In 1750, Burke went to England to study law at the Middle Temple. He opposed the corruption in Irish politics and condemned the placemen and other entrenched bureaucracy of the Protestant Ascendancy. In college, Edmund became politically active, writing letters to the editors of Dublin newspapers. He read and recommended, "Virgil, Juvenal, Sallust, Cicero, Homer, Lucien and Xenophon." to his friend Richard Shackelford. Burke was educated and trained in the classical tradition at Trinity College. I could have concentrated my efforts on just that aspect of Burke's political and literary life but I felt that a biographical assessment was important in understanding why Burke acted the way that he did.Įdmund Burke, A Short History (1729-1769)Įdmund Burke was born in Dublin, Ireland on January 12, 1729. My original interest in this material was prompted as a means to understand Edmund Burke's influence on his native country.
I feel this is important to establish a guideline when later historians will disagree on the meaning of Burke's ideas and actions. I have highlighted his revolutionary and Irish material and tried to minimize his other extraneous activities. Burke I have started with my own short biography of Burke's life.
It will require a thorough look at Burkes' writings, his political attempts to influence the British Parliament and a review of selected biographical and comparative literature. Specifically, I hope to show how Burke is perceived by biographers as being either a friend or foe of the American Revolutionaries, the French Revolutionaries and the steps he took to help alleviate conditions in Ireland. This essay will examine the life of Edmund Burke and in particular his role in the American Revolution, his impact on his native-land of Ireland and his discord with the French Revolutionary movement. Several more books and journal articles have been written detailing aspects of Burke's life such as Edmund Burke and Ireland, or Edmund Burke in the Age of the American Revolution. Another ten to twenty books have compared and contrasted him with other great thinkers such as Thomas Paine, Henry Bolingbroke, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx, and Winston Churchill.
Since his death in 1797, a score of biographies have been written about Edmund Burke, the British politician and political philosopher. A Report on the Life of Edmund Burke: His Role in the American Revolution,Īnd his Discord with the French Revolution.
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