British and American Conservatism

Item No. 15.

J. G. A. Pocock

The Varieties of Conservatism: British and American

In this lecture from 1977, given at Arizona State University, J. G. A. Pocock explores the differences between American and British conservatism. This topic requires him to revisit Louis Hartz’s thesis about how the absence of a feudal past has narrowed American politics to variations on the theme of John Locke. In The Machiavellian Moment (1975), Pocock rejected this interpretation in favour of seeing the American Revolution as a British event, infused by English Whig politics and the language of the republican tradition. The divergence of British and American conservatism could thus not simply be explained by reference to an inherent liberalism of 1776. But the question that concerns Pocock in this lecture is more about how the philosophical conservatism of Edmund Burke, the scourge of natural rights, had subsequently come to be seen as an ally of an American conservatism which celebrated the onwards march of industry and the unfettered enterprise of individuals. To see more of Pocock’s papers, visit the Intellectual History Archive.