Engaging students with political history: Citizenship in the (very) long eighteenth century

For a long time, political history dominated the teaching of history in British universities. Certainly until the social history revolution of the 1960s, the type of history that was taught was predominantly political, and was of very particular types. Whig histories focused on English constitutional development, concentrating on the improvement of institutions and lauding the efforts of privileged actors who contributed to this design; and even critiques of this approach tended to be establishmentarian and elitist in their outlook. Following the rise of social and then cultural history, political history became more marginal in the profession, and indeed has often been the type of history that progressive histories have defined themselves against. This chapter will reflect on how best to approach this now less familiar form of history with undergraduates, who often have negative preconceptions about studying it. It will suggest that teaching eighteenth-century politics in terms of ‘citizenship’ can make it relevant to today’s students, and will think about some pedagogical strategies that can help to make the experience of learning about it more meaningful and engaging.