Emma MacLeod (University of Stirling) : «  A British conversation about the French Revolution: the Wodrow-Kenrick Correspondence, 1789–1797 » (15 mai)

Jeudi 15 mai 2025 à 17h à la Maison de la Recherche (28 rue Serpente, Paris 6e), salle D421

Emma MacLeod (University of Stirling) :  «  A British conversation about the French Revolution: the Wodrow-Kenrick Correspondence, 1789–1797 » 

This paper emerges from a study of the long and rich correspondence between Rev. James Wodrow (1730–1810) of Ayrshire, Scotland, and his great friend Samuel Kenrick (1727–1811) a banker in Bewdley, near Birmingham. They had become friends as students at Glasgow University in the 1740s and began corresponding soon after Kenrick graduated, a habit that continued for the rest of their lives. The Wodrow-Kenrick Correspondence, 1750–1810 is co-edited by Martin Fitzpatrick, Emma Macleod and Anthony Page. Volume 1: 1750–1783 (Oxford University Press, 2020) and Volume 2: 1784–1790 (OUP, 2024) will be followed by volumes 3: 1791–1797 and 4: 1798–1810.

     In this paper I will discuss their conversation about the French Revolution which forms such a major proportion of the letters written between 1791 and 1797. Like the opinions of many other British people on the Revolution in France, their ideas, while formed by their existing political convictions, were to some extent fluid over these years, as events developed both in France and in Britain. Because this is such a substantial bilateral correspondence, however, we can, unusually, see how their opinions were also shaped by their debate between themselves and by their reading and discussion of a large number of the most seminal British publications on the French Revolution and the war. The paper is therefore located at the intersection of political history, cultural history, book history and the history of friendship.

Emma Macleod is a senior lecturer in History at the University of Stirling, Scotland. She has published A War of Ideas: British Attitudes to the Wars Against Revolutionary France, 1792–1802 (1998) and British Visions of America, 1775–1820: Republican Realities (2013); and she has co-edited Political Trials in an Age of Revolutions: Britain and the North Atlantic, 1793–1848 (2019), with Michael T. Davis and Gordon Pentland. She co-edited the Scottish Historical Review 2018–2023.


OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
fbensimon (14 avril 2025). Emma MacLeod (University of Stirling) : «  A British conversation about the French Revolution: the Wodrow-Kenrick Correspondence, 1789–1797 » (15 mai). Séminaire franco-britannique d'histoire. Consulté le 8 novembre 2025 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/13qwx