Robert Walcott (24 January 1910 – 23 August 1988) was an American historian specializing in early 18th-century English politics.

Augustan politics

Walcott subjected early 18th-century English politics to a Namierite analysis, arguing that it was dominated by various factions based on sectional and familial interests. He challenged the traditional view, espoused by

G. M. Trevelyan George Macaulay Trevelyan (16 February 1876 – 21 July 1962) was a British historian and academic. He was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1898 to 1903. He then spent more than twenty years as a full-time author. He returned to the ...

and Sir

Keith Feiling Sir Keith Grahame Feiling (7 September 1884 – 16 September 1977) was a British historian, biographer and academic. He was Chichele Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford, 1946–1950. He was noted for his conservative interpre ...

, that the politics of Queen Anne's reign was dominated by two parties (Whigs and Tories). However Walcott's thesis came under increasing criticism. G. V. Bennett claimed that Walcott's book-length argument was "disastrous":

alcott'smethodology was patently at fault. Having created a card-index of biographical material for individual M.P.s, he attempted on this basis to allot them to the different political groups of his own theory. One connection, the 'Newcastle-Pelham-Walpole' faction, clearly had no existence at all, as any acquaintance with known political correspondence would reveal. Other groups were inflated by the inclusion of men whose relationship with the leading political figure was of the flimsiest nature. Walcott had relied to an extreme degree on a specialized professional technique, and his work ignored not only the literature of the time but the great mass of political papers which were already available when he wrote.

In 1967 Walcott's thesis was superseded by

Geoffrey Holmes Geoffrey Holmes (19 February 1894, Toronto– 7 May 1964, Woking) was a British ice hockey player who competed in the 1924 Winter Olympics. He was a member of the British ice hockey team, which won the bronze medal. Holmes attended the Roy ...

' view that Anne's reign was indeed dominated by two parties. In 1992 Tim Harris claimed that Walcott's thesis was "now totally discredited".Tim Harris, 'From Rage of Party to Age of Oligarchy? Rethinking the Later Stuart and Early Hanoverian Period', ''The Journal of Modern History'' Vol. 64, No. 4 (Dec., 1992), p. 700.

Works

*'English Party Politics, 1688-1714' in ''Essays in Modern English History in Honor of W. C. Abbott'' (Harvard, 1941). *''English Politics in the Early Eighteenth Century'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Walcott, Robert 1910 births 1988 deaths Historians of England 20th-century American historians American male non-fiction writers People from Massachusetts 20th-century American male writers