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Article

A proper manner of carrying on controversies: Richard Price and the American Revolution

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Citation

Macleod E (2019) A proper manner of carrying on controversies: Richard Price and the American Revolution. Huntington Library Quarterly, 82 (2), pp. 277-302. https://hlq.pennpress.org/home/; https://doi.org/10.1353/hlq.2019.0015

Abstract
In the emerging spectrum of British 'friendship to liberty' over the period 1773-78 as it was expressed in preferred outcomes for the Anglo-American relationship, it is possible to read the publications and correspondence of the British political writer and philosopher, Richard Price, as placing him either in the radical pro-American camp or in the body of more moderate 'Friends of America'. This article locates the solution to Price¡¯s apparent inconsistency in an approach recently developed by historians of the 1790s which suggests that we should not expect consistency from contemporaries responding to a train of events and to a range of interlocutors. It argues that Price was at core a radical pro-American, but that his closeness to the Earl of Shelburne, both personally and ideologically, the trajectory of the Anglo-American crisis during the 1770s, and Price¡¯s own temperamental dislike of ruptures of friendship combined to suggest a greater sympathy with moderate pro-Americanism before the death of the Earl of Chatham in 1778 than at root he held.

Keywords
Richard Price; American Revolution; British politics 1773-1785; radical reformers; Earl of Shelburne; William Pitt the Elder;

Journal
Huntington Library Quarterly: Volume 82, Issue 2

StatusPublished
Publication date31/12/2019
Publication date online10/09/2019
Date accepted by journal12/12/2018
URL
Publisher URL
ISSN0018-7895
eISSN1544-399X

People (1)

Dr Emma Macleod

Dr Emma Macleod

Senior Lecturer, History

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