Date of Graduation
2005
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Type
MA
Committee Chair
Matthew Vester
Abstract
This study explores the role of historical arguments in the pamphlets of the Jewish Naturalization Controversy of 1753. Arguments made from the basis of medieval English history were among the most common in the controversy and they are key to explaining not only the origins and outcome of the Jew Bill episode, but also the underlying religious and political assumptions of the eighteenth-century English political nation. An examination of these pamphlets suggests that the conflict was due to latent antisemitism and a distinctive form of political identity, both of which were inextricably connected with Constitutionalist traditions of history and law. This study provides another example of the perseverance of English political, intellectual, and religious traditionalism in the age of the Enlightenment, adding to the interpretation of the controversy as an impediment to any narrative of progress towards the emergence of a revised or enlightened view of Judaism in England.
Recommended Citation
Hnatkovich, Philip J., ""Old England in perfection": Historical arguments in the Jewish naturalization controversy of 1753." (2005). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD). 10915.
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/10915