Review of Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World written by Roy Porter

In the book, Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World written by Roy Porter, he explains how Britain was affected by the enlightenment in a social, economic and cultural way. Porter's discussion of the British enlightenment shows just how important this era was, and that is often played down in the history of the enlightenment; due to other more significant and well known industrial revolution, like the one in the States. The essence of Porter's argument is that Britain did, in fact, have an enlightenment as vibrant and relevant as those more studied enlightenments in France or the rest of Europe, but that started earlier with ideas that influenced freedom, toleration, and independence.

Porter proves of the existence of a British enlightenment through a well-researched, argument that tracks current discussions in a broad area of studies, such as science, religion, human nature, and politics. He shows that as a result of all these new ways of thinking more people obtain a new vision to the things around them during the eighteenth century in Britain. Many thinkers, as they would call them, of the enlightenment era expressed “new mental and moral values, new canons of taste, styles of sociability and views of human nature." Which was a remarkable advance from countries like France that were doing through hard times due to its revolution and the conquest of Napoleon, that hadn’t completely finished. Still, in England the issues that the French were struggling about seemed too had vanished; with religious toleration and basic rights that were established by 1689 and the fact that the idea of absolutism died out after Charles I by 1649. Therefore, in Britain the eighteenth century, like so many other centuries, wa...

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...Victorian liberalism. Highly recommended as a foundational text in British history and/or as comparative book for the study of continental enlightenments.

The Enlightening era was a very important, as we all know it was the frame work of what we now are today. This book has given a portrait of how things in 18th century Britain were and how these changes and peoples urge to succeed helped modernize the country as a whole. Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World, has a great deal of evidence that gives for a long read some might think of it as complicated due to it having some British English, that differs from the one that we are accustom to. The book is well written with extensive endnotes and bibliography is fine just the way it is it, gives entail about Britain and the changes it went through, anything more would have made it even longer.