Reason awakes in the clubbable

Was there a distinctive British Enlightenment? Jeremy Black assesses a work that claims the age of reason flowered in a singularly British display.

That there was a British Enlightenment is an important thesis that Roy Porter has been offering for some time. This Enlightenment is discerned not so much in the writings of a small group of intellectuals (although Porter is at pains to show that there were important intellectuals in Britain) but rather in the general character of British culture and in the availability of a cultural infrastructure, especially a largely free press, but also the vibrant and unconstrained world of coffee houses and other public meeting places. "More like a communing of clubbable men than a clique or a conspiracy, the Enlightenment derived its coherence in Britain largely from a shared currency of images and idioms - it was as much a language as a programme." The book trade and the network of correspondents that lay behind scholarly journals provided the channels for ideas.

Porter also presents the British Enlightenment as distinctive from that typical on the Continent in "its pervasive individualism. Locke stressed personal rights against the ruler; Hume prized private life over civic virtue; Smith championed the individual actor in the free market - the invisible hand would bring public good out of private; Bentham held all equal and every man the best judge of his own interests, while Godwin formulated a systematic anarchism. The hallmark of British thinking lay in casting progress as a matter of individual improvement or (as with hospitals, schools and charities) as the work of voluntary associations... At variance with Foucault's stress on discipline, surveillance and control, much enlightened thinking was directed towards dissent and disestablishment."

The stress on individuality is appropriate, though, as Porter recognises, it was also shaped by interest in systems. Thinkers were as much concerned with discovery, whether through exploration, observation or historical study, as with speculation; and rationalistic methods of scholarship developed to classify, integrate and exploit what was discovered. Although the nature and closeness of the relationship between discovery and speculation varied, it was crucial to the development and application of thought. Methodism, for example, can in part be understood as a consequence of Wesley's stress on an individual's ability to understand and know salvation.

Porter is also very good on the social politics of Enlightenment. Querying earlier interpretations of popular culture as mastered from above through policing or propaganda, Porter argues that in England (and presumably the British Isles) "it makes sense to stress seduction no less than suppression. Modernising outlooks triumphed less through imposition than infiltration, via supply and demand mechanisms, exploiting opportunities in the commercial exchange of print capitalism."

As many readers will be familiar with Porter's arguments, it is most profitable to consider where his account leaves us, although even those who have already read him will be thrilled by the exuberant energy of the writing, while his swift and effective summaries of the arguments of a host of writers from Newton to Erasmus Darwin will benefit many. The illustrations are well chosen, the examples pertinent and the extensive quotations appropriate.

As in any work of this scope, there are of course problems. First, there is the book's size. A work of more than 750 pages might seem to cover everything, but the type and margins are generous and there are 130 pages of endnotes, 87 of bibliography and 34 of index. All of these are most valuable, and the notes will be a happy hunting ground for those seeking guidance to new literature. However, as Porter points out, he does not have space to cover many aspects of the subject with sufficient detail. In particular, the treatment of Scotland and the relationship between the Scottish and English Enlightenments is far too limited, while intellectual trends in Ireland are also slighted. Some readers may feel that there is no shortage of coverage of the Scottish Enlightenment elsewhere, but it would have been useful to have had a comparison of developments north and south of the border.

This leads to a second problem, that of geography. Porter has published an excellent history of London, and it should not be surprising that the capital plays a central role in his new book. London was indeed the centre of cultural and intellectual life as well as of the press, and the place it takes in Porter's new book can be justified. However, at the same time, there is a less than full treatment of intellectual life elsewhere that is linked to a diffusionist model of activity and progress. This approach needs rethinking and we need a consideration of the regional and local dimensions of intellectual and cultural life.

Third, there is the familiar problem for those who work on the intellectual history of a concern with printed matter rather than the full range of sources or with the reception of this material. Even then there is a selectivity that is worthy of comment, for example, the less than full account of William Law.

More generally, although Porter correctly notes that the Enlightenment in Britain took place within, rather than against Protestantism, his treatment of religion is somewhat unbalanced. Deism and Unitarianism are given disproportionate importance. It is worth pointing out that religious writers thought knowledge a potent weapon against atheism and deism.

Porter is fairly dismissive in his all-too-brief consideration of those who hold different views. John Redwood and Jonathan Clark are referred to as neo-conservatives who "did time at All Souls". I do not think I am alone in being unhappy if those who argue the importance of religious considerations in 18th-century culture and thought are dismissed in this fashion.

It is also worth pointing out that newspapers were not simply "beacons" for change. Indeed, there is much literature on the use of the press for what might be termed "counter-Enlightenment" purposes. For example, there was a mass of astrological literature that is ignored. More readers would have turned to works such as Riders British Merlin than to many Porter discusses. For March 1706, Riders advised: "It is good to purge and let blood, for in this month the humours and blood increase, and gross feelings breed gross blood and humours." It was still widely believed that astrological anatomies and zodiacs were keys to character and guides to the future, that extra-terrestrial forces intervened in the affairs of the world, and that each constellation in the zodiac presided over a particular part of man, guidance to this process being provided by almanacs. The new science was ignored by much of the population.

At the same time, there was a growing interest in scientific advances. Museums of natural history were created, public scientific lectures developed and societies of enthusiastic amateurs were founded. Popular science books appeared and encyclopaedias played a major role in spreading knowledge. As Porter makes clear, this was a culture in which Enlightenment values permeated perhaps more deeply than anywhere else in Europe.

It is also important to remember that if science became public and fashionable, the level of scientific knowledge was rarely profound and much of the interest was dilettante and restricted to display, rather than theory. The mathematisation of science possibly made theories harder to grasp. Instead, it was the phenomena themselves, such as orreries, that attracted attention because they appealed to the imagination as well as, rather than to, the intellect. This was true of star gazing, mesmerism and electricity.

Although Porter plays down religion and underrates the multifaceted character of print culture, he is, nevertheless, much to be congratulated for his reminder of "the intensity of ideological conflict... enlightened attitudes formed not some bland background music to events but a partisan voice, expressive of sectional interests and divided elites... there was no 'end of ideology' slumber".

Yet there is also a tendency to offer a Zeitgeist that marginalises other views. To have engaged with them would possibly have clarified the importance and impact of those forces of change that most interest him. Porter's sympathies are clear. He is favourable to the Revolution Settlement and the Whig system. This leads him to observe that the statute book "incorporated much of the enlightened wish list: freedom of the person under habeas corpus , the rule of law, Parliament, religious toleration, and so forth... Promoters of enlightened rationality did not need to storm barricades, for doors swung open within the system." This can lead Porter to overlook the limitations of Whig liberty, for example by mentioning the theatre but not the Licensing Act.

He is also less than thorough in discussing alternatives, using the disparaging phrase "Squire Booby and his drinking companions" to describe critics. Such comments indicate weaknesses in what, throughout, is an exciting and important book. There is also a somewhat misleading antithesis of stark alternatives: "Unlike elsewhere, neither censorship, police spies nor petrified ecclesiastical protocols stopped the articulate and ambitious from pursuing their goals, be they experiments in free-thinking and living, self-enrichment or the pursuit of pleasure." However, the book's range is superb, its judgements of the leading thinkers of the period are impressively erudite and searching and, throughout, Porter captures the exuberance and dynamism of much of British culture in this period.

Jeremy Black is professor of history, University of Exeter.