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.
Awards and Recognition
- Co-Winner of the 2015 István Hont Book Prize, Institute of Intellectual History
- Honorable Mention for the 2018 Laura Shannon Prize in Contemporary European Studies, Nanovic Institute
- Honorable Mention for the 2016 PROSE Award in Biography & Autobiography, Association of American Publishers
- Selected for the Claremont Review of Books CRB Christmas Reading List 2015
- One of The Guardian’s Best Books of 2015
- One of The Indian Express Stand-Out Books of the Year 2015
- One of the Irish Times 2015 Readers’ Books of the Year
- Selected for National Review Online’s “Some Great 2015 Books”
- One of The Spectator 2015 Books of the Year
Richard Bourke is professor of the history of political thought and a fellow of King's College, University of Cambridge.
"Empire and Revolution is a remarkable achievement. Richard Bourke combines an astonishing mastery of detail with unfailingly good judgment and clarity of argument. He does justice to every facet of Burke's extraordinarily rich intellectual and political life, and to the global reach of Burke's attention and efforts. This is a work to savor."—Jennifer Pitts, University of Chicago
"Bridging the gap between political practice and political thought has presented a major conundrum for intellectual historians, most especially for students of Edmund Burke. With massive erudition, comprehensive scholarship, and methodological subtlety, Richard Bourke triumphantly solves this problem by scrupulously tracking the principles informing Burke's interventions across his entire political life. Empire and Revolution is quite simply the best book on Burke ever written: all future work on Burke must start from here."—David Armitage, Harvard University
"Empire and Revolution is a monumental achievement. Bourke has at once given us a sensitive reading of Edmund Burke's political commitments and a bracing portrait of the later-eighteenth-century British Empire. This elegant and powerful book not only forces us to rethink Burke's politics, it compels us to rethink his age and our relationship to it."—Steven Pincus, Yale University
"Our understanding of Burke's thought as both statesman and philosopher, engaged in the many problems of his revolutionary times, is from this moment both deepened and broadened beyond measure."—J.G.A. Pocock, Johns Hopkins University
"Empire and Revolution is the best book on Edmund Burke available. It takes a scholar of singular learning to tackle a figure like Burke, and Richard Bourke is exactly that person. His writing is clear, his scholarship impeccable, and his mastery of eighteenth-century history self-evident. This is a brilliant book and a model for intellectual historians."—Richard Whatmore, University of St Andrews
"An extremely impressive piece of work."—Mark Philp, author of Reforming Ideas in Britain: Politics and Language in the Shadow of the French Revolution, 1789-1815
