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This biography of statesman Edmund Burke (1730–1797), covering three decades, is the first to attend to the complexity of Burke’s thought as it emerges in both the major writings and private correspondence. David Bromwich reads Burke’s career as an imperfect attempt to organize an honorable life in the dense medium he knew politics to be.
Edmund Burke prided himself on being a practical statesman, not an armchair philosopher. Yet his responses to specific problems - rebellion in America, the abuse of power in India and Ireland, or revolution in France - incorporated theoretical debates within jurisprudence, economics, religion, moral philosophy and political science. Moreover, the extraordinary rhetorical force of Burke's speeches and writings quickly secured his reputation as a gifted orator and literary stylist. This Companion provides a comprehensive assessment of Burke's thought, exploring all his major writings from his early treatise on aesthetics to his famous polemic, Reflections on the Revolution in France. It also examines the vexed question of Burke's Irishness and seeks to determine how his cultural origins may have influenced his political views. Finally, it aims both to explain and to challenge interpretations of Burke as a romantic, a utilitarian, a natural law thinker and founding father of modern conservatism.
Longlisted for the Orwell Prize and the Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction; both conservative and subversive, Burke’s beliefs have never been more relevant, as MP Jesse Norman explains.
A major new account of one of the leading philosopher-statesmen of the eighteenth century Edmund Burke (1730–97) lived during one of the most extraordinary periods of world history. He grappled with the significance of the British Empire in India, fought for reconciliation with the American colonies, and was a vocal critic of national policy during three European wars. He also advocated reform in Britain and became a central protagonist in the great debate on the French Revolution. Drawing on the complete range of printed and manuscript sources, Empire and Revolution offers a vivid reconstruction of the major concerns of this outstanding statesman, orator, and philosopher. In restoring Burke to his original political and intellectual context, this book overturns the conventional picture of a partisan of tradition against progress and presents a multifaceted portrait of one of the most captivating figures in eighteenth-century life and thought. A boldly ambitious work of scholarship, this book challenges us to rethink the legacy of Burke and the turbulent era in which he played so pivotal a role.
A provocative biography of Edmund Burke, the underappreciated founder of modern conservatism Edmund Burke is both the greatest and the most underrated political thinker of the past three hundred years. A brilliant 18th-century Irish philosopher and statesman, Burke was a fierce champion of human rights and the Anglo-American constitutional tradition, and a lifelong campaigner against arbitrary power. Once revered by an array of great Americans including Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, Burke has been almost forgotten in recent years. But as politician and political philosopher Jesse Norman argues in this penetrating biography, we cannot understand modern politics without him...
Edmund Burke was an orator, writer, British statesman, and opponent of the revolution in France. This collection of essays focuses on Burke's complex relationship to his native Ireland. It brings together 13 authors, all established experts and young scholars, from a variety of viewpoints and disciplines.
Longlisted for the Orwell Prize and the Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction; both conservative and subversive, Burke's beliefs have never been more relevant than in today's 'Big Society', as MP Jesse Norman explains. Philosopher, statesman, and founder of modern conservatism, Edmund Burke is both the greatest and most under-rated political thinker of the past three-hundred years. Born in Ireland in 1729, and greatly affected by its bigotry and extremes, his career constituted a lifelong struggle against the abuse of power. Amid the 18th century's golden generation that included his companions Adam Smith, Samuel Johnson and Edward Gibbon, Burke's controversial mixture of conservative and sub...
The 1957 book contributes greatly to our knowledge of the character and ideas of Burke.
In this volume, leading Burke scholars offer new and challenging essays which allow us to reconsider the historical context in which Reflections on the Revolution in France was written, its reception, its engagement in the discourses of nationalism and toleration, its legacy to English and Irish writers of the Romantic period, and its impact within our contemporary cultural and critical theory. The volume demonstrates a range of interdisciplinary critical methods and cultural perspectives from which to read Burke's most famous work.
This is the first such study of Operation Banner, the British Army's campaign in Northern Ireland. Drawing upon extensive interviews with former soldiers, primary archival sources including unpublished diaries and unit log-books, this book closely examines soldiers' behaviour at the small infantry-unit level (Battalion downwards), including the leadership, cohesion and training that sustained, restrained and occasionally misdirected soldiers during the most violent period of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. It contends that there are aspects of wider scholarly literatures - including from sociology, anthropology, criminology, and psychology - that can throw new light on our understanding of...