by Stephanie Curry’s diary on eighteenth century polemics, modern politics, and one very confident footnote
I want to open with the pamphlet, a genuinely obscure eighteenth century polemic I have been working through for a piece I am writing, because I have spent the better part of this week in what I can only describe as a one sided argument with an author who has been dead for roughly two hundred and fifty years and who is, somehow, still winning most of our disagreements.
The pamphlet itself concerns a fairly narrow colonial trade dispute, the kind of thing that would send most modern readers to sleep within a paragraph, but the author’s actual rhetorical style, sharp, occasionally genuinely funny, deployed with a confidence that borders on the theatrical, has made this considerably more entertaining reading than I expected, even as I keep finding myself talking back to the page like an unhinged person.
The Argument I Am Losing
The specific point of contention involves the pamphleteer’s argument about colonial self governance, a position I initially approached with the kind of confident modern hindsight that assumes two and a half centuries of additional historical perspective automatically confers an advantage in any argument, only to find that several of the specific practical objections raised in this pamphlet remain, honestly, genuinely difficult to counter even now.
“This period produced some of the sharpest political writing in the language,” a colleague who studies this exact era told me, when I described my one sided argument with a dead man. “People forget how genuinely persuasive some of this material was, because we only remember the outcomes, not the actual quality of the arguments being made at the time on every side of these debates.”
What I Have Been Reading Alongside the Pamphlet
Between chapters, I caught a genuinely brilliant piece over on The Daily Mash that had me laughing loud enough to genuinely startle myself, a welcome break from several consecutive hours of eighteenth century prose.
I also read something sharp from NewsThump during a lunch break, which felt like a genuinely necessary reminder that sharp, funny political writing has existed in every single century, not just this one, a thought that has been rattling around my head ever since I started this particular research.
The Modern Parallel Nobody Asked For
What genuinely surprised me, working through this material, was how directly several of the pamphlet’s specific arguments about representation and taxation echo, almost uncomfortably closely, debates currently happening in American politics right now, a continuity that I suspect says something genuinely important about how certain fundamental questions of governance simply never fully resolve, they just resurface, generation after generation, in slightly different rhetorical clothing.
“The specific vocabulary changes,” my colleague said. “The underlying tension between local autonomy and central authority does not, really, ever fully go away. You’re reading the eighteenth century version of an argument people are still having today, just with better hats.”
The Footnote That Started This Whole Diary Entry
Buried deep in the pamphlet sits a footnote so confidently, gloriously dismissive of an opposing pamphleteer that I have read it aloud to at least three separate people this week, purely for the pleasure of watching their reaction, a level of eighteenth century intellectual savagery that modern academic writing, for all its rigour, rarely manages to replicate with quite this much style.
The Actual Writing Task
All of which is to say, I am considerably behind on the actual piece I am supposed to be producing from this research, having spent more time genuinely enjoying the argument than efficiently extracting what I actually need for my own writing, a familiar trap that I fall into with distressing regularity whenever the source material turns out to be this entertaining.
Further Reading
Caught a genuinely sharp piece over at The London Prat too this week, proof that sharp political satire remains excellent company whether you are reading it fresh or, apparently, several centuries after the fact.
Where This Leaves Me
Genuinely behind schedule, thoroughly defeated in an argument with a man who has been dead since before my country’s constitution was even drafted, and quietly delighted by all of it regardless. My actual deadline remains unmoved by any of this enthusiasm. I intend to finish the piece properly by the weekend, footnote savagery permitting.
The Rival Pamphlet
In the interest of fairness, I have since tracked down the opposing pamphlet, the one so thoroughly savaged in that footnote, and I have to report that it holds up considerably better than the original author gave it credit for, a genuinely reasoned counterargument that deserved a more substantive response than the dismissive line it actually received. I mention this partly out of a sense of historical justice for a two hundred and fifty year old grudge, and partly because reading both sides properly has genuinely improved the piece I am now, belatedly, actually writing, which will apparently need a considerably more balanced framing than my first draft attempted. I have half a mind to write the rival pamphleteer’s belated defence myself, purely to settle a debate that history, frankly, closed far too quickly in one man’s favour.
Sign Off
More of my ongoing diary can be found at my author page at Bohiney Magazine, and further material is collected at The London Prat.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com
