The Making of the Modern World in the Long Eighteenth Century

The Making of the Modern World

in the Long Eighteenth Century

Both The Sinews of Power, by John Brewer, and The Creation of the Modern World, by Roy Porter, are concerned primarily with exploring the development of modernity within a British context; Porter explicitly so, by defining the British Enlightenment as the precursor to a modern, western value system, and Brewer implicitly so, by exploring the behind-the-scenes development of power in the British state. Before delving into their respective arguments, it may be useful to refer back to English Society 1660-1832, by J.C.D. Clark. In English Society, Clark challenges the assumption that the eighteenth century was a foment within which a modern world was created, and to a certain degree, challenges the definition of modernity itself. This report will explore the different ways in which Porter, Brewer and Clark view the eighteenth century with respect to modernity.

Clark, as we will recall, disputes the belief that English society in the eighteenth century was conscious of a progressive drive to modernize; according to Clark, they were rooted in the present. The nexus of the belief that English society was undergoing a process of modernization was actually a nineteenth century construct that attempted to define a new social order in relation to the old (Clark 2000: 14). In breaking down the barriers to modernity, Clark is echoing Bruno Latour in his book, We Were Never Modern, by defining modernity as a break from the old. In this definition, modernity is defined through a dichotomy between what is modern on the one hand, and what is not modern on the other hand (ancient, old, etc.) (Latour 1993: 10). For this reason, Clark sees no decisive break between the old order and the new order in the long eighteenth century; the old order actually survived through religion (the “confessional state”), political theory and high politics for much longer than has been traditionally perceived (Clark 2000: 2, 18).  Furthermore, Clark disputes that there was ever a coherent English Enlightenment, because English society in the eighteenth century could not possibly have perceived a coherent intellectual movement whose aim it was to break down the old order (Clark 2000: 9-10)

Roy Porter agrees with Clark in that there was no monolithic intellectual movement during this time; however, Clark posits that there was a “British Enlightenment”  that was a collection of diverse scientific, social and political theorists whose aim it was to modernize British Society (Porter 2000: 48). For Porter, it was these people who provided the great breaking point with the old order, for “the world they were making is the one we have inherited.”  (Porter 2000: xxii). Porter defends the idea of a British Enlightenment by pointing both outward, to the respect given to British thinkers of the time, and inward, to the diffusion of ideas through collective conversation and the print media. The British Enlightenment was first and foremost a defense of 1688 against its critics, but this defense was also instrumental in the permeation of ideas like “basic personal freedoms, and the worth of tolerance, knowledge, education and opportunity”  (Porter 2000: xxii). Furthermore, it was not merely theoretical, but practical in that it encouraged “ schools, hospitals, urban renewal, communications, print media, commercialism and consumerism” (Porter 2000: 14). One can see here the importance of science in the Newtonian and Baconian senses. The development of a market economy and consumerism is of central importance to enlightened thinkers in Britain, who adamantly defended individualism and with it, the pursuit of private property, private pleasures and social advancement. It this individualism and consumerism that was the impetus for reform and the desire to modernize (Porter 2000: 17, 384). Porter’s book is extraordinarily optimistic in the sense that, contrary to what is put forth by Clark, the result of the work enlightened minds who engaged themselves in a systematic, spirited, and practical defense of the new liberties against the darkness of the “Old Corruption,” is the emergence of a modern world with which we associate.

John Brewer is slightly more subtle in stance in that he avoids using the words modern or modernity, presumably to avoid becoming embroiled in this conflict; however, The Sinews of Power is written in the same tradition as Porter’s The Creation of the Modern World in that it attempts to define the development of a different British State. Brewer attempts to define the emergence of a strong, centralized and efficient British state as the rational response to the cataclysmic upheavals of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This response was the development of a bureaucracy that was capable of supporting ever-larger military and imperial ambitions through the mundane work of clerks, tax collectors and bankers (Brewer 1988: 27). In this manner, it was taxation and collection, public deficit finance, civil administration and the diffusion of public knowledge which created the order which was to last at least until 1945, if not to the present day. Although he is never explicit in terming this order a modern one, the structure of his argument suggests the emergence of a nascent modernity during the long eighteenth century.

Brewer and Porter both see the emergence of modernity as a direct response to the political, social and cultural changes of the long eighteenth century. For Brewer, the change was most importantly one that was a fiscal and organizational response to upheavals, war and a changing global climate. For Porter, the change was intellectual and personal, and had everything to do with practical innovations in science and communication.  Both start with very clear superstructures; Porter’s is the belief in liberalism, freedom, education and individualism, while Brewer’s is the powerful, efficient and centralized British states. Both historians make remarkably parallel arguments, and therefore, are subject to the same criticisms; namely, that their positive outlook on the development of ideas and institutions are naïvely anachronistic, and that they obscure the complex countercurrents of history (Porter, nevertheless, acknowledges his anachronism and seems to delight in it).

When seen in relation to their mentor Jack Plumb, both John Brewer and Roy Porter can be identified as liberal and modern, in contrast to the conservative post-modern (or anti-modern) leanings of J.C.D. Clark who forms a powerful opposition to Brewer and Porter. Both seem to be largely constructionist, as opposed to Clark, who tends towards a deconstruction of any idea of a coherent modernity, attempting to replace it with a panoply of different, fundamentally opposed perceptions of modernity (Joyce, 214). There seems to be no question as to the classification of the Brewer and Porter, but as for Clark, the question remains as whether he could be a post-modernist if he does not believe in modernity as such in the first place. Should one then, as Bruno Latour suggests, refer to him as an anti-modern (Latour)? This further raises the question of whether labels of this sort are useful or whether they actually obscure fundamental differences within the groups.

Although I have attempted to define the central arguments of these books many important questions exist and will be useful to anyone who wishes to pursue this topic any further. So, for your reading pleasure I have included a set of guide questions that I believe are important to understand the books in their individual and comparative sense.

• What is modernity, and did it ever exist?
• If so, is it a teleological error to look for the roots of modernity in any particular time frame, especially in an age that was in many ways unlike our own?
• Furthermore, given that both Brewer and Porter have a relatively narrow focus of what created the modern world and broke from the old, what then is the significance of other developments, such as the economic developments associated with capitalism or the development of industry?
• Is the upheaval of the long eighteenth century described by Porter and Brewer sufficient as a prologue to the development of modernity?
• Both Clark and Porter believe that enlightened thinking in Britain largely proceeded within the framework of the Protestant church; how then, do Porter and Clark reconcile their differences with respect to the British Enlightenment? Is Clark’s “confessional state” and Porter’s British Enlightenment mutually exclusive?
• Was there such a thing as the British Enlightenment?  
• Does Porter’s generally positive treatment of enlightened thinkers gloss over potentially negative consequences of the Enlightenment?
• Does Porter overestimate the degree to which the British polity were aware of the intellectual developments of their day?
• How does Porter’s practical and pragmatic Enlightenment compare to the more theoretical Enlightenment of the continent?
• Does Brewer adequately differentiate institutional change in Britain with institutional change on the continent?