European Liberalisms

HIST 70021

European Liberalisms

Dr Stuart Jones

MA Course Unit

Semester 1, 2007-8

Course Details

Tutor: Dr Stuart Jones, Room S 2.23, email

MA course unit, available to students on the MA programmes in History, Modern European History, Cultural History, Modern British History, and Victorian Studies; and other programmes by agreement.

Credits: 30

Teaching: eleven weekly seminars, Mondays 9-11 a.m. in S 2.23. The length of the seminars will depend on the number of students: two hours is the norm when the class size exceeds six.

Assessment: one 6,000 word essay, on a topic arising out of the course and approved by the tutor. Topic to be agreed by Monday 5 November. Submission deadline: Monday 14 January 2008. Your essay should follow the guidance on presentation provided in the History MA handbook, available at:

Formatively assessed work: students will be expected to give regular informal presentations, usually taking the form of a critical assessment of one or more contributions to the literature or an appraisal of the significance of a primary text. For feedback on your progress, you may wish to write up one of these reading reports and submit it to me by mid-November. 2000 wordswould be ample for this purpose.

Aims and Outcomes:

The course aims to equip you to think comparatively and analytically about liberalism in the ‘long nineteenth century’. On completion of the course you should have acquired a broad familiarity with debates about liberalism and about the relationship between political thought and practice in the nineteenth century, and have undertaken a systematic analysis of a particular aspect or case-study designed to shed light on a significant historiographical problem.

Course Content:

This course provides a training in the study of nineteenth-century political thought and the analysis of political ideologies through a comparative study of the theory and practice of liberalism, with a particular focus on France and Britain, and to a lesser extent Germany, in the period c. 1789-1918. Throughout it aims to explore how far liberal ideas and practices were shaped by national contexts and how far they transcended national frontiers. Themes explored will include liberal conceptions of freedom, representation, democracy and nationality.

The broad questions addressed include the following. How far was continental European liberalism derivative of the British model? What were the main determinants of liberal ideas and practice in different societies? Should we understand liberalism as a movement aiming at the reform of the state, or more generally at the reform of civil society and culture? Did liberalism necessarily assume the existence of the autonomous individual? After some initial exploration of debates about liberalism in particular national contexts, seminars will be organized on a thematic basis to address these questions.

A generic aim of MA programmes is to develop your capacity to take responsibility for your own learning. This means that the syllabus outlined below is not set in stone: it leaves some room for sessions framed around topics suggested by students themselves, and some of the topics below may be replaced by alternatives, provided that they satisfy the aims of the course. Similarly, the reading lists given below should be supplemented, where appropriate, with other items that you come across in the course of your reading. Indeed you will not benefit as you should from the course if you confine yourself to the reading I assign to you. You should feel free to develop lines of thought and reading that interest you, within the scope of the course and the weekly topics.

General Reading

While political theorists have written countless books on liberalism, but there is a dearth of good historical syntheses. However, the following should provide an orientation in the subject:

Bellamy, Richard, Liberalism and Modern Society: An Historical Argument (Cambridge, 1992)

Claeys, Gregory (ed), Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Thought (London, 2005). Many relevant articles, including Claeys’s own entry on liberalism

Claeys, Gregory. ‘Political Thought’, in Chris Williams (ed.), A Companion to Nineteenth-Century Britain (Oxford, 2004), 189-202 [E book]

Gaus, Gerald F., & Kukathas, Chandran (eds), Handbook of Political Theory (London, 2004), especially chs 28-30

Jones, H.S., Victorian Political Thought (Basingstoke, 2000)

Ruggiero, Guido de, History of European Liberalism (Oxford, 1927)

Resources and Research Tools

As far as possible, seminars will focus on primary sources. Many of these are available electronically, or in modern editions, but in some cases you will need to go back to the original editions (or, in the case of French or German texts, early translations). While some of these will be on open shelves in the library, others will be held in store or in the library’s Special Collections at Deansgate. Store books can be ordered electronically, in which case they are usually available for collection from the issues desks within a few hours. If you need to use the Deansgate library, you should get me to provide you with a letter of introduction. It is a good idea to pre-order material. Look at the library’s website under Special Collections for more details.

Another library which you should find useful for this course is the Manchester Central Library (St Peter’s Square), and in particular the Social Science Library on the first floor. This has outstanding nineteenth-century collections. Note that the computerized catalogue covers only recently acquired material. You will therefore have to make use of the card catalogues in an adjacent room.

The bibliography that follows indicates items that are available electronically, whether on the web or via library subscriptions. I assume that by now you know how to access electronic journals and other electronic resources availabe through the library: if you don’t, please ask.[E] = library electronic resource; underlining = www link (see electronic version of the course guide).

A very important electronic resource is the Online Library of Liberty, published by the Liberty Fund in the USA. See This is an outstandingly rich resource, which reproduces original editions or important modern editions of an impressively wide range of texts in the history of liberalism. It includes the entire modern edition of the Collected Works of John Stuart Mill (32 volumes in all).

Suggested Weekly Topics

Seminars 1-3: Liberalism in National Contexts

1Introduction (24 September)

This meeting will in part be organizational, but I shall also introduce some of the central themes of the course. The items that appear under ‘general reading’ above would constitute useful preparatory reading.

2Britain (1 October)

An old view of Victorian liberalism sees it as shaped essentially by utilitarianism and classical political economy. The aim here is to assess the contribution of these movements, in comparison with other intellectual and political traditions, to the formation of Victorian liberalism.

Bellamy, Richard (ed), Victorian Liberalism: Nineteenth-Century Political Thought and Practice (London, 1990)

Biagini, Eugenio, ‘Neo-roman liberalism: “republican” values and British liberalism, ca. 1860–1875’, History of European Ideas 29 (2003), 55-72 [E]

Biagini, Eugenio, Gladstone (Basingstoke, 2000)

Burrow, J.W., Whigs and Liberals: Continuity and Change in English Political Thought (Oxford, 1988)

Collini, Stefan, Winch, Donald, & Burrow, John, That Noble Science of Politics: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Intellectual History (Cambridge, 1983)

Fontana, Biancamaria, Rethinking the Politics of Commercial Society (Cambridge, 1985)

Goldman, Lawrence (ed), The Blind Victorian: Henry Fawcett and British Liberalism (Cambridge, 1989)

Goldman, Lawrence, ‘A Peculiarity of the English? The Social Science Association and the Absence of Sociology in Nineteenth-Century Britain’, Past and Present no. 114 (1987) , pp. 133-171 [E]

Goldman, Lawrence, ‘The Social Science Association, 1857-1886: a context for mid-Victorian Liberalism’, English Historical Review 101 (1986), pp. 95-134 [E]

Harvie, Christopher, The Lights of Liberalism (London, 1976)

Hilton, Boyd, ‘Gladstone’s theological politics’, in Michael Bentley and John Stevenson (eds), High and Low Politics in Modern Britain: Ten Studies (Oxford, 1983) pp. 28-57

Hilton, Boyd, The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought 1785-1865 (Oxford, 1988), chs 5 & 9

Mandler, Peter (ed), Liberty and Authority in Victorian Britain (Oxford, 2006).

Mandler, Peter. ‘Nation and power in the liberal state : Britain c. 1800-c. 1914’. In Scales, Len; Zimmer, Oliver (ed.), Power and the nation in European history (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 354-69.

Jones, H.S., Victorian Political Thought (Basingstoke, 2000)

Vincent, John, The Formation of the British Liberal Party 1857-68 (London, 1966)

3France (8 October)

The French Revolution was in a sense born of the liberal ideals of the Enlightenment, yet it is often held to have stifled the development of liberalism in France. Our main aim here is to explore and assess this interpretation.

Primary source:

Auguste Nefftzer, ‘Liberalism’, in M. Block (ed), Dictionnaire général de la politique (1873-4; first edn 1863). My translation here.

Secondary sources:

Furet, François, Interpreting the French Revolution (Cambridge, 1981)

Furet, François, Revolutionary France 1770-1880 (Oxford, 1992)

Hazareesingh, Sudhir (ed), The Jacobin Legacy in Modern France (Oxford, 2002)

Hazareesingh, Sudhir, From Subject to Citizen: the Second Empire and the Emergence of Modern French Democracy (Princeton, 1998), esp ch. 3

Hazareesingh, Sudhir, Intellectual Founders of the Republic: Five Studies in Nineteenth-Century French Republican Political Thought (Oxford, 2001) [E]

Hazareesingh, Sudhir, Political Traditions in Modern France (Oxford, 1994)

Hulliung, Mark, Citizens and Citoyens: Republicans and Liberals in America and France (London, 2002), esp. ch 5

Jainchill, Andrew and Moyn, Samuel, ‘French democracy between totalitarianism and solidarity: Pierre Rosanvallon and revisionist historiography’, Journal of Modern History 76 (2004), 107-154 [E]

Jaume, Lucien, L’Individu effacé ou le paradoxe du libéralisme français (Paris, 1997) – the standard work for anyone with a reading knowledge of French.

Manent, Pierre, An Intellectual History of Liberalism (Princeton, 1995)

Rosanvallon, Pierre The Demands of Liberty: Civil Society in France since the Revolution (Cambridge, Mass, 2007)

Rosanvallon, Pierre, ‘Political rationalism and democracy in France in the 18th and 19th centuries’, Philosophy and Social Criticism 28 (2002), 687-701 [E]

Rosanvallon, Pierre, ‘The history of the word democracy in France’, Journal of Democracy 6.4 (1995), 140-154 [E]

Rosanvallon, Pierre, Democracy Past and Future (New York, 2006)

Siedentop, Larry, ‘Two liberal traditions’, in Alan Ryan (ed), The Idea of Freedom (Oxford, 1979)

Simon, W.M. (ed), French Liberalism 1789-1848 (London, 1972): copy available from me

Soltau, Roger, French Political Thought in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1931, and later edns), chs 3 & 10

Seminars 4-9: Themes

4Conceptions of Freedom (15 October)

Did the liberal conception of freedom rest on a comprehensive vision of the ‘good life’ – or was it neutral as between different visions of the good life? Should it be sharply distinguished from the romantic understanding of freedom – or did liberalism feed on romanticism?

Primary Sources

Mill, J.S.,On Liberty (there are lots of editions, but the 1999 edition by Edward Alexander contains useful contextual material too) [OLL and many other sites]

Constant,Benjamin, ‘The Liberty of the Ancients Compared to that of the Moderns’, in Constant, Political Writings, ed.B. Fontana (Cambridge, 1988) [www]

Humboldt, Wilhelm von,The Limits of State Action(Cambridge, 1969), or an earlier translation, The Sphere and Duties of Government [OLL]

Green, T.H., ‘Liberal legislation and freedom of contract’, in T.H. Green, Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation and Other Writings (Cambridge, 1986), ed. P. Harris and J. Morrow

Secondary Sources

Berlin, Isaiah, Political Ideas in the Romantic Age, esp the essay ‘Two concepts of freedom: romantic and liberal’ (London, 2006). Copy available from me.

Harrison, Brian, ‘State intervention and moral reform’, in Patricia Hollis (ed), Pressure from Without in Early Victorian England (London, 1974), pp. 289-318

Holmes, Stephen, Benjamin Constant and the Making of Modern Liberalism (London, 1984), especially ch 6

Krieger, Leonard, The German Idea of Freedom (London, 1972)

Rawls, John, Political Liberalism (New York, 1993, or later editions)

Rosenblum, Nancy L., Another Liberalism: Romanticism and the Reconstruction of Liberal Thought (Cambridge, Mass., 1987)

Vincent, K. Steven, ‘Benjamin Constant, the French Revolution, and the origins of French romantic liberalism’, French Historical Studies 23 (2000), 607-37 [E]

5Democracy and the Limits of Citizenship (22 October)

Why did liberals attach so much importance to representative government? Did the liberal conception of representative government entail or deny universal citizenship? What, if anything, did nineteenth-century liberalism owe to republican conceptions of freedom?

Primary Sources

Bramsted, E.K. & Melhuish, K J (eds), Western Liberalism: a history in documents from Locke to Croce (London, 1978). Documents 96-104

Essays on Reform [collective work published in 1867)328.42/E26

Guizot, François, Democracy in France (Paris, 1849)

Mill, J.S., Considerations on Representative Government. Many editions. OLL and other sites.

Secondary

Biagini, Eugenio F, ‘Liberalism and direct democracy: John Stuart Mill and the model of ancient Athens’, in Biagini (ed), Citizenship and Community: Liberals, Radicals and Collective Identities in the British Isles, 1865-1931(Cambridge, 1996).

Biagini, Eugenio, ‘Neo-roman liberalism: “republican” values and British liberalism, ca. 1860–1875’, History of European Ideas 29 (2003), 55-72 [E]

Craiutu, Aurelian, Liberalism under Siege: The Political Thought of the French Doctrinaires (Lanham, Md, 2004).

Crook, Malcolm, and Crook, Tom, ‘The advent of the secret ballot in Britain and France, 1789-1914: from public assembly to private comportment’, History 92:4 (2007), 449-471 [E]

Hall, Catherine, McClelland, Keith, & Rendall, Jane (eds), Defining the Victorian Nation: Class, Race, Gender and the British Reform Act of 1867 (Cambridge, 2000).

Hazareesingh, Sudhir, From Subject to Citizen: the Second Empire and the Emergence of Modern French Democracy (Princeton, 1998).

Johnson, Douglas (ed), Guizot: Aspects of French History (London, 1963).

Kahan, Alan S., Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe: The Political Culture of Limited Suffrage (Basingstoke, 2003).

Nolte, Paul, ‘Bürgerideal, Gemeinde und Republik. “Klassischer Republikanismus” im frühen deutschen Liberalismus’, Historische Zeitschrift 254 (1992), pp. 609-56

Urbinati, Nadia, Mill on Democracy: from the Athenian Polis to Representative Government (London, 2002).

Week 6 (29 October) - Reading Week

This is the point to decide on your essay topic and make a start on the reading.

7Liberalism, Morality and the Self (5 November)

Did the liberal project depend upon the reform of the self? What did this entail?

A theoretical starting-point here would be to look at some of the literature on ‘liberal governmentality’, inspired by Foucault:

Barry, Andrew, Osborne, Thomas, & Rose, Nikolas (eds), Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism, and Rationalities of Government (London, 1996), introduction & chs 1-3.

Foucault, Michel, ‘Governmentality’, in G Burchell, C Gordon & P Miller (eds), The Foucault Effect (London, 1991).

Joyce, Patrick, The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the ModernCity (London, 2003).

Rose, Nikolas, ‘Towards a critical sociology of freedom’, in Patrick Joyce (ed), Class (Oxford, 1995), pp. 213-224.

Try relating this model of liberalism to some of the following (in practice the literature on this subject is mostly on Britain):

Collini, Stefan, ‘The idea of “character” in Victorian political thought’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series 35 (1985). A classic article, which everyone should read.

Crook, Tom. ‘“Schools for the moral training of the people”: public baths, Liberalism and the promotion of cleanliness in Victorian Britain’, European Review of History, 13:1 (2006), 21-47.

Goodlad, Lauren, Victorian Literature and the VictorianState: Character and Governance in a Liberal Society (Baltimore, 2003).

Harrison, Brian, ‘State intervention and moral reform’, in Patricia Hollis (ed), Pressure from Without in Early Victorian England (London, 1974), pp. 289-318.

Johnson, Douglas (ed), Guizot: Aspects of French History (London, 1963) - especially the sections on education.

Jones, H.S., Victorian Political Thought (Basingstoke, 2000), ch 1, esp pp. 26-40.

Otter, Chris. ‘Making liberalism durable: vision and civility in the late Victorian city’, Social History, 27:1 (2002), 1-15.

Parry, Jonathan, The Rise and Fall of Liberal Government in Victorian Britain (London, 1993).

Searle, G.R., Morality and the Market in Victorian Britain (Oxford, 1998), especially ch 10.

Smiles, Samuel, Self-Help (1859 and subsequent editions). OLL or here. Chs 1 and 13 are probably the most useful.

Valverde, Mariana, ‘“Despotism” and ethical liberal governance’, Economy and Society 25 (1996), 357-72.

Valverde, Mariana, ‘“Slavery from Within”: the invention of alcoholism and the question of free will’, Social History 22 (1997), 251-68.

Vincent, K. Steven, ‘Benjamin Constant, the French revolution, and the problem of modern character’,History of European Ideas 30 (2004), 5-21[E]

8Liberalism and Civil Society (12 November)

How far did the realization of the liberal project depend upon the formation of an autonomous ‘civil society’? Was the idea of civil society instrinsically liberal, or were there non-liberal as well as liberal versions? Was there a tension between civil society and the hegemony of the market?

Primary Texts

Hall, John A. and Trentmann, Frank,Civil Society: A Reader in History, Theory, and Global Politics (Basingstoke, 2005), esp the extracts in part 3 (Tocqueville, Hegel, Tönnies, Durkheim etc)

Mill, J.S.,Principles of Political Economy, Book V, ch 11 (‘Of the grounds and limits of the laisser-faire or non-interference principle’). Plenty of editions. OLL and other sites.

Mill, J.S., ‘Centralisation’, in Mill, Essays on Politics and Society II, Collected Works vol 19 (London, 1977), 581-613.

Mill, J.S., ‘Civilization’, in Mill, Essays on Politics and Society I (Collected Works vol 18), 119-147

Mill, J.S., ‘M. de Tocqueville on Democracy in America’, in Geraint L. Williams (ed), John Stuart Mill on Politics and Society. Or the full essays, 1835 and 1840, in Collected Works vol 18 here.

Tocqueville, Alexis de,Democracy in America, Vol 1 Book 2, chs 3, 4,, 6; Vol 2 Book 2 ‘Influence of democracy on the feelings of the Americans’, chs 1-8 (the chapter references are to the Penguin edition, of which there are many copies in the library; but they also apply to the electronicversion available via the library catalogue)

Secondary Reading

Bayly, C.A., The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914 (Oxford, 2004), ch 8.

Blackbourn, David , and Eley, Geoff, The Peculiarities of German History (Oxford, 1984).

Garrard, John, Democratisation in Britain: Elites, Civil Society and Reform since 1800 (Basingstoke, 2002).

Habermas, Jürgen, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Cambridge, 1989).

Harris, Jose (ed), Civil Society in British History (Oxford, 2003), introduction and chs 1-5 and 14.

Harris, Jose, Private Lives, Public Spirit: A Social History of Britain 1870-1914, (Oxford, chs 7-8).

Hazareesingh, Sudhir, From Subject to Citizen: The Second Empire and the Emergence of Modern French Democracy (Princeton, 1998), introduction and ch 3