Between 1830 and 1886, Liberals dominated British politics. Focusing on the strategies of successive Liberal leaders, this study gives an overview of that dominance and argues that liberalism was a much more coherent force than has generally been recognized by historians.
The Persistence of Victorian Liberalism examines the question of where to locate the ideological break between classical liberalism and the underlying principles of the modern Welfare State. While most historians of 19th century Britain argue that such a shift occurred prior to 1900, Haggard challenges the contention that classical liberalism had been so undermined by this point that the modern Welfare State was largely inevitable. He considers the public discussion of progress, poverty, charity, socialism, and social reform, and he concludes that the vast majority of the Victorian middle and upper classes remained wedded to the tenets of classical liberalism up to the close of the century. In contrast to traditional characterizations, Haggard argues that progress, individualism, and character continued to resonate within Victorian society throughout the late Victorian period. Private philanthropy grew increasingly active as a remedy to urban poverty. The London Socialist movement, the New Unionism, the Independent Labour Party, and the New Liberalism, each proponents of socialistic reforms, found themselves marginalized politically. The key to the social debates of the day was the concept of the deserving versus the undeserving poor. Although the deserving might expect some private or public aid, the undeserving were to be punished for their lack of character. Until this notion was overturned, the Welfare State would remain outside the realm of practical politics.
This innovative book challenges many of the widely held assumptions about the place of religion in Victorian society and in London, the world's first great industrial and commercial metropolis. Against the background of Victorian London it explores the religiosity of Londoners as expressed through the dynamic renewal of traditional faith communities, including Judaism and the historic churches, as well as fresh expressions of religion, including the Salvation Army, Mormons, spiritualism, and the occult. It shows how laypeople, especially the rich and women were mobilised in the service of their faith, and their fellow citizens. Drawing on research in social, economic, oral, cultural, and women's history Jacob argues that religious motivations lay behind concerns that subsequently preoccupied people in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. These include the changing place of women in society, an active concern for social justice, the sexual exploitation of women and children, and provision of education for all classes and all ages. By examining religion broadly, in its social and cultural context and looking beyond conventional approaches to religious history, Religious Vitality in Victorian London illustrates the dynamic significance of religion in society influencing even the expression of secularism.
Victorian Britain is often described as an age of dawning democracy and as an exemplar of the modern Liberal state; yet a hereditary monarchy, a hereditary House of Lords, and an established Anglican Church survived as influential aspects of national public life with traditional elites assuming redefined roles. After 1832, constitutional notions of 'mixed government' gradually gave way to the orthodoxy of 'parliamentary government', shaping the function and nature of political parties in Westminster and the constituencies, as well as the relations between them. Following the 1867-8 Reform Acts, national political parties began to replace the premises of 'parliamentary government'. The subsequent emergence of a mass male electorate in the 1880s and 1890s prompted politicians to adopt new language and methods by which to appeal to voters, while enduring public values associated with morality, community and evocations of the past continued to shape Britain's distinctive political culture. This gave a particularly conservative trajectory to the nation's entry into the twentieth century. This study of British political culture from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century examines the public values that informed perceptions of the constitution, electoral activity, party partisanship, and political organization. Its exploration of Victorian views of status, power, and authority as revealed in political language, speeches, and writing, as well as theology, literature, and science, shows how the development of moral communities rooted in readings of the past enabled politicians to manage far-reaching change. This presents a new over-arching perspective on the constitutional and political transformations of the Victorian age.
How did ideas of masculinity shape the British legal profession and the wider expectations of the white-collar professional? Brotherhood of Barristers examines the cultural history of the Inns of Court – four legal societies whose rituals of symbolic brotherhood took place in their supposedly ancient halls. These societies invented traditions to create a sense of belonging among members – or, conversely, to marginalize those who did not fit the profession's ideals. Ren Pepitone examines the legal profession's efforts to maintain an exclusive, masculine culture in the face of sweeping social changes across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Utilizing established sources such as institutional records alongside diaries, guidebooks, and newspapers, this book looks afresh at the gendered operations of Victorian professional life. Brotherhood of Barristers incorporates a diverse array of historical actors, from the bar's most high-flying to struggling law students, disbarred barristers, political radicals, and women's rights campaigners.
"When and how did public health become modern? In Governing Systems, Tom Crook re-examines this key question in the context of Victorian and Edwardian England, long regarded as one of the 'homes' of modern public health. The modernity of modern public health, Crook argues, should be located not in the rise of a centralized, bureaucratic and disciplinary State, but in the contested formation and intricate functioning of systems of governing, from the administrative to the technological. Equally, we need to embrace a dialectical understanding of modern governance, one that is rooted in the interaction of multiple levels, agents and times. Theoretically ambitious, but empirically grounded, Governing Systems will be of interest to historians of modern public health and modern Britain, as well as anyone interested in the complex gestation of the governmental dimensions of modernity"--
In what has established itself as a classic study of Britain from the late eighteenth century to the mid-Victorian period, Eric J. Evans explains how the country became the world’s first industrial nation. His book also explains how, and why, Britain was able to lay the foundations for what became the world’s largest empire. Over the period covered by this book, Britain became the world’s most powerful nation and arguably its first super-power. Economic opportunity and imperial expansion were accompanied by numerous domestic political crises which stopped short of revolution. The book ranges widely: across key political, diplomatic, social, cultural, economic and religious themes in order to convey the drama involved in a century of hectic, but generally constructive, change. Britain was still ruled by wealthy landowners in 1870 as it had been in 1783, yet the society over which they presided was unrecognisable. Victorian Britain had become an urban, industrial and commercial powerhouse. This fourth edition, coming more than fifteen years after its predecessor, has been completely revised and updated in the light of recent research. It engages more extensively with key themes, including gender, national identities and Britain’s relationship with its burgeoning empire. Containing illustrations, maps, an expanded ‘Framework of Events’ and an extensive ‘Compendium of Information’ on topics such as population change, cabinet membership and significant legislation, the book is essential reading for all students of this crucial period in British history.
The remarkable popularity of political likenesses in the Victorian period is the central theme of this book, which explores how politicians and publishers exploited new visual technology to appeal to a broad public. The first study of the role of commercial imagery in nineteenth-century politics, Politics personified shows how visual images projected a favourable public image of politics and politicians. Drawing on a vast and diverse range of sources, this book highlights how and why politics was visualised. Beginning with an examination of the visual culture of reform, the book goes on to study how Liberals, Conservatives and Radicals used portraiture to connect with supporters, the role of group portraiture, and representations of Victorian MPs. The final part of the book examines how major politicians, including Palmerston, Gladstone and Disraeli, interacted with mass commercial imagery. The book will appeal to a broad range of scholars and students across political, social and cultural history, art history and visual studies, cultural and media studies and literature.
This open access book explores the role of continuity in political processes and practices during the Age of Revolutions. It argues that the changes that took place in the years around 1800 were enabled by different types of continuities across Europe and in the Americas. With historians of modernity tending to emphasise the rise of the new, scholarship has leaned towards an assumption that existing modes of action, thought and practice simply became extinct, irrelevant or at least subordinate to new modes. In contrast, this collection examines continuities between early modern and modern political cultures and organization in Europe and the Americas. Shifting the focus from political modernization, the authors examine the continued relevance of older, often local, practices in (post)revolutionary politics. By doing so, they aim to highlight the role of local political traditions and practices in forging and enabling political change. The book argues that while political change was in fact at the centre of both the old and new polities that emerged in the Age of Revolutions, it coexisted with, and was indeed enabled by, continuities at other levels.