Vintage-style illustration of an older man with a pink tint, in front of a collage background with text and newspaper clippings.

Richard Congreve, Positivist Politics, the Victorian Press, and the British Empire (Palgrave: 2021).

— catalogue description —

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 fore-most 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.

— chapter abstracts —

1. Prelude: ‘Who is RICHARD CONGREVE?’ It Will Be Asked

‘“Who is RICHARD CONGREVE?” It will be asked.’ was the first widely distributed review of the philosopher’s anti-imperialist ideas. The date was 16 January 1858, and the Times’ reviewers presented Congreve as at once enigmatic, outrageous, and uncommonly principled. This instance in which the public began speculating on how Congreve laced his polemics with latent meanings and motivations, affords us an opportunity to examine Positivism through the critical lens of the Victorian press. The chapter then delves into the recent historiography of Positivism and the often-overlooked utopia to which Congreve dedicated his life. Against this backdrop we will examine, through the course of this book, the ways in which both the press and Congreve aided and impaired the impact of the Positivist movement on British life.

2. Things About a Highly Strung Evangelist, 1818–1838

About the family farm, boarding school, and chapel, the young Richard Congreve encountered conflicting social outlooks. He faced the radical thinking of farmhands, the severe conservativism of his father, and a rigid evangelical pedagogy at uncle Walter Bury’s French boarding school. Then at Rugby and Oxford, the young, socially awkward poet-historian embraced the idealism of Percy Bysshe Shelley, accepted the manly Christian duties of S. T. Coleridge, reflected on Robert Owen’s socialist utopias, and absorbed Thomas Arnold’s Broad Church thinking. These contrasts that he encountered as a student, shaped and shook his adolescent persona: the unbending evangelical. This chapter argues that Congreve’s study of history, utopias, and Christian virtue spoke to him of how the past experiences of life could light the way to a new, brighter future.

3. Once Timorous, Now a ‘Very Dangerous’ Infidel, 1838–1845

The late 1830s were years of severe sadness, new friendships, and intensive study for Richard Congreve. Within a decade’s time, people considered this Anglican minister a ‘very dangerous’ man. This chapter argues that central to this persona was his keen enthusiasm for the ‘combative element’ at Oxford Union Society debates. Here, among other places, he engaged in difficult conversations on public education, Chartism, home rule, social reform, and Tractarianism. His continental, socially conscious teachings as an Oxford ‘coach’ were popular among undergraduates. But rumours of his secret writings left his peers and pupils suspicious of the extent to which he was a religious and political infidel. Controversy after controversy left him in search of a way out of Oxford.

4. A ‘Man of Fiery Temperament’, 1845–1852

Richard Congreve experienced great inner turmoil during his tenure at Rugby School. On discovering that for various reasons he was persona non grata, he immersed himself in the works of Thomas Carlyle, G. H. Lewes, J. S. Mill, and Auguste Comte. Their ideas informed his fiery utterances on free trade, elections, revolution, and autocracy. After headmaster A. C. Tait pushed him out of his post, the ordained minister and liberal pamphleteer received a warm welcome as a Wadham College don. By the time Congreve’s prophesies attracted a coterie of disciples there, he had dedicated himself to the serious study of Positivism. This chapter argues that, based on critiques surrounding the Christian church, he saw in Positivism the true purpose and duties of the rising spiritual leaders of modernity.

5. Leader of a ‘Slightly Terrorist School of Philanthropists’, 1852–1857

By the mid-1850s, Richard Congreve was tired with the idea of reforming Oxford into a modern institution, with sound teachings for empowering British elites to drive social change. During a ‘tearful crisis’ involving his faith, finances, and a new fiancée, Congreve abandoned academia and the Anglican clergy ‘for the sake of the truth’: Positivism. He became the first ‘true disciple’ of Auguste Comte’s Religion of Humanity. This chapter argues that, with Comte’s religious Positivism as his ballast, Congreve proceeded to publish studies embedded with forecasts of the demise of the British Empire. These publications extended scientific and religious justifications of Comte’s utopian vision in tandem with a new international policy. On this basis, Congreve was rising as the centre of an emergent British Positivist school.

6. Comtist ‘Vicar’ and ‘Accuser of the Nation’, 1857–1866

By the 1860s, Richard Congreve had metamorphosed into a polymath of multifarious vocations. He published anti-imperialist tracts, began studying medicine, and translated the religious utterances of Auguste Comte. He assumed the unsavoury role of sociologist ‘super-historian’ by writing through the lens of Comte’s Positivist philosophy of history. Meanwhile, Congreve also led sweeping attempts to forge an international trade union movement. He and his coterie of elusive disciples aimed to build a band of working-class followers who believed their historical destiny was to realise Comte’s utopia. Along these lines, they united in publishing the first composite scheme for an ideal British foreign and domestic policy. This chapter argues that such vocations were rooted in Congreve’s self-appointed role as ‘vicar’ of the utopian socialist Church of Humanity.

7. On a ‘Sort of Celebrity or Peculiarity’ of an ‘Atheistical Monastery’, 1866–1877

The period of 1867 to 1877 was one of great celebrity for Richard Congreve. He formally met the qualification of the Positivist priesthood. And with an aim to develop a proletarian brotherhood, he delved into issues surrounding suffrage reform, the Irish question, anonymous journalism, the scientific and philosophical merits of Positivism, popular education, the Paris Commune, and the Ashanti War. Such efforts gained the support more so of ‘the educated’ rather than ‘the working class’. This chapter argues that although middle-class allies buoyed his Positivist Society of London and school at Chapel Street Hall, few would commit to what was by 1870, an essentially defunct Church of Humanity. Yet by 1877 it appeared that his congregation was more faithful than ever.

Chapter 8: ‘Pope’ of Back-Parlour ‘Ambiguities and Illusions’, 1877–1899

In 1877, Richard Congreve entered a secret plot to undermine the leadership of the international Positivist movement. After one of his co-conspirators exposed his ill-fated ambitions, Congreve severed all connections to the Society and his closest followers. He relaunched his Church of Humanity. But rather than kindling an atmosphere of brotherly love, he proceeded to publish polemics ‘in the name of Humanity’ on crises in Eastern Europe, China, Zululand, the Transvaal, Egypt, and Uganda. Congreve’s co-religionists felt that such utterances stunted true worship of ‘the Great Being’ or ‘Humanity’. This chapter argues, however, that Congreve instead intended to forge a proletarian church of anti-imperialism. He expected from his ‘congregation’ a full commitment to ‘public duty’, as social reformers seeking to realise Comte’s utopia, the République occidentale.

— Endorsements —

‘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.