Richard Congreve, Positivist Politics, the Victorian Press, and the British Empire

 This book is about the life and times of Richard Congreve. This polemicist was the first thinker to gain instant infamy for publishing cogent critiques of imperialism in Victorian Britain. As the foremost British acolyte of Auguste Comte, Congreve sought to employ the philosopher’s new science of sociology to dismantle the British Empire. With an aim to realise in its place Comte’s global vision of utopian socialist republican city-states, the former Oxford don and ex-Anglican minister launched his Church of Humanity in 1859. Over the next forty years, Congreve engaged in some of the most pressing foreign and domestic controversies of his day, despite facing fierce personal attacks in the Victorian press. Congreve made overlooked contributions to the history of science, political economy, and secular ethics. In this book Matthew Wilson argues that Congreve’s polemics, ‘in the name of Humanity’, served as the devotional practices of his Positivist church. 

‘Wilson has written an outstanding first biography of the leading exponent of positivism in England. The reader not only learns about Richard Congreve and all his oddities but engages in a myriad of fierce contemporary debates, especially those relating to religion, the labor movement, imperialism, and the leadership of the global positivist movement. A talented writer with a gift for storytelling, Wilson transports readers with aplomb to the Victorian age. His work uncovering this strange man on a prophetic mission and explaining these important debates is a model of scholarship!’ — Mary Pickering, Professor of History, San Jose State University



‘Matthew Wilson’s engaging biography of the English Positivist Richard Congreve (1818-1899) is immensely readable, meticulously researched, and rich in detail. Tracing this dour man’s journey through his early life and career to his emergence as a Positivist Priest, dogmatic anti-imperialist, apologist for dictatorships, advocate of rights, and much more, Wilson is attentive to the political and intellectual context of Congreve’s writings and actions. Although largely forgotten, in his day Congreve drew the ire of many of his contemporaries when he addressed urgent questions. This biography is especially interesting in our fractious times when power and rights and are presented and fought over not in lectures, addresses, pamphlets, circulars, and the press but on Twitter, Facebook and other on-line platforms.’ — Geraldine Forbes, Distinguished Teaching Professor Emerita, Department of History, State University of New York Oswego



‘This is an impressive and welcome study of a remarkable Victorian utopian thinker. Tracing the development of Congreve’s Positivism and his sustained engagement with a wide range issues, including imperialism, political economy, and social reform, Wilson has made a notable contribution to nineteenth century British intellectual history’. — Duncan Bell, Political Thought and International Relations, University of Cambridge



‘This is the first major study of the most outstanding opponent of imperialism in Victorian Britain, and the leading disciple of the Positivist, Auguste Comte's, atheistic ‘Religion of Humanity’. Wilson's exhaustive study demonstrates Congreve's wide-ranging influence and contextualises his utopian aspirations. This book illuminates a controversial figure, helps to restore Positivism to a central position in Victorian intellectual life, and reminds us of the centrality of the disputed imperial legacy to debates about modern Britain’. — Gregory Claeys, Professor Emeritus of History, The University of London.



‘The Positivist movement of the second half of the nineteenth century had a remarkable, but sometimes unseen and unacknowledged, impact on the lives of a surprising number of leading British writers, politicians and creative minds. Without Richard Congreve this would never have happened. Matthew Wilson’s important, well researched, and much needed, critique places Congreve centre stage and establishes his true significance in this largely forgotten movement’. — Dr David Taylor, FSA author of The Remarkable Lushington Family. Reformers, Pre-Raphaelites, Positivists, and the Bloomsbury Group.