ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates how controversial the Hanoverian commitment to an assertive policy of maintaining the balance of power in the European continent remained throughout the reign of George II. It examines some important groundwork has already been laid by Robert Harris on the public perception and attitude towards Hanover and Hanoverian foreign policy during much of this period. It was, however, the War of the Austrian Succession that offered a political background to David Hume's rewriting of Viscount Bolingbroke's Athenian critique of the Hanoverian interventionist approach to European power politics. In Hume's view, it was much better to be torn between shock therapy of 'a voluntary bankruptcy' and clinging to the regime of war finance. The chapter proposes to complicate the picture by reframing it in the context of the contemporary debate over the causes of the rise and fall of ancient Athens.
