Saturday, January 6, 2024: 8:50 AM
Powell I (Parc 55)
This paper explores constructions of political loyalty in the wake of a revolution that was both promisingly and problematically contractual. When King James of England was overthrown in 1688, a new regime was founded on a contractual basis, and public discussions erupted with accusations of dubious loyalties. This paper explores the partisan pamphlets in which adherents to the new government wrestled with the rise of selfish passions as an instrument for legitimizing revolution. It shows how, despite being a notoriously partisan age, the period was defined by a deep anxiety that spanned the partisan spectrum. This anxiety worried that, despite the need for self-preservative defenses against tyrannical government, founding a revolutionary government on selfish motivations was fundamentally unstable. The resulting conflict exhibited itself in partisan pamphlets hurling accusations of false loyalty and dodging clear definitions of true loyalty. Previous historiography on 1688 has tended to differentiate between modern and traditional interpretations of the revolution and to highlight the partisan divide. Without negating the importance of revolutionary shifts and partisan divisions, I explore overlapping partisan rhetoric and argue that the period after 1688 witnessed a crisis in constructions of loyalty based on a new but uncomfortable awareness of self-interest as a basis for sociopolitical binding. Rather than a stark partisan distinction between traditional, monarchical loyalties and contractual, self-interested bonds, I highlight the nervous, uneven, and incomplete development from patriarchal to self-preservative bonds across the political spectrum. I trace the discomfort with selfish foundations for obligation in partisan pamphlets of post-1688 political discourse, ultimately suggesting that concerns with the role of self-interest in the formation of political communities has a longer and more nuanced history than is commonly supposed.