In the twenty-first century, empire has loomed increasingly large in scholarship—as Richard Price argued in this journal in 2006, it is the “one big thing” at the heart of modern British history. A scattered Atlantic English empire that emerged from the seventeenth century gave way to a global British empire that dramatically expanded during the mid-eighteenth-century wars, and was debated and shaped in the revolutionary era. This complex and influential historical development is the subject of a growing body of scholarship, such as Peter Marshall's outstanding The Making and Unmaking of Empires: Britain, India and America, c. 1750–1783 (2005). Overwhelmingly, the “new imperial history” focuses on study of social and cultural history. The study of “high politics” has been neglected, left moldering in Namierite tomes written more than a few decades ago. With developments such as the “new diplomatic history,” Andrew O'Shaughnessy's The Men Who Lost America (2013), and the Georgian Papers Project, however, there are signs that the study of eighteenth-century politicians is being revived and embedded in our increasingly nuanced understanding of Georgian culture.

In light of this, Patrick Griffin's The Townshend Moment is a welcome publication. The Townshend brothers, Charles and George, were important players in the patronage politics of the 1760s. They both developed an extensive knowledge of empire: Charles through working in the administrative engine-room of Britain's “fiscal-naval state,” and George as a soldier who served and clashed with the Duke of Cumberland and James Wolfe. Following the failure of the Stamp Act, in 1767 Charles Townshend enacted the American customs duties that came to bear his name in history books. He did not live to witness the response, dying in August of that year. The following month, a grieving George went to Dublin to become a resident lord lieutenant of Ireland, where he sought to reform politics, strengthen government and expand the recruitment of soldiers into the British army, including Catholics.

Griffin does an excellent job of analyzing these brothers as self-conscious agents of the British Enlightenment—reading Hume and discussing administration of the empire with Charles's friend Adam Smith. They developed a shared desire to cut through the confusions and introduce a “system” of imperial governance that upheld and facilitated the sovereignty of the British parliament. They wanted to tap America as a source of taxation and Ireland as a source of soldiers to help administer and defend an empire that had dramatically expanded. They were not alone in wanting to do this, but they brought a combined vision and drive to the task at a time of political factionalism and instability.

The “Townshend Moment” of 1767 provoked mixed reactions in America and Ireland. Many accepted the authority of Parliament and recognized the need to contribute provincial money and men to help maintain the enlarged empire, of which they were proud members. But Griffin provides fascinating discussions of the parallel and intertwined critical responses in American and Irish popular politics—especially newspapers. The Townshend system provoked patriots such as John Dickinson in Pennsylvania and Henry Flood in Ireland to develop alternative visions of a federal empire. Griffin provides a nuanced analysis of the similarities and differences between America and Ireland—for example, the American patriot response “smacked of earnestness” while the Irish “relied on humor and viciousness,” but both were angered at being treated like “bastards of our mother country” (207–8). The Townshend Moment provoked a profound change in Patriot popular politics on both sides of the Atlantic. The 1765 Stamp Act, for example, could be viewed as a mistake that had been remedied by its repeal, but the Townshend duties that followed appeared a sinister and systematic attempt to treat Americans as “slaves.” Patriots were angered and provoked into re-examining their past and anxiously discussing potential futures.

This is an excellent book. It tells a complex tale of two enlightened brothers who wanted to make the British empire great, but helped set America and Ireland on the path toward revolution.