified their positions theoretically, with arguments drawn from behaviourist social science or innovations made in linguistic philosophy, others, such as Ralf Dahrendorf and Anthony Crosland, argued that it was the perceived success of post-war welfare states or the alleged failure of political ideologies that made traditional political theory irrelevant. Second, following on from this, I argue that delineating more accurately how positivism actually operated helps to explain how political theorists were able to pursue their discipline normatively—albeit that few reacted to all aspects of positivism. Thus if some (such as Karl Popper) were more concerned to insist that political philosophy had something to say in practice, others (such as Michael Oakeshott), reacted more strongly against the proposition that human behaviour can be understood purely causally. Finally, I examine the impact of ordinary language philosophy on post-war political theory, and argue that rather than simply damaging the cause of normative political theory by encouraging a myopic concentration on the linguistic analysis of particular moral and political concepts, over the longer term its effects were much more positive, since it helped to focus attention on the irreducibly normative dimension of political concepts.