Scholarship list
Book
The Rise and Fall of English Radicalism, 1760 to 1800
Published 2025
This book explores the major political debates in England during the final decades of the eighteenth century, a period when responses to the American and French Revolutions were a major concern and the entire future of public life in England was in question. Offering an in-depth treatment of the political pamphlets and literature of the time, this book examines the voices of both the radicals and their detractors. The volume attempts to do justice to the talented radical Whigs Edmund Burke demeaned in Reflections on the Revolution in France, and who have been long forgotten, buried unfairly under the memory of the excesses of French revolutionary violence. This accessibly written volume is perfect for undergraduates, graduates, and professors of history, political science, and literature.
Book
The Saga of Edmund Burke: From His Age to Ours
Published 2024
This book offers an examination of responses to Edmund Burke from the last decades of the eighteenth century to the present day, ending with the question whether there is still a role for him to play in post-Thatcher England. It includes a chapter asking the same question about America. The sharp focus on Burke's legacy permits the author to cover a great many years while remaining quite concise. Written in an accessible style, modest in length, covering major debates in England over the course of two centuries and more, this book aims to reach out to as many potential readers as possible.
Review
From Classical to Modern Republicanism: Reflections on England, Scotland, America and France
Published 05/04/2022
7, 3, 614 - 617
Book chapter
Rousseau and the Scottish Enlightenment: Connections and Disconnections
Published 2022
Adam Smith and Rousseau, 32 - 52
Book
From Classical to Modern Republicanism: Reflections on England, Scotland, America, and France
Published 05/25/2020
In 1955 Louis Hartz published a volume titled The Liberal Tradition in America, in which he argued that liberalism was the one and only American tradition. Since then scholars of New Left and neoconservative persuasion have offered an alternative account based on the notion that the civic notions of antiquity continued to dominate political thought in modern times. Against this revisionist view the argument of From Classical to Modern Liberalism is that we need to study America in comparative perspective, and if we do so we shall discover that republicanism in the modern world was distinctively modern, drawing upon ideas of natural rights, consent, and social contract. Rather than a struggle between liberalism and republicanism, we should speak about liberal republicanism. Rather than republicanism versus liberalism, we should address liberalism versus illiberalism, the true issue of our age.
Book
Montesquieu and the Old Regime
Published 2020
Review
The Lost History of Liberalism: From Ancient Rome to the Twenty-First Century (Review)
Published 09/01/2019
American political thought, 8, 4, 600 - 603
Review of "The Lost History of Liberalism: From Ancient Rome to the Twenty-First Century" by Helena Rosenblatt (Princeton University Press, 2018).
Book
Enlightenment in Scotland and France: Studies in Political Thought
Published 2019
Enlightenment in Scotland and France: Studies in Political Thought provides comparative analysis of the Scottish and French Enlightenments. Studies of the two Enlightenments have previously focused on the transnational, their story one of continuity between Scottish intellectuals and French philosophes and of a mutual commitment to combat fanaticism in all its forms. This book contends that what has been missing, by and large, from the scholarly literature is the comparative analysis that underscores the contrasts as well as the similarities of the Enlightenments in Scotland and France.
This book shows that, although the similarities of “enlightened” political thought in the two countries are substantial, the differences are also remarkable and stand out in culminating relief in the Scottish and French reactions to the American Revolution. Mark Hulliung argues that it was 1776, not 1789, that was the moment when the spokespersons for Enlightenment in Scotland and France parted company.
Enlightenment in Scotland and France: Studies in Political Thought provides comparative analysis of the Scottish and French Enlightenments. Studies of the two Enlightenments have previously focused on the transnational, their story one of continuity between Scottish intellectuals and French philosophes and of a mutual commitment to combat fanaticism in all its forms. This book contends that what has been missing, by and large, from the scholarly literature is the comparative analysis that underscores the contrasts as well as the similarities of the Enlightenments in Scotland and France.
This book shows that, although the similarities of "enlightened" political thought in the two countries are substantial, the differences are also remarkable and stand out in culminating relief in the Scottish and French reactions to the American Revolution. Mark Hulliung argues that it was 1776, not 1789, that was the moment when the spokespersons for Enlightenment in Scotland and France parted company.
Book
Rousseau and the Dilemmas of Modernity
Published 2016
Encyclopedia entry
The Social Contract in the American Enlightenment
Published 2015
The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of the American Enlightenment