Recent Research in Modern British History
Sheffield History Teachers’ Conference
Dr Julie Gottlieb
Dr Julie V. Gottlieb
• Cultural and Gender Historian of Politics
Opening up new perspectives in the following
ways:
• Gender and women’s history of political
extremism. J.V. Gottlieb, Feminine Fascism:
Women in Britain’s Fascist Movement, 19231945 (2000)
• What happened after the vote was won. J.V.
Gottlieb and R. Toye (eds.), The Aftermath of
Suffrage (2013)
• A gender history of appeasement– from “Guilty
Men” (‘Cato’, 1940) to J.V. Gottlieb, ‘Guilty
Women, Foreign Policy and Appeasement in
Interwar Britain (forthcoming, 2015)
Central Themes of the Module
• Impact of industrialisation
• Transition to mass democracy
• Changing social relationships –
significance of gender, ethnicity, class
• Cultural shifts – role of religion, new
forms of communication, youth,
standards of behaviour and morality
• Britain as an imperial power, and the
legacies of that history.
How did Britain become “Top Nation”?
1066 and All That (published in 1930)
The British Empire in 1886
PERIODIZATION: TURN OF CENTURY
Noel Coward’s Cavalcade, a story of patriotism, pacifism and the erosion of social
classes in post-Victorian England, covering the period from New Year’s Eve, 1899 to
the same date in 1932. (film 1933)
Lyrics to Noel Coward’s The Stately Homes Of England (1938) :
Lord Elderly, Lord Borrowmere,
Lord Sickert and Lord Camp.
With every virtue, every grace,
Ah, what avails the sceptred race.
Here you see the four of us,
And there are so many more of usEldest sons
That must succeed.
We know how Caesar conquered Gaul,
And how to whack a cricket ball;
Apart from this, our education
Lacks co-ordination.
Though we're young,
And tentative,
And rather rip-representative
Scions of a noble breed,
We are the products of those homes,
Serene and stately,
That only lately,
Seem to have run to seed.
The stately homes of England
How beautiful they stand,
To prove the upper classes
Have still the upper hand.
Though the fact that they have to be rebuilt,
And frequently mortgaged to the hilt
Is inclined to take the gilt
Off the gingerbread,
And certainly damps the fun
Of the eldest sonBut still, we won't be beaten,
We'll scrimp and scrape and save.
The playing fields of Eton
Have made us frightfully brave.
And though if the Van Dycks have to go
And we pawn the Bechstein Grand,
We'll stand
By the stately homes of England.
New Year’s Eve, 1999. Cool Britannia on display at the
Millennium Dome (or not?)
Olympic Opening Ceremony (Danny Boyle) and
Representations of Britishness and National Identity
An Even Cooler Britannia!
London Bridge on the Rise
Olympic Opening Ceremony: The
Suffragettes
“This is for everyone”: Has Britain
been transformed?
The shift in the way we define periods in British history from
monarch-identified to defined by social, economic and political
leifmotifs
“King Edward’s new policy of peace was very
successful and culminated in the Great War to
End War. This pacific and inevitable struggle
was undertaken in the reign of His Good and
memorable Majesty King George V and it was
the cause of nowadays and the end of
History.” (Chapter LXI, 1066 and All That)
Britain in the ‘Roaring Twenties’
Characterization of the 1970s as a decade of economic crisis, fuel shortages, no
garbage collection, punk music etc.
The First
Industrial
Nation…
The Political Nation
Being British
Empire and Commonwealth
Changing Lives of Men & Women
Heritage
The Production of Modern British History
Transformation?
• Change – but also, what makes things
change?
• Should we focus on continuities rather than
transformations? – relative stability in Britain
compared with other countries: in 19th and
20th centuries avoided revolution, invasion,
military defeat ...
– Cf. France: revolutions (1789, 1830, 1848); shifts
between republic, monarchy, new constitutions;
military defeat (1870 and 1940); occupation (194044).