Fighting corruption and France
Fighting corruption and France
This chapter discusses the concepts of civic virtue and nationhood, and the development of radicalism. In the late eighteenth century, the cohering force of patriotic anti-French sentiment was being undermined by the radical demand for reform. Those campaigners were dubbed ‘English Jacobins’, tarred with the brush of the hated extremist French republican creed. Moreover, as British citizens joined reformist clubs, were thrown together in the armed forces, suffered from steep price and tax rises, and exchanged opinions about what so many were coming to interpret as an outdated parliamentary system, so civic loyalty to the political status quo became strained. What, we must therefore ask, was the relationship between citizenship and radicalism?
Keywords: civic virtue, nationhood, radicalism, citizenship, anti-French sentiment
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