Biography

 

Biography

Richard Whatmore was educated at the universities of Cambridge and Harvard, and holds a doctorate from the former. He is Director of the Sussex Centre for Intellectual History, a Fellow of Royal Historical Society, editor of the journal History of European Ideas, and has taught at the University of Sussex since 1993.

 

Research

Whatmore works on French, British and Swiss intellectual history during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. With the Sussex Centre for Intellectual History he is involved in a number of digitization projects, concerned with eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century intellectual history and with the research of contemporary intellectual historians.

 

Teaching

At undergraduate level Whatmore teaches courses on the Early Modern World, the Enlightenment, the French Revolutionary period, and the history of democracy (History Special Subject: Democracy and War). At postgraduate level he teaches on the Intellectual History MA and the Social and Political Thought MA. He supervises doctoral and MPhil students interested in early modern politics, political economy and religion. Supervisions include:

 ‘The Political Thought of the Cordeliers Club'

‘Polytheism in Benjamin Constant's De la Religion'

‘Bolingbroke's politics and the reform of the navy'

‘The publication and reception of David Williams' political writings'

‘Chevalier Michael Ramsay and Anglo-Catholic political thought'

‘James Mills' Commonplace Books and their intellectual context'

‘The reception of Thomas Paine's thought in Britain'

'John Thelwall's political economy and the prospects for Europe in the 1790s'

John 'Estimate' Brown and the decline of protestantism'

'Josiah Tucker's political economy and his relationship with the dissenters'

 

Recent Research Grants

2008-2011    Leverhulme Trust Large Grant (£108,000): A History of the Dissenting Academies in the British Isles, 1660-1860 (with Centre for Dissenting Studies, Queen Mary College London: Professor Isabel Rivers PI)

2008-2011    Marie Curie Post-Doctoral Fellowship (£102,000): Absolutism as political language in early modern European discourse on statecraft (with Cesare Cuttica)

2008-2011    AHRC, Collaborative Doctoral Award (£70,000): James Mill's Commonplace Books in their Intellectual Context (with The London Library)

2008-2010    British Academy Research Development Award (£110,000): Calvinism and enlightenment in the long eighteenth century (with Knud Haakonssen)

Student Consultation

Office Hour: Thursdays 12.00-13.00

Selected publications

Books

Republicanism and the French Revolution: An Intellectual History of Jean-Baptiste Say's Political Economy (Oxford University Press, 2000), xiv + 248 pp.

Economy, Polity, and Society: Essays in British Intellectual History, 1750-1950 (Cambridge University Press, 2000), viii + 283 pp., edited with Stefan Collini and Brian Young

History, Religion, and Culture: Essays in British Intellectual History, 1750-1950 (Cambridge University Press, 2000), viii + 289 pp., edited with Stefan Collini and Brian Young

Advances in Intellectual History (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), xi + 239pp. edited with Brian Young

Emer de Vattel, The Law of Nations, or Principles of the Law of Nature, Applied to the Conduct and Affairs of Nations and Sovereigns (Liberty Fund, Indianapolis, 2008), xxv + 865pp., edited with Béla Kapossy

Geneva: An English Enclave (Editions Slatkine: Travaux sur la Suisse des Lumières, 2009), x+355pp., edited with Valérie Cossy and Béla Kapossy

Micheli Du Crest's Discours sur le gouvernement de Genève (1735) (Editions Slatkine: Travaux sur la Suisse des Lumières), edited with Gabriella Silvestrini, Guillaume Poisson and Kenneth Goodwin, forthcoming 2011

Republicans against Empire: Geneva, Britain and France in the Eighteenth Century, (Yale University Press), forthcoming 2011

Articles, chapters and essays

1. 'Commerce, constitutions, and the manners of a nation: Etienn Clavière's revolutionary political economy, 1788-1793', History of European Ideas, 22 (1996), 351-68

2. 'From Constitution-building to the Reformation of Manners: Three Theories of Modern Citizenship in France, 1763-1793', in I. Hampsher-Monk, ed., Contemporary Political Problems (Belfast, 1996), 1234-1242

3. 'The Weber Thesis: unproven yet unrefuted', in W. Lamont, ed., Historical Controversies (University College London Press, 1998), 95-108

4. 'Republican Political Economy on the Eve of the French Revolution', working paper 34, Forum for Comparative Political Economy Studies (Exeter, 1998), 23 pp

5. 'Everybody's Business: Jean-Baptiste Say's General Fact conception of Political Economy', History of Political Economy, 30 (1998), 451-468

6. 'Jean-Baptiste Say's Republican Political Economy', History of Political Thought, 19 (1998), 439-456

7. 'Good books and bad morals': Jean-Baptiste Say's assessment of the French Revolution', Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 378 (1999), 303-18

8. 'Les fondations intellectuelles de la politique des Girondins', Annales Historiques de la Révolution Française, 75 (2000), no. 3, 1-26, with James Livesey

9. 'L'Amitié de grands Etats est leur plus sur appui': the small state dilemma in Genevan political economy, 1762-1798,' Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte (Revue Suisse d'Histoire), 50 (2000), 353-72

10. 'A gigantic manliness: Thomas Paine's republicanism in the 1790s', in Collini, Whatmore, and Young, eds., Economy, Polity and Society (Cambridge University Press, 2000), 135-157

11. 'Rousseau's Readers', History of European Ideas, 27/2 (2001), 317-331

12. 'Introduction', Hellmutt Pappe, 'Sismondi, Constant, Tocqueville', Storia del pensiero economica, 43 (2002), 55-77

13. 'Adam Smith's contribution to the French Revolution', Past and Present, 175 (2002), 65-89

14. 'Say et Clavière', in Jean-Pierre Potier and André Tiran, eds., Jean-Baptiste Say: Nouveaux regards sur son œuvre (Economica, Paris, 2003), 714-34

15. 'The Politics of Political Economy from Rousseau to Constant', in M. Bevir and F. Trentman, eds., Markets in Historical Contexts. Ideas and Politics in the Modern World (Cambridge University Press, 2004), 46-69

16. Review essay: David McCallam's Chamfort and the French Revolution. A study in form and ideology for H-FRANCE, February, 2004
(http://www3.uakron.edu/hfrance/reviews/whatmore.html)

17. Entries on Auguste Comte, Jean-Baptiste Say, Emmanuel Sieyès and J.-C.-L. Simonde de Sismondi in G. Claeys (ed.) Routledge Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Thought, London, 2004

18. 'Dupont de Nemours et la politique révolutionnaire', Revue française d'histoire des idées politiques, 20 (2004), 334-349

19. 'Democrats and Republicans in Restoration France', European Political Theory, 3 (2004), 38-52

20. 'British Radicalism in the 1790s', History of European Ideas, 31 (2005), 428-432

21. 'Ancients versus Moderns? Political Economy in France, 1762-1814', Proceedings from the Gimon Conference on French Political Economy, 17-19 April 2004, Stamford Libraries website, July 2005

22. 'Venturi and republicanism in eighteenth-century Geneva', in M. Albertone, ed. Il repubblicanesimo moderno. L'idea di repubblica nella riflessione storica di Franco Venturi (Bibliopolis, Naples, 2006), 385-402

23. 'Rousseau and the représentants: the politics of the Lettres écrites de la montagne', Modern Intellectual History, 3 (2006), 1-29

24. 'Intellectual History and the History of Political Thought', in Whatmore and Young, eds., Advances in Intellectual History (Palgrave, London, 2006), 109-129

25. Review essay: Aurelian Craiutu, Liberalism under Siege: The Political Thought of the French Doctrinaires, for H-FRANCE, January, 2006 (http://h-france.net/vol6reviews/whatmore2.html)

26. 'Préface' to Jean-Marc Rivier, Etienne Clavière, 1735-1793. Un révolutionnaire, ami des Noirs (Paris, 2006)

27. 'French perspectives on British politics, 1688-1734' in J.-P. Genet & F.-J. Ruggiu, eds. Les Idées passent-elles la Manche? (Press de l'Université Paris-Sorbonne, Paris, 2007), 83-98

28. 'Etienne Dumont, the British Constitution, and the French Revolution', Historical Journal, 50/1 (2007), 23-47

29. 'Emer de Vattel's Mélanges de littérature, de morale et de politique (1760)' History of European Ideas, 34/1 (2008), 77-103, with Béla Kapossy

30. 'Commerce and Enlightenment', Intellectual History Review, 18/2 (2008), 283-306, with Knud Haakonssen

31. 'The origins of the French Revolution', History of Political Thought, 29/4 (2008), 717-729

32. 'Treason and Despotism: the impact of the French Revolution upon Britain', History of European Ideas, 34/4 (2008), 583-586

33. 'Geneva: An English Enclave. A Contextual Introduction', in V. Cossie, B. Kapossy and R. Whatmore eds., Geneva: An English Enclave (Slatkine, Geneva, 2009), 1-27

34. 'The Role of Britain in the Political Thought of the Genevan Exiles of 1782', in V. Cossie, B. Kapossy and R. Whatmore eds., Geneva: An English Enclave (Slatkine, Geneva, 2009), 255-272

35. ''Neither masters nor slaves'. Small states and Empire in the Long Eighteenth Century', Proceedings of the British Academy, 'Lineages of Empire. The Historical Roots of British Imperial Thought', ed. D. Kelly (2009), 53-81

36. 'The French and American Revolutions in Comparative Perspective' in M. Albertone & A. De Francesco eds., Rethinking the Atlantic World. Europe and America in the Age of Democratic Revolutions (Palgrave, 2009), 219-238

37. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entries on Etienne Clavière, Jacques-Antoine Duroveray, François D'Ivernois (2009)

38. 'Étienne Dumont et le Benthamisme: la démocratie dans les petits États', in E. de Champs & J.-P. Cléro, eds. 'Bentham et la France. Fortune et infortune de l'utilitarisme', Studies of Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 2009), 111-127

39. 'Monarchisms and Republicanisms', European Political Theory, 8/3 (2009), 413-424

40. 'The Eighteenth-Century French Revolution', Reviews in History, Institute of Historical Research, 2009

41. 'Una tigre che non ruggisce più: politica e economia a Ginevra nel XVIII secolo', in M. Albertone, ed. L'economia come linguaggio della politica nell'Europa del Settecento (Turin University Press, Annali Feltrinelli, 2009), 271-285.

42. 'Hume's Political Economy and Eighteenth-Century International Relations', Storia del pensiero economico, 6/1 (2009), 151-156.

43. 'Vattel, Britain and Peace in Europe', Grotiana, 31 (2010), 1-23

44. 'Enlightenment Political Philosophy' in G. Klosko, ed., The Oxford Handbook of the History of Political Philosophy (Oxford University Press) forthcoming 2011

45. 'La Pensée politique de Micheli du Crest' in K. Goodwin, G. Poisson, G. Silvestrini & R. Whatmore, eds. Micheli Du Crest's Discours sur le gouvernement de Genève (1735) (Editions Slatkine: Travaux sur la Suisse des Lumières), forthcoming 2011

46. 'Shelburne and Perpetual Peace: Small States, Commerce and International Relations within the Bowood Circle' in N. Aston and C. Campbell Orr, eds., An Enlightenment Statesman in Whig Britain: Lord Shelburne (1737-1805) in Context (Boydell & Brewer), forthcoming 2011

47. 'Political Economy' in C. Insole and D. Dwan, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Edmund Burke (Cambridge University Press), 2011