Books by Andrew Mansfield
Routledge, 2023
Transcending the traditional categories of ‘medieval’ and ‘early modern’ to analyse pan-European ... more Transcending the traditional categories of ‘medieval’ and ‘early modern’ to analyse pan-European attitudes and behaviours, Sex and Sexuality in Europe, 1100–1750 provides students with a grounding in the history of sexuality by supplying both a detailed analysis of the existing historiographical debates but also analysis of the primary sources such as autobiographies and contemporary literature.
Offering an accessible overview that places sex and sexuality within the historical context of the time period, it creates a deeper understanding of connections and differences across Europe. An interdisciplinary work, it draws on cultural, social, religious, philosophical, literary, economic and scientific ideas while incorporating theory from within the field to broaden perspective of the history of sexuality. Challenging the separation of the medieval and early modern ‘periods’, this volume highlights a great deal of continuity between 1100 and 1750 across Europe, with change occurring more notably towards the eighteenth century. Key interventions on the role of the passions, the imagination, the ‘two worlds’ motif and subordination are made across the work. Moreover, it questions the belief that the ‘Middle Ages’ was one of sexual repression and highlights a second ‘world’ in which sex was a natural, even celebrated part of life and engages with the belief that the eighteenth century saw a ‘sexual revolution’.
This book is essential reading for students, scholars and the general public interested in the history of sexuality.
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Manchester University Press, 2020
This book examines the political works of Andrew Michael Ramsay (1683-1743) within the context of... more This book examines the political works of Andrew Michael Ramsay (1683-1743) within the context of early eighteenth-century British and French political thought. In the first monograph on Ramsay in English for over sixty years, the author uses Ramsay to engage in a broader evaluation of the political theory in the two countries and the exchange between them. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Britain and France were on divergent political paths. Yet in the first three decades of that century, the growing impetus of mixed government in Britain influenced the political theory of its long-standing enemy. Shaped by experiences and ideologies of the seventeenth century, thinkers in both states exhibited a desire to produce great change by integrating past wisdom with modern knowledge.
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Manchester: Manchester University Press, Feb 28, 2015
Andrew Michael Ramsay (1686-1743) was a Scottish Jacobite émigré who spent most of his adult life... more Andrew Michael Ramsay (1686-1743) was a Scottish Jacobite émigré who spent most of his adult life in France. His political works predominantly relied on a mixture of British and French doctrines to stimulate a Jacobite restoration to the British throne. Ambitious and controversial, Ramsay believed that key reforms and a growing empire would make Britain the ‘capital of the universe.’ His position as an intellectual conduit between the two kingdoms enables an extensive assessment of the political thought in Britain and France. Examining a number of important thinkers from the 1660s to the 1730s, this work stresses the significance of seventeenth century ideology on the following century. Crucially, the monograph explores the exchange of ideas between the two countries in the early Enlightenment. A time when Britain had rejected the absolutist pretensions of James II in the Glorious Revolution (1688) to protect mixed sovereignty and a key role for Parliament. This enshrinement of liberty and mixed government struck a chord in France with theorists opposed to Louis XIV’s form of centralised sovereignty. Following Louis XIV’s death in 1715, greater support for monarchical reform became evident in French political theory. Aided by the viewpoints and methodology of intellectual conduits such as Ramsay, shared perspectives emerged in the two countries on the future of monarchy.
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Papers by Andrew Mansfield
The Historical Journal, 2021
This article provides a reappraisal of the first earl of Shaftesbury (1621–83) and challenges his... more This article provides a reappraisal of the first earl of Shaftesbury (1621–83) and challenges his reputation as an unprincipled politician. Conversely, it is argued that Shaftesbury's opposition to both Cromwell during the Protectorate and Charles II in the Restoration was guided by a resolute ‘conscience’. While there was certainly elasticity in his conduct, Shaftesbury was very much the product of a political education framed during the Civil War and Commonwealth eras. The article explicitly demonstrates through an exposition of his activity and thought in the 1650s and 1670s that four guiding values remained consistent in his career. Both periods were shaped by concerns over political and religious tyranny by an overbearing executive and a threat to ‘lives, liberty, and property’ from the ruler, the church, and the army. Shaftesbury's significance lies in the aristocratic constitutionalism he believed offered a restraint to encroachment by the executive and the people in government. Relying upon long-established traditions that positioned the nobility as an independent bridle against arbitrary government, Shaftesbury suggested a forward-thinking vision of elite rule supported by the people. In clarifying Shaftesbury's values, the article rejects interpretations of him as a republican, Neo-Harringtonian, or a believer in popular government (democracy).
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The Historical Journal, 2022
This article provides a reappraisal of the first earl of Shaftesbury (1621–83) and challenges his... more This article provides a reappraisal of the first earl of Shaftesbury (1621–83) and challenges his reputation as an unprincipled politician. Conversely, it is argued that Shaftesbury's opposition to both Cromwell during the Protectorate and Charles II in the Restoration was guided by a resolute ‘conscience’. While there was certainly elasticity in his conduct, Shaftesbury was very much the product of a political education framed during the Civil War and Commonwealth eras. The article explicitly demonstrates through an exposition of his activity and thought in the 1650s and 1670s that four guiding values remained consistent in his career. Both periods were shaped by concerns over political and religious tyranny by an overbearing executive and a threat to ‘lives, liberty, and property’ from the ruler, the church, and the army. Shaftesbury's significance lies in the aristocratic constitutionalism he believed offered a restraint to encroachment by the executive and the people in ...
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Oxford Review of Education
From 2020, the long-standing debate regarding the English national curriculum’s capacity to discu... more From 2020, the long-standing debate regarding the English national curriculum’s capacity to discuss issues of ethnicity and race escalated. The history subject curriculum particularly is seen as excluding ethnic minorities from an ‘Island Story’ often depicting a White Anglocentric identity disassociated with the wider world. In 2021, the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities report declared that secondary school education must play a central role in augmenting social inclusion and shaping future citizens. The government’s current position for increasing inclusion places responsibility at the feet of teachers and schools. It is claimed by government that the curriculum’s flexibility and broadness provide opportunity to inject more diversity to what is taught, thereby meeting any demands for inclusivity. Yet the 2021 Historical Association survey emphasised a need amongst teachers for greater support despite making great efforts to diversify the curriculum. This position paper argues that making the British Empire a compulsory topic within the English history curriculum provides a ready-made vehicle for enhancing diversity and inclusion. Bolstered by global history’s methodology of relying on multiple viewpoints, together they would decentre the history curriculum’s insular potential to offer a diverse, inclusive, modern global perspective of Britain’s ‘Island Story’.
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BERA Blog [weblog article, 22 Nov 2018], Nov 22, 2018
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The Curriculum Journal, 2018
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Journal of Interdisciplinary History of Ideas , Dec 2013
Émeric Crucé’s Nouveau Cynée (1623) was the earliest work to call for both universal peace and gl... more Émeric Crucé’s Nouveau Cynée (1623) was the earliest work to call for both universal peace and global free trade. Anonymously published, the work endorsed a pacifistic international body that would replace war with diplomatic state cooperation. Crucé claimed that by eschewing belligerent aggrandisement people could not only live in peaceful co-existence, regardless of geography or religion, great material prosperity would also be engendered. But this notion of an end to war within a seventeenth century context of frequent conflict meant the work was largely ignored by contemporaries, who favoured the international law of jurists such as Grotius. As a consequence the Nouveau Cynée was largely forgoen. Instead, the abbé de Saint-Pierre’s Projet pour rendre la paix perpétuelle (1712) came to be acclaimed as the first plan to value the correlation between non-violent co-operative states and commercial prosperity. Building on the Duke of Sully’s call in the Grand Dessein (1638) for a European senate, Saint Pierre envisaged a European political union enriched by trade. Yet these proposals were restricted to Christendom,
thereby lacking the breadth and purpose of Crucé’s world vision. While the Nouveau Cynée’s contribution has been noted in international relations and economics, it has largely been neglected by historians of political thought. rough an interdisciplinary approach this article will discuss the significance of the Nouveau Cynée’s early advocacy of global peace and free trade to political thought, as well as its influence on Sully and Saint-Pierre.
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Journal of Interdisciplinary History of Ideas, Dec 31, 2013
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in Fénelon in the Enlightenment: Traditions, Adaptations, and Variations, eds. Christoph Schmitt-Maaß, Stefanie Stockhorst and Doohwan Ahn , Sep 2014
As a former associate of François Fénelon and the editor of his papers and works, Andrew Michael ... more As a former associate of François Fénelon and the editor of his papers and works, Andrew Michael Ramsay was well placed to act as the Archbishop’s first biographer. While Ramsay’s Vie de Fénelon (1723) became the template for nearly two hundred years of later biographers, the work actually reveals Ramsay’s manipulation of Fénelon’s political principles, as he promoted a Jacobite restoration to the British throne. In conjunction with Fénelon’s earlier political works, Ramsay promulgated a vision of Fénelon’s political and spiritual ideas that was misleading. This chapter discusses Ramsay’s impact on the legacy of Fénelon and the motivations for his intervention.
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Intellectual History Review, 2017
Louis the duc de Bourgogne (1686 – 1712), grandson of Louis XIV, was briefly Dauphin of France be... more Louis the duc de Bourgogne (1686 – 1712), grandson of Louis XIV, was briefly Dauphin of France before his premature death from measles. Advised by a group of noted former tutors and members of the court, Bourgogne’s Circle devised a range of plans to reform the French state under his future rule. Opposing the centralising model of sovereignty pursued by Louis XIV, the Circle intended to expand government, decentralise power into the provinces, reform an ailing economy, and resurrect the fortunes of a high-aristocracy believed to have been excluded from meaningful government. The Circle’s conviction that Louis XIV had circumvented the ancient nobility by tyrannical (‘absolutist’) means challenges revisionist interpretations of absolutism in ancien régime France. This article will therefore test revisionist claims that ‘absolutism’ did not exist in France, by assessing the contemporary opinion of the Circle’s key members. In so doing, it will reveal the divergent reform agendas of its members and contest previous historiographical notions that depict the group as possessing a cohesive ideology.
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Intellectual History Review, 2016
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History of European Ideas, 2014
In An Essay upon Civil Government (1722), Andrew Michael Ramsay mounted a sustained attack upon t... more In An Essay upon Civil Government (1722), Andrew Michael Ramsay mounted a sustained attack upon the development throughout English history of popular government. According to Ramsay, popular involvement in sovereignty had led to the decline of society and the revolutions of the seventeenth century. In his own time, Parliament had become a despotic instrument of government, riven with faction and driven by a multiplicity of laws that manifested a widespread corruption in the state. Ramsay’s solution to this degeneracy was the extirpation of Parliament, and its substitution with a monarchy moderated by an aristocratic senate. Ramsay’s adoption of certain ‘‘Country’’ elements, including a return to the first principles of the constitution, claimed to reflect the principles of
contemporary French aristocratic theory which called for the reform of government through the nobility. In his desire to exclude popular government, and reverse the decline of the state, however, Ramsay utilised the theory with which Bossuet had defended Louis XIV’s absolute France. Intriguingly, traces of the natural law system which fortified Ramsay’s theory can be found in Viscount Bolingbroke’s subsequent attack on Walpole’s Whig ministry and the corruption of the state.
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History of European Ideas, 2012
Summary In An Essay upon Civil Government (1722), Andrew Michael Ramsay mounted a sustained attac... more Summary In An Essay upon Civil Government (1722), Andrew Michael Ramsay mounted a sustained attack upon the development throughout English history of popular government. According to Ramsay, popular involvement in sovereignty had led to the decline of society and the revolutions of the seventeenth century. In his own time, Parliament had become a despotic instrument of government, riven with faction and driven by a multiplicity of laws that manifested a widespread corruption in the state. Ramsay's solution to this degeneracy was the extirpation of Parliament, and its substitution with a monarchy moderated by an aristocratic senate. Ramsay's adoption of certain “Country” elements, including a return to the first principles of the constitution, claimed to reflect the principles of contemporary French aristocratic theory which called for the reform of government through the nobility. In his desire to exclude popular government, and reverse the decline of the state, however, Ramsay utilised the theory with which Bossuet had defended Louis XIV's absolute France. Intriguingly, traces of the natural law system which fortified Ramsay's theory can be found in Viscount Bolingbroke's subsequent attack on Walpole's Whig ministry and the corruption of the state.
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Beyond the Public Sphere is a collection of fourteen essays that have originated from two colloqu... more Beyond the Public Sphere is a collection of fourteen essays that have originated from two colloquia: a workshop entitled ‘Public Sphere and Public Opinion: Historical Paradigms?’ held in 2008 and a 2010 international conference in Trento, ‘Beyond the Public Sphere’. The collection delineates current thought on the public sphere debate while evaluating the continued relevance of Jurgen Habermas's seminal text Strukturwandel der Offentlichkeit (1962) to modern conceptions. For Habermas, the bourgeois public sphere allowed private men to discourse, debate and thereby regulate the general rules of society particularly those governing the ‘publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labour’, (Section 2, Chapter 4). In his introduction to Beyond the Public Sphere, Massimo Rospocher states that despite recent vociferous attacks on Habermas's highly influential model of the public sphere the work still has much value, especially for the early modern historian. Moreover...
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The English Historical Review, 2016
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Milestone Documents in World Histor
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The English Historical Review
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Books by Andrew Mansfield
Offering an accessible overview that places sex and sexuality within the historical context of the time period, it creates a deeper understanding of connections and differences across Europe. An interdisciplinary work, it draws on cultural, social, religious, philosophical, literary, economic and scientific ideas while incorporating theory from within the field to broaden perspective of the history of sexuality. Challenging the separation of the medieval and early modern ‘periods’, this volume highlights a great deal of continuity between 1100 and 1750 across Europe, with change occurring more notably towards the eighteenth century. Key interventions on the role of the passions, the imagination, the ‘two worlds’ motif and subordination are made across the work. Moreover, it questions the belief that the ‘Middle Ages’ was one of sexual repression and highlights a second ‘world’ in which sex was a natural, even celebrated part of life and engages with the belief that the eighteenth century saw a ‘sexual revolution’.
This book is essential reading for students, scholars and the general public interested in the history of sexuality.
Papers by Andrew Mansfield
thereby lacking the breadth and purpose of Crucé’s world vision. While the Nouveau Cynée’s contribution has been noted in international relations and economics, it has largely been neglected by historians of political thought. rough an interdisciplinary approach this article will discuss the significance of the Nouveau Cynée’s early advocacy of global peace and free trade to political thought, as well as its influence on Sully and Saint-Pierre.
contemporary French aristocratic theory which called for the reform of government through the nobility. In his desire to exclude popular government, and reverse the decline of the state, however, Ramsay utilised the theory with which Bossuet had defended Louis XIV’s absolute France. Intriguingly, traces of the natural law system which fortified Ramsay’s theory can be found in Viscount Bolingbroke’s subsequent attack on Walpole’s Whig ministry and the corruption of the state.
Offering an accessible overview that places sex and sexuality within the historical context of the time period, it creates a deeper understanding of connections and differences across Europe. An interdisciplinary work, it draws on cultural, social, religious, philosophical, literary, economic and scientific ideas while incorporating theory from within the field to broaden perspective of the history of sexuality. Challenging the separation of the medieval and early modern ‘periods’, this volume highlights a great deal of continuity between 1100 and 1750 across Europe, with change occurring more notably towards the eighteenth century. Key interventions on the role of the passions, the imagination, the ‘two worlds’ motif and subordination are made across the work. Moreover, it questions the belief that the ‘Middle Ages’ was one of sexual repression and highlights a second ‘world’ in which sex was a natural, even celebrated part of life and engages with the belief that the eighteenth century saw a ‘sexual revolution’.
This book is essential reading for students, scholars and the general public interested in the history of sexuality.
thereby lacking the breadth and purpose of Crucé’s world vision. While the Nouveau Cynée’s contribution has been noted in international relations and economics, it has largely been neglected by historians of political thought. rough an interdisciplinary approach this article will discuss the significance of the Nouveau Cynée’s early advocacy of global peace and free trade to political thought, as well as its influence on Sully and Saint-Pierre.
contemporary French aristocratic theory which called for the reform of government through the nobility. In his desire to exclude popular government, and reverse the decline of the state, however, Ramsay utilised the theory with which Bossuet had defended Louis XIV’s absolute France. Intriguingly, traces of the natural law system which fortified Ramsay’s theory can be found in Viscount Bolingbroke’s subsequent attack on Walpole’s Whig ministry and the corruption of the state.
The project was produced and edited by Dr Sophie Bisset and Dr Andy Mansfield. It is now hosted at the Institute of Intellectual History at the University of St Andrews. CLICK ON LINK to be taken to the Project.