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The End of Enlightenment: Empire, Commerce, Crisis
'A brilliant and revelatory book about the history of ideas' David Runciman
'Fascinating and important' Ruth Scurr
The Enlightenment is popularly seen as the Age of Reason, a key moment in human history when ideals such as freedom, progress, natural rights and constitutional government prevailed. In this radical re-evaluation, historian Richard Whatmore shows why, for many at its centre, the Enlightenment was a profound failure.
By the early eighteenth century, hope was widespread that Enlightenment could be coupled with toleration, the progress of commerce and the end of the fanatic wars of religion that were destroying Europe. At its heart was the battle to establish and maintain liberty in free states – and the hope that absolute monarchies such as France and free states like Britain might even subsist together, equally respectful of civil liberties. Yet all of this collapsed when states pursued wealth and empire by means of war. Xenophobia was rife and liberty itself turned fanatic.
The End of Enlightenment traces the changing perspectives of economists, philosophers, politicians and polemicists around the world, including figures as diverse as David Hume, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke and Mary Wollstonecraft. They had strived to replace superstition with reason, but witnessed instead terror and revolution, corruption, gross commercial excess and the continued growth of violent colonialism.
Returning us to these tumultuous events and ideas, and digging deep into the thought of the men and women who defined their age, Whatmore offers a lucid exploration of disillusion and intellectual transformation, a brilliant meditation on our continued assumptions about the past, and a glimpse of the different ways our world might be structured - especially as the problems addressed at the end of Enlightenment are still with us today.
'Fascinating and important' Ruth Scurr
The Enlightenment is popularly seen as the Age of Reason, a key moment in human history when ideals such as freedom, progress, natural rights and constitutional government prevailed. In this radical re-evaluation, historian Richard Whatmore shows why, for many at its centre, the Enlightenment was a profound failure.
By the early eighteenth century, hope was widespread that Enlightenment could be coupled with toleration, the progress of commerce and the end of the fanatic wars of religion that were destroying Europe. At its heart was the battle to establish and maintain liberty in free states – and the hope that absolute monarchies such as France and free states like Britain might even subsist together, equally respectful of civil liberties. Yet all of this collapsed when states pursued wealth and empire by means of war. Xenophobia was rife and liberty itself turned fanatic.
The End of Enlightenment traces the changing perspectives of economists, philosophers, politicians and polemicists around the world, including figures as diverse as David Hume, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke and Mary Wollstonecraft. They had strived to replace superstition with reason, but witnessed instead terror and revolution, corruption, gross commercial excess and the continued growth of violent colonialism.
Returning us to these tumultuous events and ideas, and digging deep into the thought of the men and women who defined their age, Whatmore offers a lucid exploration of disillusion and intellectual transformation, a brilliant meditation on our continued assumptions about the past, and a glimpse of the different ways our world might be structured - especially as the problems addressed at the end of Enlightenment are still with us today.
476 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 7, 2023
53 people are currently reading
482 people want to read
About the author
Richard Whatmore
26 books6 followersRichard Whatmore is professor of modern history and codirector of the Institute of Intellectual History at the University of St Andrews. He is the author of What Is Intellectual History?, Against War and Empire, and Republicanism and the French Revolution.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
December 29, 2023
This is a brilliant book. The relationship between the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the present is vastly misunderstood. All too often the French Revolution is presented as some kind of self-confident realization of a progressive enlightenment project of rational emancipation. Nothing could be further from the truth.
By the end of the eighteenth century every self conscious advocate of enlightenment believed they had failed. Whatmore defines enlightenment as a variety of strategies pursued to put an end to the wars of religion - or more broadly the presence of enthusiasm and fanaticism in politics. Over the course of the eighteenth century intellectuals and politicians of all stripes perceived European civilization to be on the verge of total collapse - driven by constant warfare and the ensuing growth of unsustainable public debt. This sense of debt fueled crisis is something Michael Sonenscher has brilliantly documented - but Whatmore presents it far more accessibly and marries it to JGA Pocock’s definition of enlightenment.
From this perspective the French Revolution was either a desperate gamble to avert this catastrophe or rather the culmination of the return of enthusiasm and fanaticism that enlightenment figures had long feared. Regardless by the end of the eighteenth century after the terror and the rise of Napoleon both supporters and critics of the Revolution viewed it as a failure that had only accelerated the end of enlightenment.
Over the past few decades the Cambridge School has complicated the relationship between modern political thought and the eighteenth century. This book is the culmination of that project - presenting the central preoccupations of eighteenth century political thought as failed dead ends that do not present any straight lines to the emergence of modern political ideologies in the nineteenth century. In this it is totally convincing. But what remains is the difficult problem of explaining the transition from the intellectual world of the eighteenth century to that of the nineteenth- which Whatmore only briefly sketches at the end. Michael Sonenscher’s After Kant is perhaps the best attempt to do this so far from a Cambridge School perspective, but it is a deeply complicated and difficult work that ultimately raises more questions than it answers.
By the end of the eighteenth century every self conscious advocate of enlightenment believed they had failed. Whatmore defines enlightenment as a variety of strategies pursued to put an end to the wars of religion - or more broadly the presence of enthusiasm and fanaticism in politics. Over the course of the eighteenth century intellectuals and politicians of all stripes perceived European civilization to be on the verge of total collapse - driven by constant warfare and the ensuing growth of unsustainable public debt. This sense of debt fueled crisis is something Michael Sonenscher has brilliantly documented - but Whatmore presents it far more accessibly and marries it to JGA Pocock’s definition of enlightenment.
From this perspective the French Revolution was either a desperate gamble to avert this catastrophe or rather the culmination of the return of enthusiasm and fanaticism that enlightenment figures had long feared. Regardless by the end of the eighteenth century after the terror and the rise of Napoleon both supporters and critics of the Revolution viewed it as a failure that had only accelerated the end of enlightenment.
Over the past few decades the Cambridge School has complicated the relationship between modern political thought and the eighteenth century. This book is the culmination of that project - presenting the central preoccupations of eighteenth century political thought as failed dead ends that do not present any straight lines to the emergence of modern political ideologies in the nineteenth century. In this it is totally convincing. But what remains is the difficult problem of explaining the transition from the intellectual world of the eighteenth century to that of the nineteenth- which Whatmore only briefly sketches at the end. Michael Sonenscher’s After Kant is perhaps the best attempt to do this so far from a Cambridge School perspective, but it is a deeply complicated and difficult work that ultimately raises more questions than it answers.
January 25, 2026
I'll give this 3.5 stars -- it's another book that attempts to deal with far too much (in my opinion) in a single volume...though it does work if you're dipping in-and-out for particular information. I would have much preferred a book that started and finished with Hume...and maintained the focus primarily on him, as his sections were the most evocative.
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December 19, 2023What was the Enlightenment? Damned if I know. There have been so many books devoted to that question in recent years that it would be churlish to venture a definitive answer. Anyone who has dared to keep up with the literature in this field will have read about radical Enlightenments and moderate Enlightenments; contested, clandestine and cosmopolitan Enlightenments. The era of Enlightenment has been claimed by some as a beacon of tolerance, democracy and secularism; it has been denounced by others as a cesspit of persecution, authoritarianism and imperialism. As concepts go, Enlightenment has proved singularly flexible. If one were to judge by book titles alone (sometimes more satisfying than wading through the latest thousand-page tome, and certainly quicker) all one would know for certain is that the Enlightenment somehow made the modern world, though one would be forgiven for not knowing precisely how that was supposed to have happened.
The great danger of assuming the Enlightenment made the modern world is that it tends to receive the credit for all that is good about modernity as well as the blame for all that is bad. And yet, as Richard Whatmore reminds us in his powerful and meticulously argued new book, ‘sometimes the present prevents us from understanding the past’. We risk thinking that the philosophers of the 18th century were answering our questions instead of their own, when in fact it is the fundamental weirdness of their ideas that makes them so interesting. It is also this inherent strangeness that, as Whatmore demonstrates beyond all doubt, makes their recovery so vital for present times.
Whatmore’s book, which is a substantially revised and expanded version of his Carlyle Lectures delivered at Oxford in 2018, approaches the Enlightenment on its own terms. When Hume and his contemporaries challenged religious superstition, zeal and bigotry, their aim was not the cultivation of individual flourishing so much as providing a framework for advancing and maintaining civil peace. For more than 200 years, Europe and its nations had been ravaged by international and internecine wars of religion. Conflict was fuelled by fanaticism, and fanaticism by superstition. Moderation, toleration and democracy were therefore part of the Enlightenment toolkit for abolishing war and empire in perpetuity. So too were industry, commerce and free trade.
Read the rest of the review at HistoryToday.com.
Joseph Hone’s latest book The Book Forger: The True Story of a Literary Crime that Fooled the World will be published by Chatto & Windus in March 2024.
The great danger of assuming the Enlightenment made the modern world is that it tends to receive the credit for all that is good about modernity as well as the blame for all that is bad. And yet, as Richard Whatmore reminds us in his powerful and meticulously argued new book, ‘sometimes the present prevents us from understanding the past’. We risk thinking that the philosophers of the 18th century were answering our questions instead of their own, when in fact it is the fundamental weirdness of their ideas that makes them so interesting. It is also this inherent strangeness that, as Whatmore demonstrates beyond all doubt, makes their recovery so vital for present times.
Whatmore’s book, which is a substantially revised and expanded version of his Carlyle Lectures delivered at Oxford in 2018, approaches the Enlightenment on its own terms. When Hume and his contemporaries challenged religious superstition, zeal and bigotry, their aim was not the cultivation of individual flourishing so much as providing a framework for advancing and maintaining civil peace. For more than 200 years, Europe and its nations had been ravaged by international and internecine wars of religion. Conflict was fuelled by fanaticism, and fanaticism by superstition. Moderation, toleration and democracy were therefore part of the Enlightenment toolkit for abolishing war and empire in perpetuity. So too were industry, commerce and free trade.
Read the rest of the review at HistoryToday.com.
Joseph Hone’s latest book The Book Forger: The True Story of a Literary Crime that Fooled the World will be published by Chatto & Windus in March 2024.
August 31, 2025
A very interesting piece of intellectual history that fills the gap in the common understanding of the transition from the French enlightenment to 19th century British conservatism and liberalism. While the enlightenment is often seen as a precursor to the French Revolution, the revolutionaries themselves despised all Enlighteners except for Rousseau. Meanwhile, figures of the British Enlightenment starting with Hume were extremely pessimistic about the corruption of the British government and its mercantilist approach to trade and war, and advocated for free trade as a way to end wars of conquest. Enlightenment to them was a failed project, destroyed by money-hungry politicians who drag the state into unsustainable debt for war. While generally opposed to “enthusiasm” (political radicalism), some of them were nevertheless optimistic about the French revolution once it started because they always believed France would be the country of the future. However, the dark turn of the revolution made them change their mind, and re-emphasize the need for gradual reform and social change. Against all odds, Britain came out on top, and it gradually became clear that there is a path towards an open and free commercial society on the island. Burke’s predictions about the course of the revolution and the future role of England (as a policeman of the world stopping revolutions and spreading gradual freedom by force) proved to be prophetic.
March 2, 2024
I very much enjoyed this examination of the latter part of the eighteenth century and the various thinkers who believed England/Great Britain was set for inevitable decline. Chapters were dedicated to David Hume, Adam Smith, Tom Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft and Lord Shelburne and his circle (I hadn’t heard of them before). The author is described as an ‘intellectual historian’ and it was refreshing to see ideas examined as well as the delineation of events. Much interesting material on America and France and their respective revolutions. I would be happy to read more from this author, who has recently contributed to “In Our Time” on Radio 4 when they did a programme on Francois Fenelon, one of the French thinkers who influenced the revolution.
January 16, 2026
Like, what is up with these reviews?
To start with the lowest-hanging fruit, Ruth Scurr, (of all people! She knows better), claims this is 'beautifully written.' Here's a random selection:
"Believing that the seventeenth century crisis of the Stuart monarchy was being returned to, the Shelburne Circle set their minds to the task of avoiding the descent into civil war caused either by the crown or by the rise of popular fanatics akin to Puritans, plotting social reformation in the name of liberty." (58).
Crystal clear, beautifully written. I love starting a paragraph-long sentence with a gerund and a passive construction together in one clause, and then somehow adding two more gerund clauses. Special kudos for this being the conclusion to a section. Always good to make your point clearly and forcefully at the end of a section.
Or you can find a high quality paragraph like the one on page 77, which starts with Shelburne's dislike of Lord North; then cycles through calls for a war government; political factionalism; a sentence that starts "Instead, France embraced the American cause," but has no apparent antecedent for that 'Instead'; Shelburne's marriage plans; Chatham's death; coup plotting; and a naval victory. Yes, that paragraph is all on page 77. In fact, it's only half a page. Good luck unraveling it.
To be fair, the reviews mostly suggest this book is really interesting or novel, rather than well-written. I confess, I don't see it. I think (?) the idea is that the early 19th century in Britain was understood to be a moment of crisis, and we also understand ourselves as in a moment of crisis, and so we should see what they did about theirs. The answer, though, is that they did not much, and I'm not sure what we're meant to learn from this.
Within history writing, Whatmore suggests that the main approaches to the Enlightenment are 'Liberal' and 'Marxist.' Habermas writes 'Liberal' history, and he is wrong, because the Enlightenment was historically specific. The unnamed Marxists write Marxist history, and they are wrong, because they don't pay any attention to the good parts of the Enlightenment, like opposition to fanaticism and a craving for peace. This is doubly odd, because when Whatmore *does* name opponents of the Enlightenment, they are conservatives like Oakeshott, biological determinists like John Gray, or French pomo types like Lyotard and Foucault.
So, I'm not sure what the argument is against, here, though more informed historians will probably know the specific targets (it's just that general readers (like me) don't know or care). One GR reviewer helpfully puts this in the context of Cambridge School types, which makes sense of the book--we proceed here as if what is important is the disagreement of Hume and some random newspaper editorialist, rather than, say, British naval expansion and the consequent changes in the world economy.
'Our' understanding of the enlightenment is, therefore, quite limited. Who on earth, other than a professional historian or Steven Pinker could ever have doubted that 'the' Enlightenment had ended, if not with Napoleon, than certainly with Metternich, or Chateaubriand, or the Schellings, or the American slave trade, or the (first) Crimean war, or whatever? Even if we limit ourselves strictly to the realm of the history of ideas, Williams' essay on Mill can easily be read as making the same point: the 19th century thinker moves in a different world from the 18th century thinker. And really, is it news that the people we call Enlightenment thinkers weren't pollyannas? I wouldn't have thought so, any more than the fact that the people we call Enlightenment thinkers weren't always so 'enlightened,' and it would have been much better for us all if they had been more enlightened--which was after all the main point of Adorno and Horkheimer's much mentioned, rarely read 'Dialectic,' (here, 3) and many critics after them.
So, if the argument isn't especially convincing, and the structure is very "take 8 journal articles, remove the intros and conclusions, turn the 8 intros into one intro, turn the 8 conclusions into one conclusion, and voila, you've made a book". You might (?) get some new information about an individual thinker from any given essay. Perhaps you just really need to believe that Burke is a genius, or something.
I'm still unsure why Whatmore makes no reference to the almost identically structured 'Fears of a Setting Sun,' which goes through Washington, Hamilton, Adams, and Jefferson, and how they all became convinced that America was a failure. A comparison of the two would surely be interesting.
Anyway, the main lesson is surely that ideas only matter if people are willing to fight for them, consistently, and sincerely. But fighting for ideas would be fanaticism, and we can't have that.
To start with the lowest-hanging fruit, Ruth Scurr, (of all people! She knows better), claims this is 'beautifully written.' Here's a random selection:
"Believing that the seventeenth century crisis of the Stuart monarchy was being returned to, the Shelburne Circle set their minds to the task of avoiding the descent into civil war caused either by the crown or by the rise of popular fanatics akin to Puritans, plotting social reformation in the name of liberty." (58).
Crystal clear, beautifully written. I love starting a paragraph-long sentence with a gerund and a passive construction together in one clause, and then somehow adding two more gerund clauses. Special kudos for this being the conclusion to a section. Always good to make your point clearly and forcefully at the end of a section.
Or you can find a high quality paragraph like the one on page 77, which starts with Shelburne's dislike of Lord North; then cycles through calls for a war government; political factionalism; a sentence that starts "Instead, France embraced the American cause," but has no apparent antecedent for that 'Instead'; Shelburne's marriage plans; Chatham's death; coup plotting; and a naval victory. Yes, that paragraph is all on page 77. In fact, it's only half a page. Good luck unraveling it.
To be fair, the reviews mostly suggest this book is really interesting or novel, rather than well-written. I confess, I don't see it. I think (?) the idea is that the early 19th century in Britain was understood to be a moment of crisis, and we also understand ourselves as in a moment of crisis, and so we should see what they did about theirs. The answer, though, is that they did not much, and I'm not sure what we're meant to learn from this.
Within history writing, Whatmore suggests that the main approaches to the Enlightenment are 'Liberal' and 'Marxist.' Habermas writes 'Liberal' history, and he is wrong, because the Enlightenment was historically specific. The unnamed Marxists write Marxist history, and they are wrong, because they don't pay any attention to the good parts of the Enlightenment, like opposition to fanaticism and a craving for peace. This is doubly odd, because when Whatmore *does* name opponents of the Enlightenment, they are conservatives like Oakeshott, biological determinists like John Gray, or French pomo types like Lyotard and Foucault.
So, I'm not sure what the argument is against, here, though more informed historians will probably know the specific targets (it's just that general readers (like me) don't know or care). One GR reviewer helpfully puts this in the context of Cambridge School types, which makes sense of the book--we proceed here as if what is important is the disagreement of Hume and some random newspaper editorialist, rather than, say, British naval expansion and the consequent changes in the world economy.
'Our' understanding of the enlightenment is, therefore, quite limited. Who on earth, other than a professional historian or Steven Pinker could ever have doubted that 'the' Enlightenment had ended, if not with Napoleon, than certainly with Metternich, or Chateaubriand, or the Schellings, or the American slave trade, or the (first) Crimean war, or whatever? Even if we limit ourselves strictly to the realm of the history of ideas, Williams' essay on Mill can easily be read as making the same point: the 19th century thinker moves in a different world from the 18th century thinker. And really, is it news that the people we call Enlightenment thinkers weren't pollyannas? I wouldn't have thought so, any more than the fact that the people we call Enlightenment thinkers weren't always so 'enlightened,' and it would have been much better for us all if they had been more enlightened--which was after all the main point of Adorno and Horkheimer's much mentioned, rarely read 'Dialectic,' (here, 3) and many critics after them.
So, if the argument isn't especially convincing, and the structure is very "take 8 journal articles, remove the intros and conclusions, turn the 8 intros into one intro, turn the 8 conclusions into one conclusion, and voila, you've made a book". You might (?) get some new information about an individual thinker from any given essay. Perhaps you just really need to believe that Burke is a genius, or something.
I'm still unsure why Whatmore makes no reference to the almost identically structured 'Fears of a Setting Sun,' which goes through Washington, Hamilton, Adams, and Jefferson, and how they all became convinced that America was a failure. A comparison of the two would surely be interesting.
Anyway, the main lesson is surely that ideas only matter if people are willing to fight for them, consistently, and sincerely. But fighting for ideas would be fanaticism, and we can't have that.
January 24, 2026
An interesting exploration of an under-communicated aspect of the enlightenment. In the minds of many the “enlightenment” (one could speak of multiple enlightenments but most minds don’t venture that far) was an upbeat intellectual movement that spanned the end of the seventeenth century through the eighteenth but its end and why that end came about is rarely actively thought about. If pressed many might say it reach its natural conclusion in the French Revolution, but this book reveals a much more interesting picture. It shows how failure was the dominant register among enlightenment thinkers near the end of the seventeenth century. Particularly a despondency about Britain looms large in the political imagination of the entire cast of the book. The book also gives pointers as to how and why the enlightenment transitioned to what came after. In this and its great exploration of a host of more or less canonical enlightenment thinkers it fills a much needed gap in my own historical consciousness and I suspect it might assist in doing that for others too. Recommended.
April 16, 2025
So glad I read this book. The author really captures the angst of enlightened thinkers at the end of the eighteenth century & to be honest the parallels with today are uncanny. I heartily recommend it.
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January 19, 2024Favorably reviewed by The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews