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In the late Roman Republic, two political parties existed, which were the Populares (Figure 1) and Optimates, which have been seen as representing the interests of the plebeians and Senate respectively. The Senate held the interests of the upper classes, including the patricians, while the Populares championed the causes of the common classes through the plebeian tribune. Although these can be considered perhaps the first political parties to have emerged, it is unclear if they are comparable to our political parties in the modern sense, as they may have lacked clear political platforms and the parties in ancient Rome usually held control of one part of the governing bodies of the Republic (i.e., the Optimates in the Senate and the Populares in the plebeian tribune). Class generally defined which party you belonged to rather than ideals, although often class also did influence political ideals.<ref>For more on Roman politics during the late Republic and political system, see: Taylor, L. R. (1996). <i>Party politics in the age of Caesar</i> (Nachdr.). Berkeley: Univ. of Calif. Press.</ref>
Although in the Medieval period, elections and legislators did exist, most of these were driven by family or class loyalties. Something more similar to our modern political parties then began to emerge only in the late 17th century in England. The emergence linked back to the English Civil War and the turbulent time that followed with the temporary dissolution of the monarchy. Feelings of having a monarch split English society in the 17th century. After the restoration of the monarch, and then the later Glorious Revolution in 1688, political factions within parliament began to emerge into more coherent ideals. Namely, this revolved around the idea of how much power the monarch should have, where eventually a constitutional monarchy with more limited authority emerged. The Whigs and the Tories were the first two factions that emerged that we can call true parties as they had fairly developed platforms, where the Whigs supported a more limited monarch and the Tories supported a stronger monarch. Initially, these were limited areas where the parties focused their energies but this soon changed as the parties began to develop more coherent political ideals on different issues such as foreign adventures, although this often involved some role in relation to the monarch. Both parties depended on relatively wealthy and aristocratic classes at first, but in the 18th century, the Whigs began to depend also on emerging merchant classes. For the first 50 years of the two-party system that emerged in parliament, the Whigs were in power.<ref>For more on how the Whigs and Tories developed, see: Du Rivage, J. (2017). <i>Revolution against empire: taxes, politics, and the origins of American independence</i>. New Haven: Yale University Press. </ref>
Throughout out the first half of the 18th century, political parties were relatively limited in their platforms. It was in the period when the Whigs were out of power, during the 1760s, that Edmund Burke, who was a Whig and political philosopher, developed more coherent concepts that laid the foundation for modern political parties. He stated that a political party represented "joint endeavours (in regarding) the national interest, upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed." This allowed factions within the Whigs to emerge that held these ideals as a way to unify its members, which coalesced into a more unified Whig party in the 1780s around Charles Fox, the leader of the party. The Tories also then began to emerge around similar principals, under the leadership of William Pitt the Younger, for unifying their party but with different ideals. The Whigs began to become major supporters of Adam Smith's liberal economic policies, as the middle class began to influence Whig interests and also became more active in politics.<ref>For more on Burke's influence and evolution of the Whigs and Tories, see: Adams, I. (1998). <i>Ideology and politics in Britain today</i>. Manchester ; New York : New York: Manchester University Press ; Distributed exclusively in the USA by St. Martin’s Press, pg. 68.</ref>
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[[Category:Wikis]][[Category:Political History]][[Category:British History]][[Category:UNited States History]]
