{{short description|American historian (1910–1988)}} {{Use mdy dates|date=October 2024}} {{Infobox academic | honorific_prefix = | name = Robert Walcott | birth_date = {{birth date|1910|01|24}} | birth_place = Cambridge, Massachusetts, US | death_date = {{death date and age|1988|08|23|1910|01|24}} | death_place = Dennis, Massachusetts, US | education = {{Plainlist| * St. Paul's School * Harvard College }} | discipline = History | sub_discipline = 18th-century English politics }}
'''Robert Walcott''' (January 24, 1910 – August 23, 1988)<ref>''Massachusetts, Death Index, 1970-2003''</ref> was an American historian specializing in early 18th-century English politics.<ref name=GlobeObit>{{Cite news |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-boston-globe-robert-walcott-78-was/156430177/ |title=Robert Walcott, 78: Was history professor |newspaper=The Boston Globe |page=75 |date=26 August 1988 |access-date=2024-10-02 |via=Newspapers.com}}</ref>
==Early life and education==
Robert Walcott was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He graduated from St. Paul's School and Harvard College.<ref name=GlobeObit/>
==Augustan politics==
Walcott subjected early 18th-century English politics to a Namierite analysis, arguing that it was dominated by various factions based on sectional and familial interests. He challenged the traditional view, espoused by G. M. Trevelyan and Sir Keith Feiling, that the politics of Queen Anne's reign was dominated by two parties (Whigs and Tories).<ref>Robert Walcott, "English Party Politics, 1688-1714" in ''Essays in Modern English History in Honor of W. C. Abbott'' (Harvard, 1941) and Robert Walcott, ''English Politics in the Early Eighteenth Century'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956).</ref>
However Walcott's thesis came under increasing criticism. G. V. Bennett claimed that Walcott's book-length argument was "disastrous":
<blockquote>[Walcott's] methodology was patently at fault. Having created a card-index of biographical material for individual M.P.s, he attempted on this basis to allot them to the different political groups of his own theory. One connection, the "Newcastle-Pelham-Walpole" faction, clearly had no existence at all, as any acquaintance with known political correspondence would reveal. Other groups were inflated by the inclusion of men whose relationship with the leading political figure was of the flimsiest nature. Walcott had relied to an extreme degree on a specialized professional technique, and his work ignored not only the literature of the time but the great mass of political papers which were already available when he wrote.<ref>G. V. Bennett, "Review: British Politics in the Age of Anne", ''The English Historical Review'' Vol. 84, No. 331 (April 1969), p. 359.</ref></blockquote>
In 1967 Walcott's thesis was superseded by Geoffrey Holmes' view that Anne's reign was indeed dominated by two parties. In 1992 Tim Harris claimed that Walcott's thesis was "now totally discredited".<ref>Tim Harris, "From Rage of Party to Age of Oligarchy? Rethinking the Later Stuart and Early Hanoverian Period", ''The Journal of Modern History'' Vol. 64, No. 4 (December 1992), p. 700.</ref>
Walcott died at his home in Dennis, Massachusetts on August 23, 1988.<ref name=GlobeObit/>
==Works== *"English Party Politics, 1688-1714" in ''Essays in Modern English History in Honor of W. C. Abbott'' (Harvard, 1941). *''English Politics in the Early Eighteenth Century'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956).
==References== {{reflist}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Walcott, Robert}} Category:1910 births Category:1988 deaths Category:Historians of England Category:20th-century American historians Category:American male non-fiction writers Category:Academics from Massachusetts Category:20th-century American male writers Category:Harvard College alumni Category:St. Paul's School (New Hampshire) alumni