The Whig Story and Its Critics

How historians remember 1688 shapes how they compare it with later revolutions. In the nineteenth century, Thomas Babington Macaulay's History of England, whose first volumes appeared in 1848, presented 1688 as a wise, moderate revolution that spared England the violence of France. This became part of the 'Whig interpretation', which told history as steady progress toward liberty. In 1931 Herbert Butterfield criticized that approach for judging the past by the present and for sorting historical actors into heroes and villains.

Later scholars added that 1688 looked far less peaceful from Ireland and Scotland. In 2009 Steve Pincus argued in 1688: The First Modern Revolution that it was a genuinely transformative and contested revolution, not a mere restoration. The debate shows that whether a revolution counts as 'moderate' or 'radical' depends partly on where the historian stands and which places are included.