The Radical North, 1779-1914

The image of a Spence token sent to me by Malcolm Chase. Image Rachel Hammersley.

I start with a marvellous coincidence. At the end of November, I spoke at the symposium 'The Radical North, 1779-1914' which was organised at the University of Leeds, under the auspices of Northern History and with support from the Social History Society, to celebrate the life and work of Professor Malcolm Chase (1957-2020). As I began preparing my talk on Thomas Spence and the political culture of late eighteenth-century Newcastle, I spotted the photograph of a Spence token on the shelf beside my desk and thought I could use it as one of the illustrations. As I removed it from its frame I noticed that there was a message on the back and I realised that the photograph had been sent to me and my then husband, John Gurney, by Malcolm himself in 2007 as a 'New Year's Gift'. Though I have often looked at that photograph while working, I had completely forgotten that it was Malcolm who sent it to us. It seemed highly appropriate that I should have remembered as I began writing the paper, and I felt both Malcolm and John would have approved of my decision to dig more deeply into the life and times of Thomas Spence.

The symposium was a fitting tribute to Malcolm. It included excellent papers on topics ranging from Christopher Wyvill's Yorkshire Association to the legacies of Chartism in Lancashire, and the radical verse of the Pitman Poets. As always, what follows are my own reflections on the papers and the discussions they sparked.

Callum Manchester offered a thoughtful paper on the Yorkshire Association, which reminded us all of the problems associated with using the term 'radicalism', especially for the period before it was coined in 1819. As Callum explained, Christopher Wyvill is especially problematic in this regard because, while he fits neatly with some elements of the definition of a radical - in his sympathy for Dissenters; his staunch opposition to placemen and pensioners in the House of Commons; and his call for parliamentary reform - in other respects he does not. Callum's solution to this problem was to suggest that radicalism is not just about aims but also the methods deployed to achieve them. He argued that Wyvill's methods were moderate rather than radical, and presented him as taking a middle way between Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine.

Christopher Wyvill by Henry Meyer, after John Hoppner, 1809. National Portrait Gallery NPG D4946. reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

Callum's paper set a helpful framework for what followed, not least in encouraging us all to pay attention to labels and their applicability to particular individuals and groups. One particularly curious label that featured in several papers was 'Tory Radical'. It has been used to refer to 'the Factory King' Richard Oastler, who was the subject of Vic Clarke's paper. Oastler was a staunch campaigner against cheap factory labour and exploitation, and yet he worked closely with the Tory MP Michael Sadler in the General Election campaign of 1837, and even stood as a Tory candidate for Huddersfield himself. As Vic explained, Oastler's apparent political ambiguity was mirrored - and perhaps prompted - by his social ambiguity. His background as a steward at Thornhill made it possible for him to engage with both mill owners and factory workers, and to build networks across class and political lines. Later in the proceedings, Christopher Day noted that the label 'Tory Radical' has also been applied to James Heaton of Clitheroe, who deployed Chartist methods - including mass petitioning, fly posting, and organising public meetings - in resisting the Public Health Act of 1848.

In his paper, Andrew Walker spoke in more general terms about the celebration of 'Old Chartists' in the northern press in the last forty years of the nineteenth century, noting that some of these men had become more conservative over the years leading to them being described by some as 'Tory Chartists'. Finally, something similar is perhaps evident in the life of the pitman poet Lewis Proudlock, who was the focus of Jordan Clark's paper. Though a promoter of the rights of working people, Proudlock took great inspiration from Jacobite myths, not least the story of Amelia Radcliffe. The political status of Jacobitism in different contexts has been of interest to me ever since I came across Jean-Jacques Rutledge (a Franco-Irish Jacobite) who featured prominently in my first book. It was, therefore, interesting to see how this ambiguity played out in a Northumbrian context.

In the discussion, we agreed that rather than dismissing the notion of Tory Radicals as an oxymoron, we ought to take such labels seriously. The figures of the past do not always neatly fit the pigeon-holes into which later scholars want to put them. Paying attention to how they viewed themselves - in all its complexity and ambiguity - may reveal important things about their aims and methods.

Some of these so-called Tory Radicals also share something else in common, in being what we might think of as footnotes to history. Malcolm himself had a fascination for those obscured in the conventional historical narrative, and it was therefore appropriate that several such figures featured in the papers presented at the symposium.

A copy of John Marshall’s The Northern Reformer’s Monthly Magazine from 1823. Philip Robinson Library, Newcastle University, Special Collections, Rare Books (RB 941.074 NOR). Reproduced with permission.

John Marshall, who was the focus of Harriet Gray's paper, is a good example of a forgotten radical. Marshall was a printer, bookseller, and librarian who lived and worked in Gateshead and Newcastle around the turn of the nineteenth century. He had links to better known radical figures including Eneas Mackenzie and William Hone, but Marshall himself is not well known and information on him is sparse. Nonetheless, Harriet did an excellent job of piecing together the evidence that does exist. Her paper, which was paired with my own on Thomas Spence, illuminated the political culture of the north east in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and demonstrated the various ways in which Marshall continued to disseminate Spencean ideas - via Spencean methods - long after Spence's own departure to London in the late 1780s.

Though living and working half a century later, and being based in Sunderland rather than Newcastle/Gateshead, Thomas Dixon - who was the focus of Joy Brindle's paper - reminded me a little of Marshall. He too was a disseminator and seller of books, but he also emphasised the importance of moving from thought to action. A distinctive element of Dixon's activity, which Joy explored in detail, was his letter-writing. He built up a large network of correspondents, which included several well-known figures. In his letters, as in his dissemination of books, Dixon's aim was to bring about tangible improvements to the working lives of those living in his locality.

The aim of improving the lives of working people also lay behind the petitions sent to Parliament from the north of England in the late nineteenth century, which were the subject of Henry Miller's paper. Most of the signatories to these petitions are complete 'unknowns', and yet in the words of the petitions we can hear the voices of ordinary people, thereby learning of their grievances and political concerns. Much the same is true of Martin Wright's account of the Northumberland miner's strike of 1887 and its impact on the wider socialist movement.

Richard Oastler, by James Posselwhite, after Benjamin Garside, 1841. National Portrait Gallery, NPG D7845. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.

Another factor linking many of these obscure figures - and the papers at the symposium - is the important role played by religion in inspiring radical thought and action. Spence, Marshall, and Oastler were all driven by their faith, and referred to religious ideas and arguments directly in their writings. Other papers explored the influence of religious belief in more general terms. Andrew Walker paid attention to the impact of Methodism on the Chartists, while Tobin O'Connor offered a fascinating paper on the Labour Church in the 1890s. He argued that although it only lasted for a short time, and was quickly forgotten, it nonetheless provided an important path into the Labour movement for many working-class northerners.

Several of those who spoke specifically about Malcolm, referred to the importance to him of the connection between education and politics, and his commitment to sharing his knowledge with audiences beyond the academy. This was, of course, reflected in his first job at Leeds University in the Centre for Continuing Education, but he sustained his commitment to it long after transferring to the School of History. Katrina Navickas showed that, for Malcolm, politics and education were integral to each other, while Matthew Roberts and Robert Poole noted that he always wrote in a way that would engage the general reader and adapted his work to the interests and concerns of his audience.

Laura Foster also addressed the relationship between education and politics in her fascinating paper on reading and rambling groups such as the Eagle Street College in Bolton and the Clarion Sheffield Ramblers. Both clubs combined the reading and discussion of literature with walking in the countryside. Laura argued that in organisations such as these, participants created a space of pre-figurative politics in which the friendships and communities that were forged operated as a kind of microcosm of an ideal state.

This sense of creating an ideal politics through 'doing' is something that Malcolm Chase achieved in his own life and work - as was evidenced in the heartfelt testimonies offered by many of the participants. He was, his former colleague Laura King told us, a 'different kind of professor'. Though a talented and productive historian, he did not conform to the conventional academic and institutional hierarchies. He was consistently supportive of students and early career researchers. Pretty much everyone in the room appeared to have had the experience of a conversation with Malcolm about a current research project being followed up with a package of relevant material. In my case, I had simply presented a paper on Jean-Paul Marat's time in England to the History seminar at Leeds, which Malcolm had attended. A week or so later I received in the post a collection of ballads and offprints relating to Marat in Newcastle. I was neither a student nor a colleague of Malcolm's, and yet he treated my research with the same interest and generosity as those with whom he had closer connections.

Nor was it just those within the Academy who reaped the benefits of Malcolm's immense learning and kindness. He regularly spoke to non-academic audiences, ranging from parliamentary MPs to local history associations and adult education classes. Moreover, he genuinely acknowledged and valued the knowledge and expertise of those audiences. Malcolm's commitment to making historical and political knowledge widely accessible echoes the behaviour of many of the figures discussed at the symposium. Spence deliberately employed innovative methods - such as tokens, songs, and graffiti - to spread his ideas widely. Similarly, Marshall used his circulating library to make books available to the people of Gateshead, and Dixon often wrote letters to acquire key books for the people of Sunderland. Malcolm, then, embodied the marriage of scholarship and public engagement - of thought and action - that the figures he wrote about, from Spence to the Chartists, would have recognised and applauded.

Fifty Years of the World Turned Upside Down

Is what I am doing worthwhile? How can I make a difference? I often ask myself these questions. They feel especially pressing in the midst of the current cost of living crisis, in the face of impending environmental disaster, and in a situation of growing inequality both within Britain and between us and the global south. In this context, writing books and articles on obscure early modern figures and their ideas - and teaching classes to students who are relatively privileged - can feel self-indulgent. It was, therefore, reassuring to learn from Penny Corfield, at a recent conference to celebrate 50 years since the publication of The World Turned Upside Down, that the eminent early modern historian Christopher Hill was troubled by these questions too. Like me, Hill was no doubt partly prompted by the inspiring phrase from Gerrard Winstanley, which I have quoted before in this blog: 'action is the life of all, and if though dost not act, though dost nothing' (Gerrard Winstanley, A Watch-Word to the City of London and the Armie, London, 1649).

The programme for the conference, which was expertly organised by Waseem Ahmed in conjunction with John Rees.

In his excellent paper on Hill's life and thought, which marked the culmination of the conference, Mike Braddick explained that as a young man in the 1930s Hill was already 'thinking like a Marxist' but did not yet know what to 'do'. Of course, he soon found his role. As Mike explained, writing history was Hill's contribution. As one obituary of him noted, Hill was 'an historian's historian' and yet works like The World Turned Upside Down spoke not just to academics, but also to ordinary people. Moreover, as Ann Hughes explained in her paper, Hill also reached out in many different ways to a wider public through his involvement with organisations such as the Workers' Educational Association, the Open University, and the BBC. I was bemused to learn that Hill's piece 'James Harrington and the People' was originally written for radio. Oh if only someone would commission a radio programme on Harrington today! Similarly John Rees reported, on the basis of his own experience, that Hill was always happy to be associated with the organised left and gave inspiring speeches to large crowds.

There is an interesting parallel between Hill's commitment to venture beyond academia, presenting his historical research (and that of others) to the general public, and the subject matter of The World Turned Upside Down. That book took seriously the ideas of ordinary people. Its protagonists are not the 'great' thinkers of the seventeenth century but rather the ordinary people (some of them very humble indeed) who were caught up in events. Hill was interested in ideas that inspire practical political action, regardless of the social status or level of education of those who voiced those ideas and took that action.

A poster advertising the film Winstanley about the Digger movement, one of the key groups to feature in Christopher Hill’s The World Turned Upside Down. Author’s own copy.

This focus was reflected in several of the papers at the conference, including papers that dealt with figures who feature in The World Turned Upside Down and papers on those who perhaps should have done, but do not. It was apt to have Ariel Hessayon talking about the Ranters and Bernard Capp to say something about the Fifth Monarchists. Ariel contextualised Hill's account of the Ranters in The World Turned Upside Down and emphasised the fact that the strength of Hill's book lay in making these rather obscure figures visible. He also noted that Hill came to the Ranters quite late. Capp extended this point, acknowledging that the radicals are not prominent in many of Hill's earlier works such as The English Revolution 1640 and The Century of Revolution (though this partly reflects the nature of those publications). Capp also suggested that the Fifth Monarchists and Muggletonians ranked lower in Hill's estimations than the Ranters and the Diggers, not least because their ideas did not all sit comfortably with his understanding of radicalism.

Author’s copy of Hill’s book showing the tub-thumping preacher on the cover.

Several speakers made the case for particular individuals to be considered as radicals. Jackie Eales's paper focused on the radical preacher James Hunt of Sevenoaks, who does not appear in The World Turned Upside Down despite probably being the tub-thumping preacher on the cover of the original edition. Jason Peacey argued the case for George Wither and asked the thought-provoking question: How would our view of radicalism change if Wither were taken more seriously? Ed Legon's paper focused on individuals even more obscure than Hunt and Wither, textile workers-cum preachers such as one Thomas Moore, 'Dingle', and others for whom we do not even have a name. The link between textile workers and radical puritanism has long been recognised, if not fully explored, but other speakers found radicals in even more unexpected places. Will White made the case for the neutral Francis Nethersole as a radical of sorts. He pointed out that refusing to take sides was itself a political act, which might lead to disobedience and required considerable courage. He also noted the similarities between ideas put forward by Nethersole to justify his neutrality and those expressed by the Leveller William Walwyn in The Bloody Project. The fluidity implicit in Walwyn's position (and acknowledged by Hill) was also reflected in the activities of another Leveller, Captain William Bray, who was the subject of Ted Vallance's paper. Ted showed how Bray haunted the boundary between the Levellers and the Ranters. In part, this fluidity stems from thought being geared to political action, since engaging in politics (rather than merely contemplating it) may require pragmatism: deploying different arguments for different audiences; rearranging priorities in response to events; and even setting aside key principles at certain moments.

The image of the world turned upside down from the pamphlet of the same name.

This leads to another point that was reflected in both Hill's life and his work. The importance of free and open debate, and even the possibility that ideas might be changed through it. As Ann, John and Mike all noted, Hill experienced this himself in the debates in which he engaged as a member of the Communist Party Historians’ Group between the late 1930s and 1957. The idea of open debate was also reflected in papers that themselves turned conventional interpretations upside down. For example, Richard Bell showed that the interest of key Levellers in prisons was not a case of them bringing political consciousness to prisoners, but rather of the Levellers tapping into a long-standing campaign for prison reform. Similarly, Laura Stewart made a convincing case for the notion of a Scottish Revolution, emphasising the need for it to be understood on its own terms.

Laura's paper was one of many that either ventured beyond Hill's field of enquiry or even challenged key aspects of his thought. As Penny Corfield made clear, Hill would have enjoyed and appreciated the debate. He welcomed respectful disagreement on the grounds that thinking could be advanced in the process. As Mike explained, the members of the Communist Party Historians’ Group were not aiming to impose an orthodox view of the English Revolution but rather engaged in lengthy, deep and open discussion to try to work out the relevance of Marxist theory for English history. For Hill it was important that ideas were debated and kept in use.

Sketch of the bust of Thomas Spence. From the collection of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne. Hedley Papers. Reproduced with kind permission. With thanks to Harriet Gray.

The conference papers and discussions certainly inspired me, helping me better to understand and articulate the meaning of my own life and work. I too am committed to analysing not simply the ideas of great political thinkers of the past, but also those of ordinary people caught up in events. My PhD research examined the ideas of relatively humble French revolutionaries who were members of the Cordeliers Club, and considered the ways in which they adapted English republican ideas to their own situation. In my current research I am exploring how reformers and radicals in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain articulated their arguments. In this regard, the Newcastle-born radical Thomas Spence is of particular relevance. Despite being from a very humble background, Spence developed innovative political ideas of his own and believed strongly in the value of providing political education to all members of society, regardless of their wealth or social status.

At the same time, I am committed to engaging with audiences beyond academia. I have been involved with a number of exciting projects alongside our excellent educational outreach team from Newcastle University's Robinson Library and staff at the National Civil War Centre. Our current project involves working with Year 12 students on oracy and debate. Meanwhile, the Experiencing Political Texts project (https://experiencingpoliticaltexts.wordpress.com) has provided an opportunity to work with members of the public in a regular reading group where discussions are always thought-provoking. We will develop this further as we put together two exhibitions, one at the Robinson Library, Newcastle University this summer and another at the National Library of Scotland, opening in December. Finally, this blog has provided a valuable opportunity to share my research with a wider audience, but also to reflect on the implications of the ideas of the past today. I can only dream of producing a book like The World Turned Upside Down, but by taking seriously the ideas of all people - including those who have so often been silenced - perhaps I can make a small contribution and heed Winstanley's injunction to 'act'.

Moderation and Enlightenment

The week commencing 17 January 2022 was a bumper one for conferences at Newcastle University, with not one but two events organised by members of our Ideas and Beliefs research strand in the School of History, Classics, and Archaeology. Both hosted excellent papers, and so, while it means a disruption to the series on British Republicans that I started in January, it seems appropriate to devote a blogpost to each conference.

Here, I will focus on 'What was Moderate about the Enlightenment? Moderation in Eighteenth-Century Europe', organised by Dr Nick Mithen - a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow currently based at Newcastle University. This conference grew out of Nick's research project Via Media Italica: The Scholar, the Jurist, the Priest: Moderation on the Italian Peninsula, 1700-1750. As the title of the conference indicates, the aim was to explore the complex relationship between moderation and enlightenment.

Of course, a conference on the theme of moderation inevitably sparks discussions over how that term should be understood. In this regard I was struck by the parallels between the difficulties that arise when applying the term 'moderation' to the eighteenth century and those surrounding early modern 'radicalism'. In the case of 'radicalism' a key issue is that the term was not coined until 1819, so it may be argued that it is anachronistic to apply it to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries since no-one engaged in politics at that time would have called themselves 'radicals'. By contrast, 'moderation' was a term used in the eighteenth century and several thinkers discussed at the conference did use it to describe themselves. In his keynote address, John Robertson provided examples of David Hume's use of the term. Yet, understanding what figures like Hume meant by it - or what we might mean by applying it to the period of the Enlightenment - remains a tricky issue. In part this is because, just like 'radicalism', 'moderation' is often understood in relative rather than absolute terms. As one contributor, Doron Avraham, asked explicitly - can we speak of a 'moderate ideology' or is moderation always just a middle way between two other positions?

This leads on to the question of whether we can describe specific individuals as 'moderate'. To return to Robertson's keynote, Hume might appear quintessentially 'moderate' on a range of issues and was explicit about the value of moderation in relation to party politics but it is difficult to understand either his religious views or his attitude to race in this way, making it problematic to regard him as a proponent of Enlightenment moderation. Damien Tricoire prompted similar arguments in relation to Denis Diderot. Diderot has often been presented as a 'radical' thinker, yet a convincing case was put for him being seen as a 'moderate', since he rarely questioned the existing political order of his society and was careful about what he said publicly. Working in the opposite direction, Carlos Perez Crespo challenged the idea that Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès's conception of sovereignty was an act of moderation, arguing - on the basis of a careful dissection of Sieyès's position - for his radicalism on this point. Other contributors provided examples of individuals who appeared moderate at one point in their careers, but not at others. For example, Niklas Vogt, the subject of Matthijs Lok's paper, constantly adjusted his position in response to changing political circumstances. As well as defining and redefining their position in relation to events, individuals might also do so in relation to others. Vera Fasshauer's paper on Johann Konrad Dippel's quarrel with the Halle Pietists demonstrated this very clearly. She ended her paper by raising the pertinent question of which position was more moderate - that of the Pietists who sought to avoid confrontation or that of the radicals who insisted on the toleration of different opinions? The question of what constitutes a 'moderate' position is a particularly difficult one to answer in the case of eighteenth-century women writers. Simply writing and publishing could be seen as a radical act for an eighteenth-century woman, but acknowledging this makes it difficult to distinguish between what we might think of as more clearly 'radical' writers and more 'conservative' ones. This is an issue that Geertje Bol is addressing directly in her work on Mary Astell and Catharine Macaulay, and her discussion of Astell's clever redefinition of moderation as 'zeal directed towards the proper (spiritual and moral) ends' was revealing in this regard.

Anna Letitia Barbauld by John Chapman after unknown artist. Stipple engraving. 1798. National Portrait Gallery, NPG D4457. Reproduced under a creative commons licence.

A number of papers presented the idea of moderation as a tempering tendency that might be applied to a range of different views. Thus Nicolai von Eggers presented the idea of the comte de Montlosier moderating the counter revolution, while Natasha Lomonossoff described Anna Barbauld's position as one of 'moderate radicalism'. Similarly, Elad Carmel began his paper by telling us that in an unsent letter to Hume, Robert Wallace had described himself as a 'moderate freethinker', while Mark McLean showed how Lord Hailes (Sir David Dalyrmple) combined the moderation of the Scottish Enlightenment with Christian orthodoxy.

All of this raises the question of how moderation was to be enacted and here too there was a range of interesting responses. For some of the authors discussed, it was a question of balance, whether through the mediating role of a particular group such as the nobility or whether through a careful institutional system of checks and balances. For others it was about identifying and following a middle way. As Matilda Amundsen Bergström showed, Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht sought a via media between Enlightenment thought and more traditional Swedish ideas. Similarly Anna Barbauld sought a middle way between stasis and revolution, and Robert Wallace attempted to navigate between those who rejected Christianity and those who rejected any investigation of religion.

Philip Doddridge by George Vertue after Andrea Soldi. Line engraving. 1751. National Portrait Gallery, NPG D2278. Reproduced under a creative commons licence.

A moderate position was often associated, as Shiru Lim reminded us, with the promotion of civility and the banishing of disagreeability, and also with the adoption of peaceful rather than violent means. Lim's own paper explored the role that theatre was seen to play by some in the moderation of the passions. Other papers placed emphasis on the dissemination and discussion of a range of ideas in the spirit, pace Anna Barbauld, of using persuasion rather than force and of convincing rather than imposing one's views on others. Pauls Daija's fascinating paper on the Baltic case, focused on the use of education for the purposes of moderation, with books being deliberately directed at Latvian peasants to prepare them for freedom. In this case there was some care taken over the type of material that was shared, with an emphasis on useful knowledge and civilising literature rather than overtly political works, but in other cases a more open policy was adopted. For example, Robert Strivens demonstrated that Philip Doddridge presented texts expressing a wide variety of opinions to his students, deliberately exposing them to writings that opposed his own views. Similarly, Doron Avraham mentioned a multilingual version of the New Testament produced by the Pietists, which was designed to meet the needs of all confessions within the German lands.

Portrait of Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht by an unknown artist. Reproduced from Wikimedia Commons.

The very notion of a multilingual Bible as an agent of moderation highlights the importance of genre and the role it could play in the process of moderation. This theme, which is close to my current interests, was also reflected in Bergström's discussion of Nordenflycht's writings. Her use of poetry to discuss philosophical matters may seem strange to twenty-first century eyes, but Bergström made clear that it was not unusual for Swedish writers at the time. However, the particular form Nordenflycht adopted in one of the texts discussed - with a first section consisting of questions addressed to a leading Swedish scholar and a second part offering replies - was particularly appropriate to the pursuit of a moderate line. Similarly as Marc Caplan demonstrated, Isaac Euchel's play Reb Henoch: Oder Woss tut me damit? deliberately used linguistic pluralism as a means of reflecting different viewpoints.

As is often the case with such discussions I came away less sure of what 'moderation' means in the context of the eighteenth century than I was at the start, but I was certainly more enlightened!

Radical Republicanism

As I acknowledged in my recent book, the term 'republicanism' means different things to different people. Adding the adjective 'radical' to the term only complicates matters further, especially when the focus is the early modern period. The term 'radicalism' was not in use until the early nineteenth century, leading some scholars to argue that it should not be applied before that time. Yet 'Radical Republicanism in Early Modern Europe' was the title of an excellent conference organised by Anna Becker, Nicolai von Eggers, and Alessandro Mulieri in late June 2021. The conference organisers did not shy away from the difficulties with the terminology, indeed Nicolai von Eggers opened the proceedings by asking whether it is valuable to speak of 'radical republicanism'. What followed was a rich and lively discussion about what we mean by that label, what role the people should play within a republic, and why radical republicans are so often neglected within the historiography.

Niccolò Machiavelli by Santi di Tito. Taken from Wikimedia Commons.

The constitution of the citizen body and the role its members should play have been key questions for those discussing republican rule ever since ancient times. As Alessandro Mulieri noted in his paper, Aristotle argued for the wisdom of the many over that of the few, insisting that as a collective body the many (understood as the middle orders rather than the poor) would have greater expertise, prudence, and virtue when it came to the selection of magistrates and the judgement of their actions. Niccolò Machiavelli famously expanded Aristotle's assessment to incorporate the plebs and to include lawmaking as well as the selection of magistrates. John McCormick has drawn attention to this aspect of Machiavelli's thought in his published work on the Florentine's democratic credentials. He developed this idea further in his paper at the conference, by exploring in greater detail the aristocratic republicanism of Francesco Guicciardini, which was in large part a response to Machiavelli's democratic republicanism. McCormick convincingly demonstrated that Machiavelli had got under Guicciardini's skin, leading him to adopt awkward positions (such as justifying genocide).

Plans that appeared in the Revolutions de Paris for platforms designed to make it possible for orators to be heard in a large assembly that was part of the wider proposals made by radical republicans during the early years of the French Revolution discussed by Nicolai von Eggers. Source gallica.bnf.fr/BnF.

One feature of the more aristocratic form of republicanism advanced by Guicciardini is the mixed constitution. Both Markku Peltonen and Annelien de Dijn questioned its dominance within the republican tradition, showing that many seventeenth- and eighteenth-century republicans explicitly rejected that model, opting instead for a purer form of democratic rule. One of the key claims of Peltonen's excellent paper was that not only were republican arguments boldly made by a large number of English commentators during the period of the Commonwealth and Free State (1649-53), but that many described the government under which they were living positively as a democracy. De Dijn cited another seventeenth-century radical republican, Pieter De la Court who insisted that freedom would only be secure in a true democracy where decision-making power lay firmly with the people. Moreover, De Dijn argued that De la Court (along with his contemporary Baruch Spinoza and, later, Jean-Jacques Rousseau) took Aristotle's argument to its logical conclusion, insisting that the people were more likely to rule in the common good than the elite and arguing, therefore, that there should be no restraint on popular power but only a strict form of majoritarian rule.

In the discussion, Camilla Vergara articulated the distinction being explored very clearly: one form of republicanism involves the sharing of power between the elites and the plebs; whereas the other (democratic or plebeian republicanism) involves giving power to the people. Of course this raises further questions about how popular power can and should be exercised (especially in large modern states). This issue was broached in the two papers on the French Revolution. Ariane Fichtl explored the influence on the French revolutionaries of ancient institutions such as the popular tribunes. Nicolai von Eggers focused on those radicals who adopted an intermediate position between representative and direct democracy by calling for the use of imperative mandates that would bind deputies or delegates to act only on the instructions of those who had elected them.

Samuel Hayat's paper on the recent 'gilets jaunes' protests in France, opened up a further question of whether 'the people' speak with a single voice. This is certainly the impression the 'gilets jaunes' seek to present, but to do so they must downplay differences of opinion based on race, sex, or class. A further issue raised by Hayet's paper is the thorny relationship between the terms 'popular' and 'radical'. The importance of distinguishing the 'popular' from the 'radical' has long been acknowledged by historians of the British civil wars - not least John Morrill. Moreover, not only in that Revolution but also in France in 1793 and again in 1848, the revolutionary authorities were presented with a dilemma. Should free and fair elections be suspended if the outcome of such elections was likely to be a rejection of the revolutionary regime? 

Portrait of Pieter de la Court by Abraham van den Tempel, 1667. Taken from Wikimedia Commons.

Regardless of the different ways in which it has been defined, radical republicanism has long been obscured or even neglected. Throughout the conference we heard papers calling for the rehabilitation of important figures as diverse as Ptolemy of Lucca, Pier Filippo Pandolfini, and Pieter De la Court, as well as for recognition of the republican implications of the works of figures such as Étienne de La Boétie (examined in an interesting paper by Saul Newman). Selective borrowing has been in operation throughout history. In papers by Miguel Vatter and Alessandro Mulieri, Machiavelli was shown to have rejected Platonism and Aristotelianism while simultaneously taking on board certain ideas from them. In my own paper I showed that selectivity was also in operation in the use of James Harrington's ideas by eighteenth-century British thinkers.

This selectivity has continued in later scholarship. Jérémie Barthas noted that Rudolf von Albertini was crucial in downplaying the significance of radical republicans like Pandolfini, because of the perceived connection between his ideas and those of the Jacobins. Following John McCormick's account of the brutal side of Guicciardini's thought, Anna Becker posed the leading question of where the more positive reading of him had originated. Similarly, Markku Peltonen argued that radical republican writings of the early 1650s have largely been ignored by recent republican scholars.

Gaby Mahlberg and Anna Becker both wondered whether part of the reason for the dominance of a more elitist reading of the republican tradition arises from the source material that tends to be used - in particular the focus on a range of printed canonical texts. Gaby's exploration of translations, reviews and networks - along with Anna's work on women and republicanism - have the potential to offer an alternative view. While source material may be part of the problem, political attitudes and priorities no doubt also play their part. For this reason, radical republicanism not only offers a rich vein for future historical research, but also a potential source of valuable material to help us to understand the nature of the political system we have inherited and the means by which it might be improved in the future.