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.

中文翻译：

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帕特里克·格里芬。Townshend时刻：18世纪帝国的建立。刘易斯·沃尔波列（Lewis Walpole）系列，十八世纪文化和历史。纽黑文：耶鲁大学出版社，2017年。376. $ 40（布）。

在二十一世纪，帝国的学术势力越来越大-正如理查德·普赖斯（Richard Price）在2006年的杂志中所指出的那样，这是现代英国历史的核心“大事”。从十七世纪开始出现的一个分散的大西洋英国帝国被一个全球性的英国帝国所取代，该帝国在18世纪中叶的战争中急剧扩张，并在革命时代受到了辩论和塑造。这种复杂而有影响力的历史发展是越来越多的学术研究的主题，例如彼得·马歇尔（Peter Marshall）出色的《帝国的制与败：英国，印度和美国》，c。1750–1783（2005）。绝大多数“新帝国史”侧重于研究社会和文化历史。对“高级政治”的研究被忽略了，几十年前写的Namierite模版中保留了模塑。随着“新外交史”，安德鲁·奥肖内西（Andrew O'Shaughnessy）的《失去美国的男人》（2013）和格鲁吉亚论文计划等发展，有迹象表明，对18世纪政治家的研究正在复兴并被嵌入到我们的著作中。对格鲁吉亚文化的了解日益细化。