Enlightened Oxford The University and the Cultural and Political Life of Eighteenth-Century Britain and Beyond

Enlightened Oxford aims to discern, establish, and clarify the multiplicity of connections between the University of Oxford, its members, and the world outside; to offer readers a fresh, contextualised sense of the University's role in the state, in society, and in relation to other institutions between the Williamite Revolution and the first decade of the nineteenth century, the era loosely describable (though not without much qualification) as England's ancien regime.

Nigel Aston asks where Oxford fitted in to the broader social and cultural picture of the time, locating the University's importance in Church and state, and pondering its place as an institution that upheld religious entitlement in an ever-shifting intellectual world where national and confessional boundaries were under scrutiny. Enlightened Oxford is less an inside history than a consideration of an institutional presence and its place in the life of the country and further afield. While admitting the degree of corporate inertia to be found in the University, there was internal scope for members so inclined to be creative in their teaching, open new research lines, and be unapologetic Whigs rather than unrepentant Tories. For if Oxford was a seat of learning rooted in its past - and with an increasing antiquarian awareness of its inheritance - yet it had a surprising capacity for adaptation, a scope for intellectual and political pluralism that was not incompatible with enlightened values.

Nigel Aston

Nigel Aston is a Research Associate at the University of York, and Reader Emeritus in the School of History, Politics, and International Relations at the University of Leicester where he taught for two decades. Educated at Durham and Christ Church, Oxford, he is the author of several single-authored books and numerous articles on British and French eighteenth-century religious and political history and is currently completing the editing of the Yale Boswell Editions The correspondence of James Boswell with the Rev. W.J. Temple, Vol. 2: 1777-1796.

Introduction
1. Fame, Form, and Function: the University's place and purpose in the long eighteenth century
Intellectual Presence
2. Oxford and British academic contexts after the Glorious Revolution
3. The defence of the Church of England and Christian belief
4. Oxford and the Arts and Humanities
5. Oxford and contemporary science: anxiety, adaptation, and advance
Institutional Presence and Interactions
6. University personnel: offices, influence, and the polity
7. Oxford and the Crown
8. Oxford, the world of Westminster, and the defence of the University's interests
9. Beyond the University: Outreach and connections in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland
Cultural Constructions, Connections, and Tensions
10. The University as seen from outside
11. Oxford and the wider world: the European connections and imperial involvements of the University
12. Insider trading: family, friendship, connection, and culture beyond the University
Conclusion: Oxford variations on an Enlightenment theme