Secondary Sources: 17th and 18th Century European & British Societies
As I continue to work towards finding evidence for the divergence of ethical ideologies between European and British philosophers in the 17th and 18th centuries, I’ll be researching the societies of those eras. These two books, Eighteenth-Century Europe: Tradition and Progress, 1715-1789 and English Society in the Eighteenth Century offer good insights into the daily lives and governments of the countries during these eras. I’ve found significant evidence in both books that help to support the “emotion” vs. “reason” ethical ideologies between British and European philosophers within the societies of the British Empire, the Dutch Republic, and the Kingdom of France.
- Woloch, Isser, and Gregory S. Brown. Eighteenth-Century Europe: Tradition and Progress, 1715-1789. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2012. Print.
Woloch, Isser, and Brown’s work provided me with a solid understanding of Eighteenth-Century Europe. The book contains various accounts of civilization across Europe, but also focuses largely on Great Britain, which is one of the focuses of my essay. This book gave detailed accounts of trade and economic growth throughout different European nations, and while that didn’t go directly into my thesis, it was beneficial in understanding the landscape of the era and the wealth of the other European nations as opposed to Great Britain. It also contains several important quotes from Voltaire which helped shape my comprehension of what Great Britain was like during this period.
- Porter, Roy. English Society in the Eighteenth Century. London: Penguin, 1991. Print.
Similar to Eighteenth-Century Europe: Tradition and Progress, 1715-1789, this book, English Society in the Eighteenth Century, was incredibly useful in gathering data about 18th, and even bits of 17th and 19th, century Great Britain. This book helped lay the statistical foundation that would be a driving force in my thesis work, as much of my argument centers around the social aspects of Great Britain and the struggles that the impoverished underwent. It also speaks briefly on several of the philosophers that were covered in my essay, allowing for me to build a bit more evidence for those specific philosophers. One of the more important pieces from this book were the population statistics that evidenced massive population growth in Great Britain.
Good sources! We need to be super focused now, since the first draft was supposed to be last week. For a two source post, we need to know what exactly the evidence is that you found in these sources, and how it supports your thesis.