What is the Enlightenment, and when did it come to an end? Neither are easy questions to answer. The Enlightenment, as a historical phenomenon or a phenomenon of ideas, coalesced into an attempt to rid humanity of rigid superstitions and fanaticism and liberate it from tyranny of every sort. Its first movements were discernible in Europe in the 17th century, and it became a continent-wide experiment of thought in the following one. But when did it end – as the title of Richard Whatmore’s book takes for granted?

There’s a good case for stating that it never came to an end. Once tyranny and religious certainty were dismissed as universal conditions of existence by the thinkers and writers who followed Voltaire, they could never be reinstated. From the 18th century onwards, with occasional backslidings, we would, until very recently, have been confident in stating that the freedoms of expression, thought and belief which began under the Enlightenment were destined to remain in place. The movement certainly did not end at the beginning of the 19th century, but continued to expand to give those freedoms to groups of people the 18th century hardly dreamt of – women, non-whites and sexual minorities. The ideas which the Enlightenment initiated, such as the liberation of slaves with the Mansfield judgment of 1772, would spread over the coming centuries. The Enlightenment didn’t end: it’s the air we breathe.

For my money, Edmund Burke was the most consistently accurate diagnostician of the direction of society

There is an ingenious case that suggests that the Enlightenment thinkers we value most were in fact precursors of the committers of the worst atrocities of the 20th century. A.N. Wilson, writing in this magazine a week ago, praised C.S. Lewis for pointing out that Hitler and Stalin were, after all, Enlightenment thinkers, determined to shed religious belief. There is a good deal in this; it isn’t just the clever Oxford-essay conclusion written to amuse a bored tutor. But one has to think that human abomination will always find an intellectual framework to justify itself in. Enlightenment didn’t create the innate wickedness of Stalin, Hitler and Mao. If the Enlightenment had never happened, can we really suppose that a Europe of devout and universal religious belief would ever have permitted freedom of thought? That wickedness would have found a way to express itself with God just as it did without. 

Richard Whatmore tackles the Enlightenment’s implications for historical events. Basically, his subject is how principled thought about liberty and the expression of knowledge should engage with increasingly rampageous trade. The Enlightenment was concerned with the nature of society: man should live free from oppression imposed by powerful bodies. As it spread, it frequently found itself at odds with reality – notably the desire to sell stuff. How did its ideals find expression in George III’s conduct of policy, in the revolt of the American colonies, in the French revolution, in the expansion of the British Empire? The questions grew increasingly complex, and less capable of being contained within a narrative. Whatmore maps the change of abstract thought and commentary amid the unpredictable flow of events.

The result is a decidedly demanding book which most readers will find very hard work. It focuses on eight writers over the course of 70-odd years. Their changing views, principally about political institutions, form the basis of Whatmore’s discussion. David Hume was perhaps the philosopher most famous in the 18th century for his unrepentant atheism. Lord Shelburne, 1st Marquess of Lansdowne, one of many brief prime ministers, was notable for his advocacy of Free Trade and his overseeing of the last stages of American independence. Catharine Macaulay was a historian and commentator on constitutional matters. Edward Gibbon, the chronicler of ancient Rome, was intensely knowledgeable about the republics of Switzerland and how they were affected by the ambitions of the French revolution – a subject very relevant to the Enlightenment’s war on fanaticism. Edmund Burke was the great conservative theorist and, for my money, the most consistently accurate diagnostician of the direction of society. Jacques-Pierre Brissot was a prolific hack writer in pre-revolutionary France, dedicated to radical causes. Thomas Paine was the American theorist and campaigner on behalf of the French revolution. Amusingly, when he ran away to France and was appointed to an official position, it emerged (not mentioned by Whatmore) that he couldn’t speak a word of French. Finally, Mary Wollstonecraft extended the rights of man to womankind, a gesture probably not paid much attention to until the 20th century.

Whatmore focuses on Europe, and takes for granted that British imperialism was a tyrannical movement, driven by mercantilism and entirely contrary to the ideals of the Enlightenment. He ignores the spread of education in the colonies themselves. No doubt it was not very admirable of Warren Hastings to descend on India and enrich himself at other people’s expense; but the British Empire was the engine not just of oppression but, ultimately, of learning in many (not all) of its colonies. The universities of India, and the systems of justice and scholarly investigation there, are surely the products of Enlightenment, and it is not fair to ignore such incidental benefits in favour of assertions of imperialism as a force of unremitting darkness. The role of the British Empire in preventing or fighting against slavery is also ignored. Whatmore makes no mention of the Mansfield judgment; and the passionate movements in British society against this barbarism, evidenced (for example) by the Anti-Saccharine Society in Thomas Love Peacock’s novel Melincourt, are swept aside. 

Of course this is a colossal subject, which no single volume could cover in full. Tantalising episodes, such as the attempt to establish a community of Swiss thinkers and workers in Waterford, Ireland, are briskly mentioned without satisfying our curiosity. There might also have been some recognition of when one or other of these thinkers made a prediction that, in reality, was absurdly out of kilter. Several of them confidently stated that Britain, with its reliance on trade, was bound to collapse into anarchy in a matter of months, and France would take over as the predominant power in Europe under an unchallengeably wise and stable monarchy. It didn’t work out like that. Perhaps only Burke, that most rational of commentators, saw exactly what states rested on, and where they could be confident of their continuing strength. 

Whatmore is certainly knowledgeable about his chosen figures. I have a suspicion, however, that contemporary pieties about imperialism, sexual relations and other factors of the past have been allowed to tinge the narrative, or drive him to avoid whole subjects. This is a challenging book – not one for the Christmas list – and a lighter touch to take us through this undoubtedly significant subject would have been welcome.