Debating the Revolution: Britain in the 1790s

The French Revolution gave a fundamental shock to the human intellect through every region of the globe , wrote William Godwin in his Memoirs of an Author of the Vindication of the Rights of Women . Wordsworth’s The Prelude was yet more striking: Twas in truth an hour/Of universal ferment . The late 18th century, especially the 1790s, was a fateful period for Britain and all parts of the world where European influence was felt. The disintegration of French absolutism unleashed a global crisis and vital features of modernism in politics took centre stage - democracy, nationalism, mass military mobilization on a scale later seen in world wars, and even colonial revolt. Chris Evans shows how in Britain the intellectual fury, long fermenting, touched all sectors of society. This study, based on historiography, shows how all these issues were sharpened by the Revolution and how it resulted in widespread if gradual modernization of the British state in the following century.