The Creation of the Modern World:
The Untold Story of the British
Enlightenment by Roy Porter
The Definitive Case For The British Enlightenment
Traditionally, The Enlightenment has been associated with France,
America, and Scotland rather than Britain, which, strangely enough, is
thought not to have had an Enlightenment to speak of. Roy Porter
effectively upsets this view in Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of
the Modern World. Porters general concern is with the interplay of
activists, ideas, and society, and to this end he examines innovations in
social, political, scientific, psychological, and theological discourse. The
key figures (the enlightened thinkers) read like a Whos Who of the 17th
and 18th centuries--Newton, Locke, Bernard de Mandeville, Erasmus
Darwin, Priestley, Paine, Bentham, and Britains premier enlightenment
couple Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, as well as the men who
helped popularize and disseminate their ideas, such as Addison, Steele,
Defoe, Pope, and Sterne. The book is peppered with brilliant quotes, and
although it covers such vast ground in a rapid and sometimes breathless

manner, Porter just about manages to hold it all together. While
returning the Enlightenment to Britain, Porter also provides a persuasive
general defense of the movement against its Foucauldian, feminist, and/or
postmodern critics who still paint it black. It was perpetually dismissed as
anything from superficial and intellectually naïve to a conspiracy of dead
white men in periwigs [who] provide the intellectual foundation for Western
imperialism, and one of the books strengths is that after reading it, one
finds it hard to understand how these critiques gained such influence in
intellectual circles. The major shortcoming of the book--as Porter is well
aware--is that too many themes receive short measure: literature and the
arts, political debate, the forging of nationalism, and more. Several
chapters, if not all, deserved book-length treatment, making this work of
nearly 500 pages seem quite short. But if Enlightenment leaves the reader
unsatisfied, it is in the best possible way--one would have liked to hear
more from Porter rather than less. Word has it hes already planning an
encore. --Larry Brown, Amazon.co.uk
Personal Review: The Creation of the Modern World: The Untold
Story of the British Enlightenment by Roy Porter
The late historian Roy Porter has provided an invaluable addition to
studies in the history of the Enlightenment with his book, The Creation of
the Modern World: The Untold Story of the British Enlightenment (hereafter
CMW). Livelier than any work of intellectual history has a right to be,
Porter proves himself a master historian with a sharp pen. Polished in
style and scholarship, wit and weightiness, CMW should stand as a
watershed in Enlightenment studies. Porter's aim is to change how the
importance of the Enlightenment in Britain is viewed, and on that account
he succeeds wildly.
It might be better said that Porter's aim is not to change how the British
Enlightenment is viewed, but to show that there was such a thing in the
first place. The "Enlightenment" can be a somewhat ambiguous term. To
cut it down to a crude and insufficient summary, it is often viewed as the
movement in western Europe in the late 17th and 18th centuries away
from religion and monarchy and toward secularism and democracy. Like
all intellectual movements it took place primarily in the upper tiers of
society. Porter's argument is simple: what happened in Britain during this
time has an equal if not greater claim to the title of "Enlightenment" as
what happened on the continent.
Known primarily for his work in the history of medicine, Porter's work is
never accused of being boring. CMW is no different. Porter's
characteristic buoyancy is evident from the moment he attacks his thesis; it
is almost as if he is personally insulted as an Englishman that the British
Enlightenment has never been seen as a movement of greater repute.
Thus it might be argued that his presupposition is more of a bias. If one is
going to go about proving something about which one is biased, it would
not hurt to take a lesson from Porter in how it is done.

Porter's approach to history might be called the "over-enthused scholar's"
approach. The density with which he fills the pages of CMW with the
names of people, places, movements, societies, ideas, relationships, etc.
is truly staggering. It is as if he has the ability to draw at will from a lifetime
of memorizing arcane facts and data about British history. It is in this
sense that it is difficult to argue with the conclusion that Porter has
accomplished his aim on an awe-inspiring scale. But there is a difficulty in
appropriating this volume of information, especially for the casual reader.
There are moments when it seems as if Porter could have backed off a bit,
as it were, and given the reader a breather from new facts and information.
Here analysis and commentary are so tightly intertwined with the
introduction of new data that it can become confusing. But this weakness
of CMW is also its strength. Porter may be unmatched for his sheer ability
to amass quantities of data in support of his argument.
Although any history of the Enlightenment will in some sense be an
intellectual history, Porter manages to turn it into a broader social history
as well. He structures the book into chapters that each deal with a
different subject - religion, human nature, politics, sexual equality, and the
like - and traces the development of changes in that subject. Hovering
over all of these changes are certain central figures: Locke, Hume,
Wollstonecraft, etc. He uses the popular method of history writing that
focuses on mini-biographies of key figures of the period, but not
exclusively. Porter is just as likely to introduce an animated commentary
on the increased speed of urban life in late eighteenth century London as a
commentary on some obscure Jacobin agitator.
But it is in the mini-biographies, the characters in this story of the British
Enlightenment, that Porter's thesis comes alive. CMW paints a picture of a
network of intellectual relationships and influences that illustrates the
British Enlightenment as a movement, a true alteration of the fundamental
makeup of eighteenth century British society. The rabid interest Porter
takes in these figures translates onto the page into characters that are
larger than life, individuals who seemingly obsessed over whatever little
corner of this period they laid claim to.
If CMW has a primary weakness it is that Porter is so successful in proving
his thesis - that there was such a thing as a British Enlightenment - that he
almost entirely fails to point to anything like a counter-Enlightenment on a
large scale. He does treat this subject for a few pages here and there, but
it seems that any history of an intellectual and social movement would not
be complete without a robust treatment of the reaction movement. What,
for example, of Methodism? References to Wesley and his followers are
few, and those there are tend to downplay the enthusiasm of such religious
extremists by showing the unflattering opinion of them held by the Humes
and the Godwins.
Perhaps this is unavoidable. A movement such as the Enlightenment is
historically important not because it was representative of every member

and stratus of society, but because the world was changed by those upon
whom it was influential. Indeed, Porter only devotes one chapter to the
common folk ("The Vulgar," a term that Porter uses to describe the view of
the lower classes by many of his protagonists), and even then it is to show
what the main characters thought about them and their role in society. If
the ideals of the Enlightenment filtered down to those people that
liberalism and freedom were supposed to help, it would not be easy to tell
by reading CMW.
But if Porter ignores the lower classes, he does not ignore the changes
occurring in the world in which they live. From the proliferation of coffee
shops and the printed word to new novelties such as take-away meals on
the streets and pleasure gardens, Porter sees the British Enlightenment as
something more than an intellectual or political movement: it was the total
transformation of a society. Perhaps there is something to criticize here as
well. Is the fact that urban life became more fast-paced a characterizing
feature of the Enlightenment? In Porter's line of reasoning it certainly is,
and perhaps he is in some sense adding his own stamp to the term. If
before encountering CMW a reader has a mental image of the
Enlightenment as stuffy philosophers or scientists poring over manuscripts
in their chambers or of French philosophes prattling on about the evils of
religion, then after reading Porter there must certainly be a new mental
image: that of an entire society transformed by a new way of looking at life.
If this new definition of Enlightenment is appropriated then Porter's book
will be seen as a revelation, for in that case the transformation of British
society will stand as the supreme example. Less drastic than the change
in French society after the French Revolution, the British Enlightenment
will be seen as more successful due to its being more consistent with the
ideals of the Enlightenment as a whole. In Porter's hands the drama of
human social history in eighteenth century Britain is indeed that: a drama,
albeit one written with wit and style, intrigue and humor, and a volume of
scholarship with which it will be difficult for anyone in the future to contend.
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