of other conceptual vocabulary, whether this be as varieties of the political ‘Right’ – such as ‘moderate Right’, ‘radical Right’, ‘extreme Right’ – or in terms of other vocabulary altogether, such as ‘Christian democrat’, ‘romantic’ or ‘reactionary’. This of course does not preclude making distinctions between different types of conservatism. There are, for example, important differences of emphasis between those forms of conservatism that tend to favour a more active attempt to return politics and society to an earlier point; those that are pessimistic about the current prospects for successful adaptation without the survival of earlier norms, but see little prospect of retaining or resuscitating them; and those that are more cautiously optimistic. One may even contend that Freeden should have made more of these differences of emphasis in his analysis. But this should not detract from his major achievement in establishing that all such ideological positions are ultimately species of conservatism, rather than being radically separate forms of right-wing thinking.8 What Freeden’s approach provides, in other words, is a way of identifying what differentiates conservatism from other ideological positions while also respecting its extreme adaptability.
However, what Freeden in Ideologies and Political Theory does not give us is a full account of how conservatism has evolved historically as a political ideology. This is entirely understandable in a pioneering work that seeks to prove the importance of a whole new area of scholarly study, but such an account is nevertheless vital, given conservatism’s intrinsic variability. While conceptual analyses of the different forms of conservatism are essential, particularly in view of the myriad forms the ideology can take, nevertheless, given that the very essence of conservatism is to be oppositional, to seek to control change, we need to trace its evolution historically in order to understand it properly. Such an approach has two advantages in particular. First, it enables us to explore the development of conservatism in the context of its struggle with rival ideologies, examining how it has sought to combat various progressive threats from liberalism and socialism (amongst others) during its long and complex history. Second, it also enables us to chart how conservatism is to be distinguished from political ideologies and movements which, although distinct, have at various points been closer to conservatism than the more progressive ideologies. Thus, at various historical junctures, movements such as ‘libertarianism’, ‘nationalism’, ‘Christian democracy’, ‘populism’ and even ‘fascism’, to name only the most influential, have been deemed to overlap with conservatism. Analysing conservatism in a historical and developmental fashion enables us to examine the degree to which such movements have been similar to conservatism, and even in some cases provided intellectual ammunition for it.
Plan for the Book
Where, then, should our investigation of conservatism start? This innocent-sounding question in fact conceals a keenly fought debate about the origins of political ideologies, including liberalism and socialism as well as conservatism. For even if we exclude other countries and focus solely on Britain, there is considerable disagreement about when one can start talking of ‘conservatism’ and ‘liberalism’, as opposed to older labels and dichotomies like ‘Court’ and ‘Country’ or ‘Tory’ and ‘Whig’. Thus Robert Eccleshall, for example, introducing a well-known anthology of English conservatism, begins his survey of conservative thought with Charles II’s Restoration in 1660, but eschews using the term ‘conservatism’ until he reaches the eighteenth century (Eccleshall 1990). Other more recent commentators have suggested that it is a mistake to apply the label to any period before the beginning of a more ‘professional’ politics at the end of the nineteenth century, or even genuine mass democracy in the twentieth (Bourke 2018). Moreover, such disagreements only proliferate if we expand our focus to encompass other countries and regions, since industrialization, the 1848 revolutions in Europe, slavery, imperialism and mass politics, for example, have had differing effects on different countries at different times.
Nevertheless, there seems good reason to begin our survey of conservatism in the late eighteenth century, which commentators have long viewed as a plausible place to seek the birth of modern political ideologies, in view of the triple effects of the industrial revolution, the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. In particular, Mannheim’s argument that there was no need for ‘conservatism’ as an ideology while previous early modern traditions went unquestioned remains a strong one (Mannheim 1986; Koselleck 2004). Given the limitations of a fairly short book, I will be confining my exploration of conservative development largely to Britain, France and the United States, with the occasional glance at Germany and Italy. Obviously to some extent such a choice is somewhat arbitrary, but, on the positive side, it still allows us to draw some important comparisons between how conservatives reacted to similar challenges in countries with very different national traditions, and to explore how Freeden’s excellent analysis of conservatism can be applied in a wide range of different contexts.9 Thus Chapter 2 seeks to examine how conservatives in Britain, France and the United States reacted to the French Revolution, industrialization and the Enlightenment, looking at the wide variety of responses in each country in turn.10 Chapter 3 shifts to exploring how conservatives reacted to the 1848 revolutions, the intensification of nationalism and imperialism, and the advent of mass politics, taking the story up to the First World War. Chapter 4 then examines how conservatives responded to the development of mass politics, the advent of socialism, and mid-twentieth-century scepticism about political theory, amongst other challenges, from roughly 1918 to the 1960s. Finally, Chapter 5 explores how conservatives reacted to the end of the economic ‘golden age’ that followed the Second World War, the impact of the liberalizing movements of the 1960s, and the problems that New Right conservatism itself presented to more traditionalist conservatives. Finally, a brief epilogue cautions against predicting the demise of conservatism too readily.
Notes
1 1 For just one example, see Nisbet 1986: 21–74; see also Freeden 1996: 331–2.
2 2 Ironically, Huntington did not in fact himself remain loyal to his definition of conservatism as essentially reactive, also claiming that ‘the essence of conservatism can be summed up in a small number of basic ideas’ (Huntington 1957: 457).
3 3 See below, Chapters 2 and 5, and Gray 1997a.
4 4 See below, Chapter 2.
5 5 It is true that to some extent Oakeshott and Gilmour both admitted that a conservative approach to tradition was more complex than this. Oakeshott, in particular, especially in his later work, emphasized that a tradition is not a monolithic entity, but instead composed of a set of diverse practices (see, for example, Oakeshott 1975: 55–60 and Oakeshott 1976). This did not, however, dislodge Oakeshott from his fundamental conviction that there is a dominant tendency within the Western European tradition favouring individualism. As such, he believed those opposing it were not merely in disagreement, but mistaken (Oakeshott 1991: 363–83).
6 6 See Mannheim: ‘the conservative mode of experience thus preserves itself … by raising to the level of reflection and methodical control those attitudes to the world which would otherwise have been lost to authentic experience’ (1986: 101).
7 7 Although conservatism apparently advocates a huge variety of different positions, Freeden argues that as an ideology it does much more than simply provide a knee-jerk reaction to progressive ideologies at any given moment, as Huntington would contend. Rather, while it deploys political concepts more eclectically than progressive ideologies do, it does not do so in a purely reactive manner, but instead seeks to establish counter-progressive positions which may have considerable potential to endure.
8 8 Compare, by contrast, the approach taken by Eatwell and O’Sullivan (1989) on ‘the nature of the Right’.
9 9 It should be emphasized that I am definitely not implying that conservatism is a uniquely Western phenomenon