The word ‘Whig’ is a tricky word, but very useful. It is a political word, but also a historical world. It is arguably the best word to sum up the particularly English psychosis. So it is worth an explanation.
In the 18th century it was common in Europe to say that "the English" were the best historians. Europeans did not distinguish: for most of ‘the English’ were, in fact, Scottish: the Europeans meant Hume, Robertson, Ferguson. David Hume was the author of the History of Great Britain (1754), later renamed by him, History of England, as he got bored of Irish and Scottish history. (I don’t know who wrote the elaborate Wikipedia page about Hume, but they refer to the history as the History of England throughout, only adding in footnote, “sometimes referred to as History of Great Britain”. Nay.) William Robertson was the author of A History of Scotland (1759), History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V, with a View of the Progress of Society in Europe (1769) and The History of America (1777). Adam Ferguson was the author of Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767). Hume famously thought that the "English" couldn’t write this sort of literature, and wrote to Gibbon on the publication of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776) to say that it was remarkable to see an Englishman writing history so well, a bit like a dog dancing on its hind legs. Men like Voltaire, when asked to
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my ideas about whiggism may be a little different. I would argue that the original (political) Whigs were revolutionaries who managed, in 1689, to turn England into the de facto republic which it remains and they also inspired the American Revolution.
Considering the article sets out to be an “explanation” of the word “Whig”, and is so very long, it doesn’t do much explaining!
The Whigs were one of the two political parties in the 18th and 19th centuries. There. That’s an explanation. What is “whiggism”? It doesn’t exist, because political parties at that time were based on interest groups, not ideas.
“Samuel Johnson was one of them. No chance of a degree for Johnson: as he would have had to swear the oaths”.
I’m sure Johnson was no Liberal, but did he not leave Oxford because he couldn’t afford the fees, rather than being averse to swearing oaths?
Dr. Alexander’s pieces are always worth a read, always I learn something new.
But, if I might be the cheeky boy who questions the Emperor’s new attire, what are your thoughts about the Calif-hopeful Erdoğan, Führer of the country where Bilkent is to be found?
Dare he say?
It is true, I suggest, that the Turks, as a race, have themselves a very interesting history, by no means always positive in their more aggressive Muslim periods. Ask the Armenians.
I first visited Turkey (hitchhiking) in 1964 and have travelled widely there, many times and with enjoyment. But Erdoğan is a creature of the militant Muslim East. Apart from Istanbul, you find very few bookshops. Not a good sign. But as an old Turkish shop-owner told me, if most Turks think there is only one book that is necessary to read, selling anything other than colour picture books for tourists is challenging. I don’t like beach holidays, so now avoid the country, which is a shame. Perhaps.
Just to say that this 2000-word and learned essay is excellent, outstanding. For those who have forgotten, as I had: The Peace of Utrecht was a series of peace treaties signed by the belligerents in the War of the Spanish Succession, in the Dutch city of Utrecht between April 1713 and February 1715
Lovely read – thanks!
Excellent and highly thought provoking piece, the best I can remember by Mr Alexander who sometimes wears his learning rather heavily and longwindedly.
The guy is so long winded, they should attach him to one of Ed Miliband’s ghastly wind turbines. I bet he could provide power for a small village.
Well, one or two paragraphs could be shorter, but what you’re really saying is that maybe your taste in reading is for things that are a bit shorter? Dr Alexander is not long winded; history is complicated – in fact he sums up vaste swathes of complexity in a remarkably short space, and makes them intelligible to gumbies like me and you. He’s a historian; again, it’s complicated.
There is definitely something Dickensian about this bloke why say it in one word when you can say it in ten! But of course Dickens was paid by the word ergo had an incentive. No excuses for James Alexander I fear.
I’ve always said that the bourgeois ‘left’ of today have more in common with the Liberal Party of the 19th century than they have in common with the working class socialists of the 20th.
History can only be written by those with time and leisure. Gibbon’s Rise and Fall is terrible and ahistorical, counterfactual yet de rigeuer reading at Uni. Squatting on the wealth created by others he and other large stomached wig wearers applied their bias to their limited view of ‘history’. Voltaire et al never built, created, or made anything except theories, and slander, most of them wrong.
There are great historians in other countries you have never heard of, many of whom don’t align with the narratives. An example is Pierre Duhem, historian of physics and science. He has disproven many myths about ‘science’ for example including the Galileo invented everything nonsense, a 17th century Popov one imagines. Spanish scholastics pre-empt Scottish ‘Enlightenment’ history by more than 2 centuries.
One of the most enjoyable books I have read recently was a history of Churches and church-goers in England starting in the 7th century. Some real insights into average people with average lives and how they lived. More enlightening than grand sweeping neo-Marxist theories about stages and inevitabilities.
You forgot to list Churchill as one of England’s great historians. I doubt that is by accident. Are you aware of John… Read more »
After you’ve done with all the academic name dropping,Oxfords and Cambridge alike, it was the working man that built Britain, always was, always has been and,with a bit of luck, always will be!🇬🇧