Paper 5: British Political History 1688-1886
List of Topics and Bibliographies 2015-16
Page
Introduction to Paper 5
3
General surveys
8
Chronological topics
1. The impact of the1688 Revolution and the emergence of the Hanoverian settlement, 1688-1721
2. The Whig oligarchy and its opponents, 1721-60
3. George III and the politics of crisis, 1760-84
4. The younger Pitt, Fox, and the revolutionary era, 1784-1806
5. Lord Liverpool and Liberal Toryism 1807-27
6. The collapse of the ancien régime, 1827-35
7. The rise and fall of party in the age of Peel, 1834-50
8. Palmerston and mid-Victorian stability, 1848-67
9. Government and policy in the age of Gladstone and Disraeli, 1867-86
10. The parties and the people 1867-90
10
12
13
14
16
17
19
21
23
25
Thematic topics
11. The constitution: the roles of monarchy and parliament
12. The process of parliamentary reform, 1815-1886
13. Patriotism and national identity
14. Political communication and the development of a ‘public sphere’ in the eighteenth century
15. The powers of the state: administrative and financial reform
16. The powers of the state: central-local relations, the impact of war, and social reform
17. Extra-parliamentary politics and political debate in the long eighteenth century
18. Chartism, class and the radical tradition, mainly after 1815
19. Gender and politics
20. Religion and politics
21. Scotland and Britain in the eighteenth century
22. Ireland, 1689-1885
23. Britain and Europe
24. Britain and Empire
25. Languages of politics: an overview
28
30
32
36
37
40
44
48
50
54
57
59
64
68
71
Abbreviations
AmHR = American Historical Review
EcHR = Economic History Review
EHR = English Historical Review
HPT = History of Political Thought
HJ = Historical Journal [formerly Cambridge Historical Journal]
HR = Historical Research [formerly Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research]
IHR = International History Review
IHS = Irish Historical Studies
IRSH = International Review of Social History
JBS = Journal of British Studies
JMH = Journal of Modern History
JEcclH = Journal of Ecclesiastical History
JICH = Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History
JIH = Journal of Interdisciplinary History
J Soc Hist = Journal of Social History
Parl Hist = Parliamentary History
PA = Parliamentary Affairs
P&P= Past and Present
PBA = Proceedings of the British Academy
SHR = Scottish Historical Review
Soc Hist = Social History
TRHS = Transactions of the Royal Historical Society
WHR = Welsh History Review
Vict Studs = Victorian Studies
2
Introduction to Paper 5
In taking Paper 5, you will not be expected to study the whole of the 1688-1886 period. As a
general guide you should aim to cover about half of it, and you may begin and end at whichever
date you and your supervisor judge best, given your own particular interests. Whichever part of
the period you study, you will encounter important themes which make the period a significant
phase in British history. These themes are covered in the lectures, but a summary of the major
ones here may be useful.
*
The Revolution Settlement of 1689 established a novel system of parliamentary
sovereignty, which survived more or less unscathed throughout the period and only began
to be undermined in the twentieth century with the growing power of the executive, the
civil service and extra-parliamentary corporations. This system undoubtedly contributed
to the country’s political stability relative to her continental rivals. At the same time, the
powers of the Crown, the functions of parliamentary representation, the extension of
popular liberties and rights, and the role of party all remained areas of fierce debate. This
meant that the narrative drama of high politics—the stories of elections, cabinet intrigues,
personalities, debates, and legislation—was more than just the game it sometimes seems
today, but had real outcomes and affected the lives of real people.
*
It is probably with the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 that Britain was first generally
recognised as a Great Power. The Treaty of Paris in 1763 established her as the Greatest
Power, a position confirmed by the Treaty of Vienna in 1815. Between these dates the
First British Empire was won and partly lost, and the Second British Empire established.
After 1815 the country had to perform the role of the world’s policeman, while after
about 1870 there was a gradual turning away from Europe to the third phase of empire.
Diplomatic and imperial history are covered elsewhere in the Tripos (i.e. Papers 17, 18,
and 21), but Britain’s European and world roles were also matters of intense debate in
domestic politics. Moreover, they contributed to distinctive views about national identity
(‘Englishness’) which are arguably crucial in understanding the appeal of some of the
most charismatic political leaders and political traditions of the period.
*
These two centuries also saw Britain establish itself as first the commercial market place,
then the warehouse, and finally the workshop of the world, while throughout the period it
acted as the world’s banker. These successive economic transformations impacted on
politics as new commercial and then industrial elites arose to challenge the hegemony of
the old aristocratic, monarchical, and clerical regimes. Economic developments also
created the world’s first predominantly urban society, with attendant social problems
(policing, housing, health, etc), all of which required political solutions and challenged
traditional conceptions of the role of politics and the state. Such problems also generated
– at least according to some historians – a growing sense of class consciousness and
potential for social conflict, and present us with the difficulty of assessing how popular
politics functioned and how political order was maintained. Finally, concern for the social
order helps to explain why religious issues played an important part in politics throughout
the period.
*
Another salient theme arises from the political unions with Scotland (1707) and Ireland
(1801), which not only created a United Kingdom state whose legitimacy was being
called into serious question by 1886, when a government proposed an Irish Home Rule
Bill for the first time, but also precipitated debate on issues of British identity and
3
nationality. The Irish problem, in particular, presented British politicians with a set of
fundamental challenges to their dominant assumptions about property, religion, local
government, and empire.
*
A final theme traces the way that political life was immersed in wider intellectual and
cultural contexts. Broad developments in society created new opportunities for, and
new media of, political communication and association. Political tactics and goals
found expression in many literary and cultural forms. The aspirations of varying
groups of men were reshaped as the habits of daily economic and social life evolved
through commercialization, industrialization and urbanization. Likewise, women’s
political capacities, disabilities, and ambitions fluctuated in relation to their changing
circumstances. Notions of political capacity and citizenship were enriched by
intellectual developments. The role of religious ideas was often important in debates
on these broader topics, while there was considerable controversy about the role that
religious institutions should play in politics and the constitution.
The Cambridge History Faculty has always been exceptionally strong in the history of ideas, and
this has naturally affected the way in which political history is understood. Concepts relating to
the constitution, the role of the state, and national identity play an important part in the paper,
and emphasis is placed on underlying intellectual, cultural, religious, and linguistic
developments. Candidates who have already studied this period at school should find this
approach both novel and refreshing, while candidates who have not studied the period before
may be reassured that they will not be at any disadvantage.
In the essays you write on this paper you may well have to deal with relatively short periods, but
you should always be prepared to relate your knowledge of such detailed events and processes to
the wider themes of the paper.
The booklist
The importance of the period and the diversity of approaches to studying it are reflected in the
vast amount of historical literature that has been published on it. The booklist aims to give you
and your supervisor a sense of that variety and a chance to shape your own reading programme
from within it. Needless to say, the examiners do not expect you to master more than a small
proportion of the books on the list; the aim of studying the paper is to gain a sense of the
dynamics of your chosen period.
In some of your other Tripos papers your main task may be to compare and evaluate other
historians’ interpretations, but the study of political history allows you to use what other
historians say to mark out your own path through the complicated byways of the past. The
sections of the booklist aim to help you do this, but they are not a straitjacket and they are
certainly not intended to privilege any particular schemes of interpretation.
The booklist is divided into 25 topics. Those in the first section follow a political chronology,
while those in the second focus on the most important themes of the period. In order to study
political history effectively, you will need a grasp of the political narrative covered in the first
section, and so most supervisors will want you to cover at least four consecutive chronological
topics (among topics 1-9, topic 10 being more thematic). Though they vary in length, it is
essential to ensure that by the time of the examination you are familiar with at least 75-80 years
of the period. (If you are studying the nineteenth century, you may wish, in order to achieve this,
4
to incorporate the short topic 6 into topics 5 and 7, or to do some extra reading in vacations.) It is
for supervisors and candidates to work out their own preferred combination of chronological and
thematic topics, since there is such a wide choice. The following advice may be useful.
It is probably a good idea to start with some broadly chronological topics in order to gain
familiarity with the period and its political culture. Naturally, the distinction between
chronological and thematic topics is not absolute, since the chronological topics also privilege
particular themes where relevant. You should not assume that examination questions set on
chronological topics will be limited to matters of cabinet and parliamentary politics. It is a
particular feature of Paper 5, as it has historically been taught and examined, to emphasise the
role of political ideas and policy approaches as well. Therefore it is important, when writing
essays about particular governments or parties, to make use of cross-references to those thematic
topics that deal with appropriate policy issues (eg foreign policy, Ireland, social policy).
Similarly, when writing on the broader thematic topics, you will need enough chronological
detail to make your generalisations convincing. Your supervisor should give you guidance on
how best to do this. The most important cross-references are marked at the top of each topic,
together with a summary of important issues that the reading raises. This often takes the form of
a string of interrogatives, designed to give you an insight into the sort of questions that might be
asked.
Some of the thematic topics focus on key political issues such as the nature of the eighteenthcentury state or the dynamic of nineteenth-century parliamentary reform. Others feature
problems such as the place of national identity in politics, the nature of radicalism, and gender.
The booklist is thus designed to illuminate all those issues that provoke most debate among
historians at the moment. In most cases we have combined works across the whole period in one
thematic list, though there are two topics on the constitution (11 and 12) and on radicalism (17
and 18). Whether there is one list or two on a topic, candidates should note that they will usually
be required to answer questions on these topics over a considerable number of years (perhaps
sixty or seventy or more). Over the years, such questions have become a standard feature of the
paper; please look at the most recent past papers for the best guide. Therefore, students and
supervisors have a choice as to the particular period that they can study for each of the thematic
topics, as long as they choose a broad one. In general, in studying this paper it is as common for
students to focus on the period 1760-1846 or 1784-1867 as it is on 1688-1806 or 1807-86.
Of course on most such topics there is a limit in practice to the number of years that can be
studied effectively in a week of reading, without downplaying the crucial subtleties and
complexities of the political process and the political culture, and supervisors are aware of this.
Candidates should see their weekly topics as the foundation of a general intellectual
understanding of their chosen period, which will need to be supplemented by targeted reading
after the supervisions have been completed and when revising.
Note that this document opens with a list of general works on the period, including items
that relate to the general economic and social background. Most of these are not listed
again under individual topics, even though they may be extremely relevant to some of them.
So whenever you start on a week’s work, remember to look first at the general section.
5
The various topics in this booklist are the ones around which the examination questions will be
structured. This is appropriate, since examination papers usually contain about 28 questions
(including ‘either/or’ alternatives as two questions). However you should not assume that there
will be a straightforward question on each topic. Because of the many ways in which
connections between thematic and chronological topics can be traced, questions may appear in a
somewhat indirect form (see under ‘Tripos questions’ below). Candidates should understand
this inter-relationship and should revise the great majority of the topics that they have
studied, rather than treat them as entirely discrete topics.
Tripos questions
Before setting a Tripos question paper the examiners will consult with all those who lecture on
and supervise in that paper in order to find out what subjects the undergraduates taking that paper
have covered. Their aim is then to set a paper which will be fair to all candidates, while
nevertheless making sure that the questions are sufficiently searching to allow the better prepared
candidates to demonstrate their superiority. Questions are never designed simply to search out
ignorance by requiring detailed knowledge of the more recondite aspects of a topic. Nor, in the
case of political history, is there ever such a thing as ‘the right answer’. Examiners will expect
you to be able to argue a case, to back it up with detailed factual examples, and to consider and
counter possible objections to the case you have made. You may wish to support your arguments
by references to the historiography, for while it is not necessary (on this paper) to do so simply
for the sake of it, it can often be an efficient way of getting your understanding across. (And
there are some topics, for example national identity, or the eighteenth-century state, which have
been so defined by the historiography that substantial reference to it is more or less essential.)
But you will certainly not be penalised merely for making a case which the examiner happens not
to agree with. What examiners are looking for above all is an ability to conceptualise
political problems effectively - for example by comparing different periods and
personalities or different intellectual approaches to the subject - but in a way that
appreciates the richness and subtlety of the historical material.
Most Tripos papers will contain a substantial number of thematic questions covering long
periods. Naturally, the longer the period, the less comprehensive detail is expected; however
simplification can easily be taken too far, since politics is necessarily a complex process at all
times. Candidates will need to show both the ability to generalise and an appreciation of
when generalisation is inappropriate.
Questions rooted in the chronological section will usually focus on a shorter time scale, but
you cannot assume that this will replicate the particular periodization used in this booklist.
Some questions may straddle more than one period. Some may pursue a prominent political
theme across time. These might, for example, include controversies over a particular
category of policy issue, or questions about the qualities required for political leadership or
the reasons for ministerial success or failure. Sometimes you will be specifically invited to
relate your close knowledge of an individual or period to wider themes, as for example in the
question, ‘What was x’s legacy for British politics?’ Examiners may want to encourage
candidates to discuss, say, whether there was a coherent ‘whig tradition’ or ‘conservative
tradition’ and how it changed over time, or how attitudes to party shifted at different periods.
Candidates should certainly think systematically about the relevance of political languages
and traditions to their chosen timespan, and the last thematic topic, on ‘Languages of politics’
is perhaps particularly useful in supplying revision reading for this.
6
A favourite device of examiners is to disguise a question in the form of a proposition in
quotation marks, followed by an injunction to ‘Discuss’. It is perfectly legitimate in such
cases to take a middle view by showing the ways in which the proposition seems true and the
ways in which it seems false. It is equally legitimate to agree wholly with the proposition or
else to disagree with it wholly. However, if you decide to disagree with it, you must include
some recognition of why it might be true, since the examiner would not have included a
proposition which he or she believed to be wholly false. It is not wise to deny an assertion
without having the knowledge to appreciate why a case for it might be made. If you cannot
even see what a question might be getting at, better not to answer the question.
Finally, it might be useful to turn from these generalisations to what various examiners have
reported on Paper 5 in recent years. Generally speaking the examiners’ comments have displayed
satisfaction with the quality of the scripts. They have remarked favourably on candidates’ grasp
of the concepts dominating the literature, on the extent of their preparation (there has been almost
no ‘short measure’), and on their sophistication in handling their material. Often candidates
score particularly highly on broader questions which could not have been anticipated but which
involve making on-the-spot comparisons and contrasts over lengthy periods. ‘Safe’ questions, by
contrast, turn out to be anything but safe for those who re-heat supervision essays without
sufficient thought as to the precise question being asked of them. For example, policy-oriented
questions—such as those on the loss of the American colonies or the thinking behind the repeal
of the Corn Laws —often receive answers which are too thin on specifics and rely too much on
generalised analysis of parliamentary politics at the time. Knowing enough detail to be able to
deploy it selectively as part of a fluent analysis is a key skill of the historian. Questions which
require crisp definitions of particular concepts—like ‘radicalism’ or ‘Liberal Toryism’—can
easily upset candidates: some scripts will ignore the requirement altogether, while others will
take refuge in prepared formulations rather than using the definition as the basis for working
towards answering the problem posed. Comparative questions are often done well, but a common
failing is to paint on too small a canvas, making the comparison in just one or two areas rather
than taking a broader view.
7
GENERAL SURVEYS
Note that most of these works are not listed again in this booklist, even though they will
all be relevant to some of the topics addressed in the following pages. The asterisked
books are basic works which students who are new to the period will find especially
useful.
(a) Mainly eighteenth century
J. Cannon (ed)
The Whig ascendancy: colloquies on Hanoverian England (1981)
I.R. Christie
Wars and revolutions: Britain 1760-1815 (1982)
B. W. Hill
The early parties and politics in Britain 1688-1832 (1986)
G. Holmes
The making of a great power 1660-1722 (1993)
G. Holmes & D. Szechi An age of oligarchy 1722-1783 (1993)
* J. Hoppit
A land of liberty? England 1688-1727 (2000)
P. Jupp
Governing Britain 1688-1848: the executive, parliament, people (2006)
* P. Langford
A polite and commercial people: England 1727-1783 (1989)
J.B. Owen
The eighteenth century (1974)
* F. O’Gorman
The long eighteenth century 1688-1832 (1997)
J.H. Plumb
England in the eighteenth century, 1714-1815 (1959)
W. Prest
Albion ascendant: English history 1660-1815 (1998)
R. Price
British society 1680-1880: dynamism, containment and change (1999)
W.A. Speck
Stability and strife: England 1714-1760 (1977)
S. Watson
The reign of George III, 1760-1815 (1960)
C. Wilson
England’s apprenticeship 1603-1763 (1965)
(b) Mainly nineteenth century
D. Beales
* M. Bentley
* A. Briggs
* E.J. Evans
N. Gash
E. Halévy
B. Harrison
* B. Hilton
T.K. Hoppen
N. McCord
P. Mandler (ed.)
C. Matthew (ed)
B. Porter
B Porter
R. Price
M. Pugh
* D. Read
K. Robbins
M. Roberts
W.D. Rubinstein
G. Searle
From Castlereagh to Gladstone 1815-1885 (1969)
Politics without democracy 1815-1914 (1984)
The age of improvement 1783-1867 (1959)
The forging of the modern state, 1783-1867 (1983)
Aristocracy and people 1815-65 (1979)
A history of the English people in the 19th century (6 vols., 1949-52 edn)
The transformation of British politics, 1860-1995 (1996)
A mad, bad, and dangerous people? England 1783-1846 (2006)
The mid-Victorian generation 1846-86 (1998)
British history 1815-1906 (1991)
Liberty and authority in Victorian Britain (2006)
The short Oxford history of the British Isles: the 19th century (2000)
Freedom, empire and decline: a political history 1851-1990 (1994)
Britannia’s burden: political evolution of modern Britain 1851-1990 (1994)
British society 1680-1880: dynamism, containment and change (1999)
The making of modern British politics 1867-1939 (1982)
England 1868-1914: the age of urban democracy (1979)
The eclipse of a great power: modern Britain, 1870-1975 (1983)
Political movements in urban England 1832-1914 (2009
Britain’s century: a political and social history 1815-1905 (1998)
A new England? Peace and war 1886-1918 (2004)
8
* R.T. Shannon
G.M. Young
The crisis of imperialism 1865-1915 (1974)
Portrait of an age: Victorian England (2nd edn., 1953)
(c) The social and economic context
R.J. Brown
Economy and society in modern Britain 1700-1850 (1991)
P.J. Cain & A.G. Hopkins British imperialism: innovation and expansion 1688-1914 (1993)
M. Daunton
Progress and poverty: economic and social history 1700-1850 (1995)
M. Daunton
State and market in Victorian Britain: war, welfare and capitalism (2008)
M. Daunton
Wealth and welfare: an economic and social history of Britain 1851-1951
(2007)
R. Floud & P. Johnson (ed.) The Cambridge economic history of modern Britain. Volume I:
Industrialisation, 1700-1860 (2004)
Douglas Hay & Nicholas Rogers Eighteenth-century English society: shuttles and swords (1997
H. Perkin
The origins of modern English society, 1780-1880 (1969)
R. Porter
British society in the eighteenth century (1982)
(d) For reference
Oxford English dictionary on historical principles (20 vols.) or Shorter Oxford English dictionary on
historical principles (2 vols.)
Dictionary of national biography
English historical documents
Vol. 10, 1714-1783, edited by D.B. Horn & M. Ransome (1969)
Vol. 11, 1783-1832, edited by A. Aspinall & E.A. Smith (1959)
Vol. 12, Part I, 1833-1874, edited by G.M. Young & W.D. Handcock (1956)
Vol. 12, Part II, 1874-1914, edited by W.D. Handcock (1977)
British electoral facts, 1885-1975, edited by F.W. S. Craig
The 18th-century constitution 1688-1815: documents & commentary, ed. by E.N. Williams (1960)
The 19th-century constitution 1815-1914: documents & commentary, ed. by H.J. Hanham (1969)
British historical statistics, edited by B.R. Mitchell (2nd edn., 1989)
9
CHRONOLOGICAL TOPICS
1. The impact of the1688 Revolution and the emergence of the Hanoverian settlement,
1688-1721
The Revolution of 1688 had impacts and implications that endured for decades. We do
not study its causes or progress, but we are concerned with its political legacies. What
issues continued to evoke intense political dispute in the first decades of the eighteenth
century? How apt is the term ‘party’ to describe the organisation of politics in this
period? What developments, if any, contributed to a ‘growth of stability’? To what
extent was the ‘rage of party’ grounded in social, economic, or other factors? What
were the political and ideological significances of such groups as Non-Jurors, High
Churchmen, Latitudinarians, and Dissenters? Who were the political victors and losers
in the struggle to put a stamp on the new regime? What was the significance of the
Jacobite rebellion? How do we explain the successful establishment of the Hanoverian
dynasty?
See also Topic 15a on the fiscal-military state and Topic 17 on popular politics,
especially the Sacheverell affair.
(a) The Glorious Revolution and its impact
R. Beddard (ed.)
The Revolutions of 1688 (1991).
R. Connors
‘The nature of stability in the Augustan Age’, Parl.Hist. (2009)
T. Harris
Revolution: the great crisis of the British monarchy, 1685-1720 (2006)
T. Harris & S. Taylor (eds) The final crisis of the Stuart monarchy: the revolutions of 1688-91 in their
British, Atlantic, and European contexts (2013)
G. Holmes (ed.)
Britain after the Glorious Revolution, 1689-1714 (1969)
J. Hoppit
A land of liberty? England, 1689-1727 (2000)
J. Israel (ed.)
The Anglo-Dutch moment: essays on the Glorious Revolution and its world
impact (1991)
J.R. Jones (ed)
Liberty secured? Britain before and after 1688 (1992)
J.P. Kenyon
‘The revolution of 1688: resistance and contract’ in N. McKendrick (ed),
Historical perspectives (1974)
S. Pincus
1688. The First Modern Revolution (2009). For critical reviews, see Parl. Hist. 30
(2009) and JIH 41 (2010).
* J.H. Plumb
The growth of political stability in England, 1675-1725 (1967)
Clayton Roberts
‘The Growth of Political Stability Reconsidered’, Albion (1993)
Craig Rose
England in the 1690s: revolution, religion and war (1999)
L.G. Schwoerer
The declaration of rights 1689 (1981)
L. G. Schwoerer
The Revolutions of 1688-1689 (1992)
W. Speck
Reluctant revolutionaries: Englishmen and the revolution of 1688 (1988)
K. Wilson
‘Inventing revolution: 1688 and eighteenth-century popular politics’, JBS (1989)
(b) Court and cabinet politics
R. Hatton
T. Claydon
George I: elector and king (1978)
William III (2002)
10
J.A. Downie
O. Field
E. Gregg
* T. Harris
R. Hatton
* G. Holmes
Robert Harley and the press (1979)
The Kit-Kat Club: friends who imagined a nation (2008)
Queen Anne (1976)
Politics under the later Stuarts, 1660-1715 (1993)
George I: elector and king (1978)
British Politics in the age of Anne (1967, revised edition 1987)
For an evaluation of this book forty years on, see Parliamentary History (2009)
G. Holmes
Politics, religion and society in England 1679-1742 (1986)
G. Holmes
‘Robert Harley and the ministerial revolution of 1710’, Parl Hist (2010)
G. Holmes
The trial of Dr Sacheverell (1973)
G. Holmes & C. Jones ‘Trade, the Scots and the parliamentary crisis of 1713’, Parl Hist (1982)
B.W. Hill
Robert Harley: Speaker, secretary of state, and premier minister (1988)
J.P. Kenyon
Revolution principles: the politics of party, 1689-1720 (1977)
(c) Electoral and party politics
G.V. Bennett
The tory crisis in church and state 1688-1730: the career of Francis Atterbury
(1975)
G.V. Bennett
‘English Jacobitism 1710-15: myth and reality’, TRHS (1982)
J. Cannon (ed)
The Whig ascendancy: colloquies on Hanoverian England (1981)
I.G. Doolittle
‘Government interference in City elections, 1714-16’, HJ (1981)
* T. Harris
Politics under the later Stuarts: party conflict in a divided society (1993)
D. Hayton (ed)
The House of Commons 1690-1715 (2002) [Introduction to Volume I]
D. Hayton, D.
‘Moral reform and country politics in the late seventeenth century House of
Commons’, PP, 128 (1990)
G. Holmes
The electorate and the national will in the first age of party (1976)
G. Holmes & W.A. Speck (ed.) The divided society: party conflict 1694-1716 (1967)
H. Horwitz
Parliament, policy and politics in the reign of William III (1977)
C. Jones (ed)
Party and management in parliament, 1660-1784 (1984) [essays by Hayton and
Jones]
C. Jones (ed)
Britain in the first age of party (1987) [essays by Beckett and Speck]
M. Knights
‘Politics after the Glorious Revolution’, in B. Coward (ed.), A companion to
Stuart Britain (2003)
M. Knights
Representation and misrepresentation in later Stuart Britain: partisanship and
political culture (2005)
J. Plumb
‘The growth of the electorate in England from 1600-1715’, P&P, 45 (1969)
W.A. Speck
Tory and whig: the struggle in the constituencies 1701-15 (1970)
W.A. Speck
‘The general election of 1715’, EHR (1975)
D. Szechi
Jacobitism and tory politics 1710-1714 (1984)
R. Walcott
Politics in the early eighteenth century (1956)
(d) Local politics
* G.S. De Krey
G. S. De Krey
P. Gauci
P.D. Halliday
B.W. Hill
P. Jenkins
A fractured society: London in the first age of party (1985)
‘Political Radicalism in London after the Glorious Revolution’, JHH (1983).
Politics and society in Great Yarmouth, 1660-1722 (1996)
Dismembering the body politic: partisan politics in England’s towns 1650-1730
(1998)
‘The change of government & “loss of the City” 1710-11’, EcHR (1971)
The making of a ruling class: the gentry of Glamorgan (1983) (Part 2).
11
N. Landau
* J. Miller
‘Independence, deference and voter participation; the behaviour of the electorate
in early 18th-century Kent’, HJ (1979)
Divided cities: politics and religion in English provincial towns 1660-1722
(2007)
2. The Whig oligarchy and its opponents, 1721-60
What were the key tools of governance under Walpole and Pelham? Is it justified to call
Walpole the ‘first prime minister’? In what ways, if any, was the Whig regime marked
by ‘stability’? What roles did patronage and repression play in governance? What was
the relation between the Whig/Tory axis of ideology and politics and the Court/Country
axis of ideology and politics? What were the status of Toryism and Jacobitism in this
period of Whig domination? What was at stake in the competition between Walpole and
Bolingbroke? To what extent did the Pelhams adopt a different approach from that of
Walpole? What was the impact of war of domestic political stability? How important
was the monarch as a decision-maker? In this period, extra-parliamentary activity, the
development of the press, and literary and artistic energies all contributed to political
life. What role did they play, and how effective were they?
See also Topic 14 on political communication, Topic 17a and b on popular politics, and
Topic 21c on Jacobitism (the major external threat to the Walpolean regime).
(a) The Walpolean regime
* J. Black, ed.
R. Browning
S. Burtt
H.T. Dickinson
P.S. Fritz
C. Jones, ed.
P. Langford
W.A. Speck
* S. Targett
* S.J.C. Taylor
S.J.C. Taylor
P. Woodfine
Britain in the age of Walpole (1984)
Political and constitutional ideas of the court whigs (1982)
Virtue transformed (1992) ch. 6
Walpole and the whig supremacy (1973)
The English ministers and Jacobitism between 1715 and 1745 (1975)
Britain in the first age of party (1987) [Essays by Horwitz and Jones]
The Excise crisis (1975)
‘Whigs and tories’ in J. Cannon, ed., The Whig ascendency (1981)
‘Government and ideology: Walpole’s newspaper propagandists’, HJ
(1994)
‘Walpole, Church of England, and Quaker Tithe bill 1736’, HJ (1985)
‘Whigs, tories and anticlericalism: ecclesiastical courts legislation in
1733’, Parliamentary History (2000)
Britannia’s glories (1998)
(b) Opposition: patriot, Jacobite and Tory
I.R. Christie
L. Colley
E. Cruickshanks
Perry Gauci
* C. Gerrard
A. Hanham
M. Harris
‘The Tory party, Jacobitism and the `45: a note’, HJ (1987)
In defiance of oligarchy (1982)
Political Untouchables (1979)
William Beckford: first prime minister of the London empire (2013)
The patriot opposition to Walpole (1994)
‘“So few facts”: Jacobites, tories and the pretender’, Parl Hist (2000)
London newspapers in the age of Walpole (1987)
12
B. Harris
* B. Harris
I. Kramnick
N. McKendrick
P.K. Monod
J.G.A. Pocock
A.C. Thompson
* K. Wilson
A patriot press (1993)
Politics and the nation (2002)
Bolingbroke and his circle (1968)
Historical perspectives [essays by Bennett and Skinner]
Jacobitism and the English people (1989)
‘Varieties of whiggism’, in Pocock, Virtue, commerce and history
(1985)
‘Popery, politics, and private judgement in early Hanoverian Britain’,
HJ (2002)
The sense of the people (1995)
(c) Urban politics
L. Colley
* L. Colley
I.G. Doolittle
* N. Rogers
N. Rogers
* N. Rogers
‘The loyal brotherhood and the Cocoa Tree: the London organisation
of the Tory Party, 1727-60’, HJ (1977)
‘Eighteenth-century radicalism before Wilkes’, TRHS (1981)
‘Walpole’s City Elections Act (1725)’, EHR (1982)
‘The urban opposition to Whig oligarchy, 1720-60’, in M. and J. Jacob,
eds., Origins of Anglo-American radicalism (1984)
‘The City Elections Act (1725) reconsidered’, EHR (1985)
‘Aristocratic clientage, trade and independency: popular politics in
radical Westminster’, P & P (1973)
(d) Oligarchy after Walpole
J.C.D. Clark
J.C.D. Clark
R. Middleton
J.B. Owen
M. Peters
M. Peters
M. Peters
A.C. Thompson
‘The decline of party, 1740-60’, EHR (1978)
The dynamics of change (1982)
The bells of victory (1985)
The rise of the Pelhams (1957)
Pitt and popularity: the patriot minister and London opposition (1980)
The elder Pitt (1998)
‘The myth of William Pitt, great imperialist’, JICH (1993)
George II (2011), chs 6-9
3. George III and the politics of crisis, 1760-84
The accession of George III has often been taken as marking a new phase in British
political history. To what extent did the organisation of politics change in this period?
Did party decline with a reconsolidation of the ruling class? Or did party enter a new
and more vital phase with Rockingham and his followers? Did the age of political
stability end? How does one explain the ministerial instability of the period after 1760?
Did George III break with the political practices of his predecessors? What were the
impacts of imperial policies in India and America on domestic politics? What was new,
if anything, about John Wilkes and the movements that organised around him? What
were the origins and contributions of Dissenting radicalism? What was the impact on
domestic politics of the North American revolt and the ensuing war?
See also Topic 17c on Wilkes, Wilkites, and their successors, and Topic 24c on the
imperial crisis
13
J. Black
J. Brooke
*G.M. Ditchfield
George III (2006)
King George III (1972)
George III: an essay in monarchy (2002)
(a) The problem of political stability in the 1760s
Jeremy Black, ed., British politics and society from Walpole to Pitt, 1742-1789 (1990)
* J. Brewer
Party ideology and popular politics at the accession of George III (1976)
J. Brooke
The Chatham administration 1766-1768 (1956)
Edmund Burke
Thoughts on the cause of the present discontents (1770)
H. Butterfield
George III and the historians (1957)
I.R. Christie
Wilkes, Wyvill, and reform 1760-1785 (1962)
* H.T. Dickinson
‘George III and parliament’, Parl Hist (2011)
W.M. Elofson
‘The Rockingham Whigs and the country tradition’, Parl Hist (1989)
P. Langford
The first Rockingham administration, 1765-1766 (1973)
P. Lawson
George Grenville: a political life (1984)
L.B. Namier
The structure of politics at the accession of George III (1929 2nd edn 1957)
F. O’Gorman
The rise of party in England : the Rockingham Whigs,1760-82 (1975)
R. Pares
King George III and the politicians (1953)
P.D.G. Thomas
John Wilkes: a friend to liberty (1996)
P. Woodland
‘The House of Lords, the City of London and the opposition to the cider
excise’, Parl Hist (1992)
(b) The domestic impact of the American revolution
J.E. Bradley
J.A. Cannon
I.R. Christie
I.R. Christie
S. Conway
* S. Conway
W.C. Lowe
Religion, revolution and English radicalism: non-conformity in eighteenthcentury politics and society (1990)
The Fox-North coalition: crisis of the constitution 1782-4 (1969)
The end of Lord North’s ministry, 1780-1782 (1958)
‘Party in politics in Lord North’s administration’, Parl Hist (1987)
The American War of Independence 1775-1783 (1995)
The British Isles and the war of American independence (2000)
‘George III, peerage creations and politics, 1760-1784’ HJ (1992)
4. The younger Pitt, Fox, and the revolutionary era, 1784-1806
What was the nature of the conflict between the younger Pitt and Fox? Was the basis of
Pitt’s support ideological or social or economic or a combination of these? Is there a
case to be made for the rise of two-party politics in this period? Did the politics of
poverty (Speenhamland) and the food supply (1801 census) betoken new forms of
economic and social policy? How did the campaign against slavery and the slave trade
gain political purchase? Did ‘a politics of virtue’ shape policy and reform in this period?
What was the impact of the French revolution on politics and on the government’s
policies? Did Pitt preside over his own ‘Terror’? What were the forms and goals of
extra-parliamentary politics? How did political radicalism evolve in this period? How
do we explain the mobilization of popular loyalism? What was at issue between radicals
and conservatives? What role did religion play in these debates? To what extent was
14
revolution in Britain a real danger?
See also Topic 15 on reform of the state, Topic 17 on extra-parliamentary politics
during the French Revolution, and Topic 24 on anti-slavery.
(a) Pitt and Fox
A. Aspinall (ed)
The later correspondence of George III (1966-70) [introductions Vols. 2-3]
J.A. Cannon
The Fox-North coalition: crisis of the constitution 1782-4 (1969)
P.J. Corfield, E.M. Green, & C. Harvey ‘Westminster man: Fox & his electorate’, Parl Hist (2001)
J.W. Derry
The regency crisis and the Whigs, 1788-9 (1963)
J. Derry
Politics in the age of Fox, Pitt and Liverpool (2001)
H.T. Dickinson (ed.) Britain and the French revolution, 1789-1815 (1989)
M. Duffy
‘The younger Pitt and the House of Commons’, History (1998)
J. Ehrman
The younger Pitt (3 vols, 1969-96)
D.E. Ginter
Whig organization in the general election of 1790 (1967)
P. Kelly
‘Radicalism and public opinion in the 1784 general election’, HR (1972)
P. Kelly
‘British parliamentary politics, 1784-6’, HJ (1974)
P. Kelly
‘Pitt and the king, 1783-4’, HR (1981)
S. Lee
‘George Canning and the idea of opposition, 1801-7’, History (1998)
W.C. Lowe
‘George III, peerage creations and politics, 1760-1784’ HJ (1992)
P. Mackesy
Statesmen at war: the strategy of overthrow, 1798-9 (1974)
P. Mackesy
War without victory: the downfall of Pitt 1799-1802 (1984)
* L.G. Mitchell
Charles James Fox (1992)
L.G. Mitchell
Fox and the disintegration of the Whig party, 1782-1794 (1971)
J. Mori
‘The political theory of Pitt the younger’, History (1998)
P.K. O’Brien
‘Pitt the younger as chancellor of the exchequer’, History (1998)
N.C. Phillips
Yorkshire and English national politics 1783-1784 (1961)
R. Reilly
Pitt the younger, 1759-1806 (1978)
J.J. Sack
‘The memory of Burke and the memory of Pitt’, HJ (1987)
R. Thorne
The House of Commons 1790-1820 (1986) [especially Vol. 1, ‘Survey’]
* M. Turner
Pitt the younger: a life (2003)
D. Wilkinson
‘The Pitt-Portland coalition 1794 and origins of the Tory party’, History (1998)
D. Wilkinson
The Duke of Portland: politics and party in the age of George III (2003)
R. Willis
‘Pitt’s resignation in 1801’, HR (1971)
(b) Reforming the state
G. Atkins
‘Christian heroes, providence and patriotism in wartime Britain, 1793-1815’, HJ
(2015)
G. Atkins
‘Religion, politics and patronage in the late Hanoverian navy, c. 1780-1820’, HR
(2015)
J.R. Breihan
‘William Pitt and the commission of fees 1785-1801’, HJ (1984)
* A. Burns & J. Innes (ed.) Rethinking the age of reform: Britain 1780-1850 (2003)
A. S. Foord
‘The waning of “the influence of the Crown”’, EHR (1947)
P. Harling
The waning of ‘old corruption’: economical reform 1779-1846 (1996)
J. Innes
‘Politics and morals: the reformation of manners movement in later 18th century
England’ in E. Hellmuth (ed.), The transformation of political culture (1990)
J. Norris
Shelburne and reform (1963)
15
J. Torrance
‘Social class and bureaucratic innovation: the commissioners for examining the
public accounts, 1780-7’, P&P (1978)
(c) The impact of the French revolution
Edmund Burke
* I.R. Christie
J.E. Cookson
C. Emsley
C. Emsley
C. Emsley
J. Mori
M. Morris
G. Newman
F. O’Gorman
Thomas Paine
M. Philp
T.P. Schofield
Reflections on the revolution in France (1790)
Stress and stability in late eighteenth-century Britain: reflections on the
avoidance of revolution (1984)
The friends of peace: anti-war liberalism in England 1793-1815 (1982)
‘The London insurrection of 1792: fact, fiction, or fantasy?’, JBS (1978)
‘Pitt’s terror: prosecution for sedition during the 1790s’, Soc Hist (1981)
‘Repression, Terror and the rule of law in England during the decade of the
French Revolution’, EHR (1985)
William Pitt and the French revolution, 1785-1795 (1997)
The British monarchy and the French revolution (1998)
‘Anti-French propaganda and British liberal nationalism’, Vict Studs (1975)
The Whig party and the French revolution (1967)
Rights of man (2 vols, 1791-2)
Reforming ideas in Britain: politics and language in the shadow of the French
revolution, 1789-1815 (2013)
‘Conservative political thought in Britain in response to the French revolution’,
HJ (1986)
5. Lord Liverpool and Liberal Toryism 1807-27
What was the legacy of the French wars on government and the party system? How far
did this period see a new, purified image for government, and how far was ‘Old
Corruption’ still seen as a valid description? Was there a discernible shift of power from
monarch to cabinet? Did the period see the rise of a more ‘professional’ breed of
politician? What difference did Peel make at the Home Office, Huskisson at the Board
of Trade, and Canning at the Foreign Office? Why did fiscal and monetary policies
assume such prominence? Did Whigs and so-called ‘Tories’ have coherent ideologies
and provincial roots? How valid is it to distinguish between ‘liberal’ and ‘high
Toryism’? In what ways and how successfully did ministers attempt to associate the
government with ‘public opinion’? Why, after a period of political flux, did Liverpool’s
government survive so long?
See also Topic 15 on administrative and economical reform, Topics 17 and 18 on postWaterloo radicalism, and Topic 23 on foreign policy.
(a) General
J. Derry
P. Fraser
G.I.T. Machin
R. Muir
F. O’Gorman
Politics in the age of Fox, Pitt and Liverpool (2001)
‘Party voting in the House of Commons 1812-27’, EHR (1983)
The Catholic question in English politics 1820-30 (1964)
Britain and the defeat of Napoleon (1996)
The emergence of the two-party system 1760-1832 (1982)
16
F. O’Gorman
F. O’Gorman
M. Turner
‘The unreformed electorate of Hanoverian England: the mid-eighteenth century
to 1832’, Soc Hist (1986)
‘Party politics in the early nineteenth century 1812-1832’, EHR (1987) [and
reply by P. Fraser]
Age of unease: government and reform in Britain, 1782-1832 (2000)
(b) The policies of the Liverpool government
Harriet Arbuthnot
W.R. Brock
J.E. Cookson
J.W. Derry
A. Gambles
N. Gash
V.A.C. Gatrell
N. Gash
P. Handler
P. Harling
* B. Hilton
B. Hilton
B. Hilton
S. Lee
J.J. Sack
N. Thompson
The journal of Mrs Arbuthnot 1820-32 (edited by F. Bamford & Duke of
Wellington, 2 vols, 1950)
Lord Liverpool and liberal toryism (1941)
Lord Liverpool’s administration 1815-22 (1975)
Castlereagh (1976) [especially Chapter 1]
Protection and politics: conservative economic discourse 1815-1852 (1999)
Mr Secretary Peel (1961)
The hanging tree: execution and the English people, 1770-1868 (1994)
Lord Liverpool (1984)
‘Forgery and the end of the “bloody code” in early nineteenth-century England’,
HJ (2005)
The waning of ‘old corruption’: economical reform 1779-1846 (1996)
‘The political arts of Lord Liverpool’, TRHS (1988)
Corn, cash, commerce: the economic policies of the Tory governments 1815-30
(1977)
‘The gallows and Mr Peel’, in T.C.W. Blanning & D. Cannadine (ed.), History
and Biography (1996)
George Canning and liberal toryism 1801-27 (2008)
‘The memory of Burke and the memory of Pitt’, HJ (1987)
Wellington after Waterloo (1986)
(c) The whig opposition
J.E. Cookson
W.A. Hay
P. Mandler
A. Mitchell
L.G. Mitchell
E.A. Smith
The friends of peace: anti-war liberalism in England, 1793-1815 (1982)
The whig revival, 1808-1830 (2004)
Aristocratic government in the age of reform: whigs & liberals 1830-52 (1990)
(Chapters 1 and 2)
The whigs in opposition 1815-1830 (1967)
The whig world 1760-1837 (2005)
Lord Grey, 1764-1845 (1990)
6. The collapse of the ancien régime, 1827-35
These were some of the most dramatic years in British politics in this period: why was this
and what were the consequences? Why, first of all, did religion become such a disruptive
force in 1827-30? Why could Catholic Emancipation no longer be resisted, and what effects
did this have? Why after 47 years did the Pitt-Portland-Liverpool regime collapse in 1830?
How serious was the social and political crisis of 1830-2, and how important was the pressure
exerted by the political unions and other provincial middle-class organisations? Why was
there so much petitioning about slavery and the poor law as well as Reform? How important
17
was evangelicalism and a widespread sense of apocalyptic anxiety? How did the new Whig
ministers diagnose current social and political evils, and in what ways was their Reform Act
designed to cure them? Did the Act, and the further major reforms of 1833 and 1834 (tackling
slavery, the East India Company, the Irish Church, and the poor law) stabilize politics or the
reverse? Why did Ireland precipitate another political crisis in 1834-5? How different was
British politics in 1835 from in 1827?
See also Topic 12 on parliamentary reform, Topic 20 on religion and Topic 22 on Ireland.
(a) The religious question
T. Bartlett
G. Best
R. Brent
R. Brent
J.C.D. Clark
R.W. Davis
R.W. Davis
B. Hilton
K.T. Hoppen
P. Jupp
G.I.T. Machin
G.I.T. Machin
G.I.T. Machin
F. O’Ferrall
J. Wolffe
The fall and rise of the Irish nation: the Catholic question 1690-1830 (1992)
‘Whigs and Church establishment: the age of Grey & Holland’, History (1960)
Liberal Anglican politics: whiggery, religion and reform 1830-41 (1987)
‘New whigs in old bottles’, Parl Hist (1992)
English Society 1688-1832 (1985, 2000)
‘The tories, whigs, and Catholic emancipation, 1827-1829’, EHR (1982)
‘The whigs and religious issues, 1830-5’ in R.W. Davis & R.J. Helmstadter (ed.),
Religion and irreligion in Victorian society (1992)
‘The ripening of Robert Peel’, in M. Bentley (ed), Public and private doctrine:
essays presented to Maurice Cowling (1993)
‘An incorporating union? British politicians and Ireland 1800-1830’, EHR
(2008)
British politics on the eve of reform: Wellington’s administration (1998)
Politics and the churches in Great Britain 1832-68 (1977)
‘Resistance to repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts’, HJ (1979)
‘Canning, Wellington and the Catholic question’, EHR (1984)
Catholic emancipation: Daniel O’Connell and the birth of Irish democracy
1820-30 (1985)
The Protestant crusade in Great Britain 1829-60 (1991)
(b) The Reform Act
A. Briggs
M. Brock
J. Cannon
J. Hamburger
P. Hollis
P. Hollis (ed)
N. McCord
J. Milton-Smith
D.C. Moore
D.C. Moore
‘Middle-class consciousness in politics 1780-1846’, P&P (1956)
The Great Reform Act (1973)
Parliamentary reform 1640-1832 (1973)
James Mill and the art of revolution (1963) (Chapter 4)
The pauper press: working-class radicalism of the 1830s (1970)
Pressure from without in early Victorian England (1974)
‘Some difficulties of parliamentary reform’, HJ (1967)
‘Earl Grey’s cabinet and the origins of parliamentary reform’, HJ (1972)
‘The other face of reform’, Vict Studs (1961)
‘Concession or cure: a sociological interpretation of the Great Reform Act’, HJ
(1966)
I. Newbould
Whiggery and reform 1830-41: the politics of government (1990)
* J. Parry
The rise and fall of Liberal government in Victorian Britain (1993), chapter 2-4
J.A. Phillips & C. Wetherell ‘Great Reform Act 1832: modernization of politics’ AmHR (1995)
Philip Salmon
‘Reform should begin at home: English municipal and parliamentary reform,
1818-32’, in C. Jones, P. Salmon, and R.W. Davis (ed.), Partisan politics,
principle and reform in Parliament, 1689-1880 (2005)
18
E.A. Wasson
‘The coalition of 1827 and the crisis of whig leadership’, HJ (1977)
(c) Social unrest and government response
P. Dunkley
‘The whigs and the poor law 1830-4’, JBS (1980-1)
Carl Griffin
The rural war: Captain Swing and the politics of protest (2012)
U. Henriques
Before the welfare state: social administration in industrial Britain (1979)
E.J. Hobsbawm & G. Rudé Captain Swing (1969)
P. Mandler
‘The making of the new poor law redivivus’, P&P (1987) [and debate with A.
Brundage and D. Eastwood in P&P (1990)]
M. Wiener
Reconstructing the criminal: culture, law and policy in England 1830-1914
(1990)
(d) The abolition of slavery
R. Anstey
D.B. Davis
N. Draper
S. Drescher
I. Gross
‘Parliamentary reform, Methodism, and anti-slavery politics, 1829-1833’, Slavery
& Abolition (1981)
‘The emergence of immediatism in British and American anti-slavery thought’,
Mississippi Valley Historical Review (1962-3)
The price of emancipation: slave-ownership, compensation and British society at
the end of slavery (2009)
Abolition: a history of slavery and antislavery (2009)
‘The abolition of negro slavery and British politics, 1832-1833’, HJ (1980)
7. The rise and fall of party in the age of Peel, 1834-50
Historians differ about how far there was a party system before 1830, and how far
party was regarded as an honourable or even legitimate undertaking, but there is no
doubt that the Reform crisis created new problems and frictions which altered
traditional political alignments and assumptions. In the 1830s, constitutional,
religious and economic issues were all extremely contentious. At the same time,
aspects of the 1832 political settlement facilitated, perhaps even required, the growth
of party organization in the constituencies. How, then, were parties to cope with the
obstacles that they faced? How effectively did the separate groupings of Whigs,
Liberals, and Radicals cohere to form a single political entity? Why did the
Conservatives recover so quickly after 1832, and how far did a ‘two-party system’
operate? How far did Peel’s methods of governance differ from those of his
predecessors, Liverpool, Canning, and Wellington? How did government and
opposition respond to the increased political pressure from extra-parliamentary
religious and economic interests? How did the economic policies designed to address
the tensions between town and countryside (e.g. fiscal reform, free trade, monetary
policy) impact on the nature of government? Why was the Anti-Corn Law League so
successful in mobilizing middle-class opinion? Why did Peel’s government collapse
so spectacularly in 1846 and why were both parties in disarray in the late 1840s?
19
See also Topic 15 on free trade, Topic 16 on the so-called ‘revolution in government’,
and Topic 20 on religion.
(a) General
N. Gash
M. Ledger-Lomas
I. Newbould
J. Parry
R. Stewart
Reaction and reconstruction in English politics 1832-52 (1965)
‘The character of Pitt the Younger and party politics, 1830-1860’, HJ (2004)
Whiggery and reform 1830-41: the politics of government (1990)
The rise and fall of liberal government in Victorian Britain (1993)
Party and politics, 1830-52 (1989)
(b) Whigs, Liberals, Radicals
J. Bord
J. Coohill
P. Mandler
L.G. Mitchell
J. Parry
J. Prest
E.A. Smith
R. Stewart
M. Taylor
W. Thomas
B. Weinstein
Science and whig manners: science and political style 1790-1850 (2009)
Ideas of the Liberal Party: perceptions, agendas and liberal politics in the House
of Commons (2011)
Aristocratic government in the age of reform: whigs & liberals 1830-52 (1990)
Lord Melbourne, 1779-1848 (1997)
‘Liberalism and liberty’ in P. Mandler (ed), Liberty and authority in Victorian
Britain (2006)
Lord John Russell (1972)
Lord Grey, 1764-1845 (1990)
Henry Brougham, 1778-1868: the public career (1985)
The decline of British radicalism 1847-1860 (1995)
The philosophical radicals: studies in theory and practice 1817-41 (1979)
Liberalism and local government in early Victorian London (2011)
(c) Tories, Conservatives, Peelites
J.B. Conacher
M Cragoe
M Cragoe
Benjamin Disraeli
A.P. Donajgrodski
D Eastwood
N. Gash
N. Gash
* R.A. Gaunt
B. Hilton
A. Hawkins
D. Hurd
T.A. Jenkins
I. Newbould
R. Stewart
The Peelites and the party system 1846-52 (1972)
‘The Great Reform Act and the modernization of British politics: the impact of
Conservative associations, 1835–1841’ JBS (2008)
‘Sir Robert Peel and the “moral authority” of the House of Commons, 1832–41’
EHR (2013)
Sybil, or, the two nations (1845)
‘Sir James Graham at the Home Office’, HJ (1977)
‘Peel and the tory party reconsidered’, History Today (1992)
Sir Robert Peel: the life of Sir Robert Peel after 1830 (1972)
‘From the origins to Sir Robert Peel’, in R.A. Butler (ed.), The Conservatives: a
history from their origins to 1965 (1977)
Sir Robert Peel: the life and legacy (2010)
‘Peel: a reappraisal’, HJ (1979)
The forgotten prime minister: the 14th earl of Derby: Volume I: ascent, 1799-1851
(2007)
Robert Peel: a biography (2007)
Sir Robert Peel (1999)
‘Peel and the Conservative party 1832-41’, EHR (1983)
The foundations of the Conservative party 1830-1867 (1978)
20
(d) Ecclesiastical and religious policies
R. Brent
O. Brose
R. Floyd
D.A. Kerr
B. Hilton
G.I.T. Machin
J. Wolffe
Liberal Anglican politics: whiggery, religion and reform 1830-41 (1987)
Church and parliament: reshaping of the Church of England 1828-60 (1950)
Church, chapel and party: religious dissent and political modernization in 19thC
England (2008)
Peel, priests and politics: Sir Robert Peel’s administration and the Roman
Catholic Church in Ireland 1841-6 (1982)
‘Whiggery, religion, social reform: the case of Lord Morpeth’, HJ (1994)
Politics and the churches in Great Britain 1832-68 (1977)
The Protestant crusade in Great Britain 1829-60 (1991)
(e) Economic policies
W.O. Aydelotte
L. Brown
M. Daunton
S.Fairlie
D.R. Fisher
* A. Gambles
A. Gambles
B.Kemp
A. Macintyre
N. McCord
P. Mandler
H. Miller
S. Morgan
‘The country gentlemen and the repeal of the corn laws’, EHR (1967)
The Board of Trade and the free trade movement 1830-42 (1958)
Trusting leviathan: the politics of taxation in Britain 1799-1914 (2001)
‘The nineteenth-century corn law reconsidered’, EcHR (1965)
‘The sugar crisis of 1844 reconsidered’, HJ (1975)
‘Rethinking protection: conservatism and corn laws 1830-52’, EHR (1998)
Protection and politics: conservative economic discourse 1815-1852 (1999)
‘Reflections on the repeal of the corn laws’, Vict Studs (1962)
‘Lord George Bentinck and the protectionists: a lost cause?’, TRHS (1989)
The Anti-Corn Law League 1838-1846(1958)
Aristocratic government in the age of reform: whigs & liberals 1830-52 (1990)
‘Popular petitioning and the Corn Laws, 1833-46’, EHR (2012)
‘The Anti-Corn Law League and British anti-slavery in transatlantic perspective,
1838-1846’, HJ (2009)
P.A. Pickering & A. Tyrrell The people’s bread: a history of the Anti-Corn Law League (2000)
C. Schonhardt-Bailey From the corn laws to free trade: interests, ideas, and institutions in historical
perspective (2006)
8. Palmerston and mid-Victorian stability, 1848-67
The period between 1848 – when Britain noticeably failed to experience anything like
the revolutionary upsurges on the continent – and the death of Palmerston in 1865 is
usually regarded as one of quietude in domestic politics. This was not in fact true at the
level of squabbles for power between groups at Westminster (there were six different
governments during the 1850s, and the party system was disorganized). But several
contemporaries noted that social, economic and intellectual movements seemed more
important than politics, which concerned itself with relatively uncontentious issues at
home, as well as a series of foreign matters. This was the period of greatest British
global power, and there was a lot of celebration of British superiority, but there were
also moments of panic about whether it would continue: there were invasion scares in
1852 and 1859, and grave concern about the conduct of the Crimean War in 1854-5. So
the main question to be asked about this period is not about the ins and outs of
ministries but a broader one: why did the control of the governing classes seem so
comparatively unchallenged? Why was there so little pressure for political and
21
constitutional reform? Why, conversely, were foreign and defence issues so important?
Was Palmerston a conservative force and to what extent did his personality dominate
this era? What impact did the Great Exhibition and other national celebrations have on
British consciousness? The 1832 Reform Act and the campaigns of the Anti-Corn Law
League in the 1840s suggested great middle-class political awareness, implying the
imminent triumph of commercial and industrial groups over the old aristocratic
governors, but why did social change not have more impact on national politics in the
1850s and 1860s? Did middle-class radicalism ‘fail’? And what light does the rapid
passage of a radical Reform Act in 1867, less than two years after Palmerston’s death,
shed on these issues?
See also Topic 12 on parliamentary reform, Topic 16f on middle-class radicalism, and
Topic 23 on Britain and Europe.
(a) General
J.A. Auerbach
The Great Exhibition of 1851: a nation on display (1999)
D. Brown & M. Taylor Palmerston Studies (2 vols., 2007)
W.L. Burn
The age of equipoise: a study of the mid-Victorian generation (1964)
L. Goldman
‘The Social Science Association, 1857-1886: a context for mid-Victorian
Liberalism’, EHR (1986)
* A. Hawkins
‘“Parliamentary government” and political parties 1830-1880’, EHR (1989)
H.C.G. Matthew
‘Disraeli, Gladstone and the politics of mid-Victorian budgets’, HJ (1979)
Bernard Porter
‘Bureau and barrack: early Victorian attitudes towards the continent’, Victorian
Studies (1984)
John Tosh
‘Gentlemanly politeness and manly simplicity in Victorian England’, TRHS (2002)
(b) Party politics
J.B. Conacher
P. Gurowich
A. Hawkins
A. Hawkins
H.C.G. Matthew
J. Parry
J. Parry
J. Parry
E.D. Steele
R. Stewart
R. Stewart
A. Taylor
The Peelites and the party system 1846-52 (1972)
‘Continuation of war by other means: party & politics 1855-65’, HJ (1984)
Parliament, party and the art of politics in Britain, 1855-59 (1987)
‘Lord Derby and Victorian Conservatism’, Parl Hist (1987)
Gladstone 1809-1874 (1986)
The politics of patriotism: English liberalism, national identity and Europe,
1830-1886 (2006)
The rise and fall of Liberal government in Victorian Britain (1993)
‘Past and future in the later career of Lord John Russell’ in T.C.W. Blanning & D.
Cannadine (ed.), History and Biography (1996)
Palmerston and Liberalism 1855-65 (1991)
The foundations of the Conservative party 1830-1867 (1978)
Party and politics, 1830-52 (1989)
‘Palmerston and Radicalism, 1847-1865’, JBS (1994)
(c) Foreign and defence policy
Olive Anderson
M. Chamberlain
‘The growth of Christian militarism in Victorian Britain’, English Historical Review
(1971)
British foreign policy in the age of Palmerston (1980) [with documents]
22
G. Hicks
K. Martin
* J.P. Parry
B. Porter
D.M. Schreuder
D. Southgate
N.W. Summerton
K. Wilson (ed)
‘Don Pacifico, democracy, and danger: the Protectionist party critique of British
foreign policy, 1850-1852’, International History Review (2004)
The triumph of Lord Palmerston (1924, 1963)
‘The impact of Napoleon III on British politics, 1851-70’, TRHS (2001)
The refugee question in mid-Victorian politics (1980) [Introduction]
‘Gladstone and Italian unification: the making of a Liberal?’, EHR (1970)
The most English minister: the policies and politics of Palmerston (1966)
‘Dissenting attitudes to foreign relations, peace and war, 1840-90’, JEcclH (1977)
British foreign secretaries and foreign policy (1987) [esp. Steele’s essay]
(d) Radicalism and public opinion
S. Conway
N. Edsall
W.H. Greenleaf
D.A. Hamer
D. Nicholls
J. Prest
D. Read
D. Read
G.R. Searle
M. Taylor
F.M.L. Thompson
A. Tyrrell
* J.R. Vincent
‘The politicisation of the nineteenth-century Peace Society’, HR (1993)
Richard Cobden: independent radical (1986)
‘Toulmin Smith and political tradition’, Public Administration (1975)
The politics of electoral pressure: Victorian reform agitations (1977)
‘Richard Cobden and the Peace Congress Movement 1848-53’, JBS (1991)
Politics in the age of Cobden (1977)
Cobden and Bright (1967)
Peel and the Victorians (1987)
Entrepreneurial politics in mid-Victorian Britain (1992)
The decline of British radicalism 1847-1860 (1995)
‘Land and politics in England in the nineteenth century’, TRHS (1965)
‘Making the millennium: the peace movement’, HJ (1978)
The formation of the Liberal party 1857-68 (1966)
9. Government and policy in the age of Gladstone and Disraeli, 1867-86
How did political leaders respond to the new political situation after the 1867
Reform Act? Was it seen as a new dawn of radicalism, and how effective was the
radical agenda after 1867? How far was policy influenced by extra-parliamentary
pressures, particularly in the Liberal party? Or were the propertied classes still in
control? Why was Gladstone’s first Government long regarded as the pinnacle of
Victorian political achievement, and why is it now mainly discussed in terms of its
shortcomings? How much scope was there for domestic policy differences between
the parties? Did Gladstone succeed in imposing a new agenda on the Liberals or
Disraeli on the Conservatives? What explains each man’s political journey, and
were they as ideologically opposed as they have sometimes been presented? Was
the Liberal party a ‘faddist’ party by the 1880s, or still seen as the natural party of
government? Another dramatic recasting of the electoral system in 1884-5 was
followed by an Irish crisis rather than a radicalization of British politics. Why were
religious, Irish, and foreign policy issues so important in this period, when the new
electorate might be expected to have had different concerns? Was Gladstone’s
decision to advocate Home Rule in the winter of 1885-6 a natural progression for
him?
See also Topic 20 on religion and Topic 22 on Ireland. Topic 10 on the parties and
the people complements this topic by focusing on the impact of politics on voters.
23
(a) Liberalism
O. Anderson
‘Gladstone and the abolition of compulsory church rates’, JEcclH (1974)
D. Bebbington & R. Swift (ed.) Gladstone centenary essays (2000)
D.W. Bebbington
The mind of Gladstone: religion, Homer, and politics (2004)
D.W. Bebbington
The nonconformist conscience: chapel and politics 1870-1914 (1982)
M. Bentley
The climax of liberal politics (1987)
* E. Biagini
Gladstone (2000)
E.J. Feuchtwanger Gladstone (1975)
William Gladstone Midlothian speeches 1879-80, ed M.R. D. Foot (1971)
L. Goldman
Science, reform, and politics: the Social Science Association 1857-86 (2002)
L. Goldman
‘The Social Science Association, 1857-1886: a context for mid-Victorian
Liberalism’, EHR (1986)
L. Goldman
‘The defection of the middle class: the Endowed Schools Act, the liberal party,
and the 1874 election’ in P. Ghosh & L. Goldman, Politics and culture in
Victorian Britain (2006)
D.A. Hamer
Liberal politics in the age of Gladstone and Rosebery (1972)
D.A. Hamer (ed)
The radical programme 1885 (1971 edn)
C. Harvie
The lights of liberalism: university liberals and the challenge of democracy
1860-86 ((1976)
R.J. Helmstadter
‘The nonconformist conscience’ in P.T. Marsh (ed), The conscience of the
Victorian state (1979)
B. Hilton
‘Utilitarian or neo-Foxite whig: Robert Lowe as chancellor of the exchequer’ in E.
Green and D. Tanner (ed.), The Strange Survival of Liberal England (2007)
R. Jay
Joseph Chamberlain: a political biography (1981)
T.A. Jenkins
Gladstone, whiggery and the liberal party 1874-86 (1988)
G.I.T. Machin
‘Gladstone and nonconformity in the 1860s’, HJ (1974)
P. Marsh
Joseph Chamberlain: entrepreneur in politics (1994)
H.C.G. Matthew
‘Rhetoric and politics’ in P.J. Waller (ed), Politics and social change in
modern Britain (1987)
H.C.G. Matthew
Gladstone 1875-1898 (1995)
J. Parry
The rise and fall of liberal government in Victorian Britain (1993) [Chapter 10]
J. Parry
The politics of patriotism: English liberalism, national identity and Europe,
1830-1886 (2006)
J. Parry
‘The decline of institutional reform in nineteenth-century Britain’, in D. Feldman
and J. Lawrence (ed.), Structures and transformations in modern British history
(2011)
J. Parry
‘Religion and the collapse of Gladstone’s first government, 1870-4’, HJ (1982)
A. Ramm
‘The parliamentary context of Gladstone’s first government’, EHR (1984)
M.J.D. Roberts
‘Gladstonian Liberalism and Environment Protection, 1865–76’, EHR (2013)
J. Roach
‘Liberalism and the Victorian intelligentsia’, HJ (1957-8)
R. Quinault
‘Joseph Chamberlain: a reassessment’ in T.R. Gourvish & A. O’Day (ed.), Later
Victorian Britain (1988)
R. Quinault et al.
William Gladstone: new studies and perspectives (2012)
R.T. Shannon
Gladstone: heroic minister 1865-1898 (1999)
R. Shannon
‘Peel, Gladstone and party’, Parl Hist (1999).
J.R. Vincent
The formation of the liberal party 1857-68 (1966)
A. Warren
‘Forster, Liberals, new directions in Irish policy 1880-2’, Parl Hist (1987)
M. Winstanley
Gladstone and the Liberal party (1990)
24
(b) Conservatism
R. Blake
B. Coleman
H. Cunningham
E. Feuchtwanger
R.F. Foster
P. Ghosh
J. Parry
J. Parry
R. Quinault
R. Quinault
R. Shannon
R. Shannon
P. Smith
* P. Smith
P. Smith
J.R. Vincent
A. Warren
Disraeli (1966)
Conservatism and the conservative party in 19th-century Britain (1988)
‘The Conservative party and patriotism’ in R. Colls & P. Dodd (ed.),
Englishness: politics and culture (1986)
Disraeli, democracy and the tory party: conservative leadership and
organisation (1968)
Lord Randolph Churchill: a political life (1981)
‘Disraelian Conservatism: a financial approach’, EHR (1984)
‘Disraeli and England’, HJ (2000)
Benjamin Disraeli (2007)
‘The fourth party and conservative opposition to Bradlaugh’, EHR (1976)
‘Churchill and tory democracy’, HJ (1979)
The age of Disraeli 1867-81 (1992)
The age of Salisbury, 1881-1902 (1996)
Disraelian conservatism and social reform (1967)
Disraeli: a brief life (1996)
‘Disraeli’s politics’, TRHS (1987)
Disraeli (1990)
‘Disraeli, the Conservatives, and the government of Ireland’, Parl Hist (1999)
(c) Church and state issues
M. Cruickshank
D. Grube
G.I.T. Machin
J. Murphy
Church and state in English education 1870 to the present day (1944)
‘Religion, power and parliament: Rothschild and Bradlaugh revisited’, History
(2007)
Politics and the churches in Great Britain 1869-1921 (1987)
Church, state and schools in Britain 1800-1970 (1971)
(d) The move towards Home Rule, to early 1886
E.F. Biagini
British democracy and Irish nationalism 1878-1906 (2007)
A.B. Cooke & J.R. Vincent The governing passion: cabinet government and party politics in
Britain 1885-6 (1974)
L.P. Curtis
Coercion and conciliation in Ireland: conservative unionism 1880-92 (1963)
* J. Loughlin
Gladstone, home rule and the Irish question 1882-93 (1986)
W.C. Lubenow
Parliamentary politics and the home rule crisis: the British House of
Commons in 1886 (1988)
A. Warren
‘Lord Salisbury and Ireland: principles, ambitions, and strategies’, Parl Hist (2007)
A. Warren
‘Gladstone, land, social reconstruction in Ireland 1881-7’, Parl Hist (1983)
10. The parties and the people 1867-90
The 1867 and 1884-5 Reform Acts gave party organisers the task of
communicating to a much larger electorate, while in the 1880s landed power
seemed under threat for various reasons. This topic complements Topic 9 by
focusing on politics in this period at the grass roots. How far had politics become a
uniform, national process by 1880, by 1885, by the late 1880s? How did each
25
party seek to build support among potential voters? How far did they rely on
ideological appeals and how far on social activities, deference, or class
consciousness? What were the differences between popular Liberalism and
popular Conservatism, and why did the Conservatives come to be at less of a
disadvantage than before in appealing to electors? When did the Conservative
party revival become significant and how much difference did the split of 1886
make to its fortunes? How important were patriotism and social reform to the
Conservative image? Was religion a positive or a negative element in the appeal of
either party? How far had power relations within each party changed by the late
1880s and how far were the propertied classes still in control of them?
Note: This topic extends slightly beyond the formal end-date of the paper, in order
to embrace the immediate effects of the Reform Acts of 1884-5 and the party splits
of 1886 on party political organization. It makes most sense to include the revival
of the Conservative party to the late 1880s within this topic, but to stop before
imperialism reached its height in the 1890s. Please note that there are no longer
any starred questions on the Paper 5 examination paper and therefore candidates
taking Paper 6 as well as this paper will not be debarred from tackling a question
on this (or any other) topic on this paper. However they will be in danger of being
penalised if they repeat similar material in any of their answers on the two papers.
(a) General studies of voting patterns and of party organisation and discipline
H. Berrington
N. Blewett
M. Brodie
D. Cannadine
G. W. Cox
‘Partisanship and dissidence in the 19th-c House of Commons’, PA (1968)
‘The franchise in the United Kingdom, 1885-1918’, P&P (1965)
The politics of the poor: the East End of London (2004) [Chapter 2]
The decline and fall of the British aristocracy (1990), pp.25-54
The efficient secret: the cabinet and the development of political parties in
Victorian England (1987)
J. Davis
‘Slums and the vote, 1867-1890’, Historical Research (1991)
J. Davis & D. Tanner ‘The borough franchise after 1867’, Historical Research (1996)
J.P.D. Dunbabin
‘Electoral reforms and their outcome in the United Kingdom, 1865-1900’ in T.
Gourvish & A. O’Day (ed.), Later Victorian Britain (1988)
* J.A. Garrard
‘Parties, members and voters after 1867: a local study’, HJ (1977)
H.J. Hanham
Elections and party management in the age of Gladstone and Disraeli (1978)
P. Joyce
Work, society and politics: the culture of the factory in later Victorian England
(1980)
P. Joyce
‘The factory politics of Lancashire in the later 19th century’, HJ (1975)
* J. Lawrence
‘The dynamics of urban politics, 1870-1918’ in J. Lawrence & M. Taylor (ed.),
Party, state and society (1997)
J. Lawrence
Electing our masters: the hustings in British politics from Hogarth to Blair
(2009)
J. Lawrence
Speaking for the people: party, language & popular politics 1867-1914 (1998)
T. Lloyd
The general election of 1880 (1968)
T.J. Nossiter
Influence, opinion and political idioms in reformed England: case studies from
the North-east 1832-1874 (1975) (Chapters 10-12)
C. O’Leary
The elimination of corrupt practices in British elections, 1868-1911 (1962)
H. Pelling
Popular politics and society in late Victorian Britain (1967) [Chapters 1, 6]
K. Rix
‘By-elections and the modernisation of party organisation, 1867-1914’ in P.
Readman and T. Otte, By-elections in British politics, 1832-1914 (2013)
26
J. Vincent
Pollbooks: how Victorians voted (1967) [pp. 43-50]
(b) Broadly on Liberalism
D.W. Bebbington
The nonconformist conscience: chapel and politics 1870-1914 (1982)
E. Biagini
Liberty, retrenchment and reform: popular liberalism 1860-80 (1992)
E. Biagini & A. Reid (ed.) Currents of radicalism: popular radicalism, organised labour and party
politics in Britain 1850-1914 (1991)
L. Blaxill
‘Electioneering, the Third Reform Act, and Political Change in the 1880s’ Parl
Hist (2011)
L. Blaxill
‘Joseph Chamberlain and the Third Reform Act: a reassessment of the
P.F. Clarke
J. Davis
P. Griffiths
D.A. Hamer
J. Munson
J.R. Vincent
“Unauthorized Programme” of 1885’, JBS (2015).
Lancashire and the new liberalism (1971)
‘Radical clubs and London politics, 1870-1900’ in D. Feldman & G. Stedman
Jones (ed), Metropolis –London: histories and representations since 1800 (1989).
‘The caucus and the liberal party in 1886’, History (1976)
The politics of electoral pressure: Victorian reform agitations (1977)
The nonconformists: in search of a lost culture (1991)
The formation of the liberal party (1966)
(c) Broadly on Conservatism
F. Coetzee
F. Coetzee
J. Cornford
E.H.H. Green
R.L. Greenall
* J. Lawrence
B. Porter
R. Price
M. Pugh
M. Roberts
J.R. Vincent
‘Villa toryism reconsidered: Croydon’, Parl Hist (Special Issue 1997)
For party or country: nationalism and popular conservatism (1990)
‘The transformation of the Conservative party in the late nineteenth century’, Vict
Studs (1963-4)
The crisis of conservatism (1994) [Chapters 3-4]
‘Popular conservatism in Salford, 1868-86’, Northern History (1974)
‘Class and gender in the making of urban Toryism’, EHR (1993)
The absent-minded imperialists: empire, society, and culture in Britain (2004)
‘Society, status and jingoism: lower-middle-class patriotism 1870-1900’ in G.
Crossick (ed), The lower middle class in Britain (1977)
The Tories and the people, 1880-1935 (1985)
‘“Villa Toryism” and popular Conservatism in Leeds, 1885-1902’, HJ (2006)
‘The effect of the second reform act in Lancashire’, HJ (1968)
27
THEMATIC TOPICS
11. The constitution: the roles of monarchy and Parliament
The British revered their constitution but they often disagreed about its nature and
operation. How did the British perceive their constitution in the long eighteenth
century? What roles did ideas of liberty, balance, and law play? How did the actual
balance of power evolve over the century between Crown and Parliament and among
monarch, ministers, bureaucracy, Lords, and Commons? To what extent was the
regime participatory? In what senses, if any, was the regime ‘representative’? Where
and when was the Hanoverian electorate an effective influence on politics? What was
left of monarchal power in the post-1688 political world? How did monarchal power
evolve over the course of the long eighteenth century? What were the functions of the
royal court in the post-1688 regime? How far did the constitutional changes of 182832, and their successors, alter the influence of monarchy? In what sense was
eighteenth- or nineteenth-century Britain a ‘crowned republic’?
See topic 12 for reform of parliament in the nineteenth century
(a) The constitution, 1688-1815
J.V. Beckett
C. Brooks
J. Cannon
J.C.D. Clark
H.T. Dickinson
J.A.W. Gunn
G. Holmes
J. Hoppit
C. Jones (ed.)
C. Jones (ed.)
B. Kemp
P. Langford
* P. Langford
M. McCahill
M. McCahill
J.M. Norris
* F. O’Gorman
F. O’Gorman
F. O’Gorman
J.A. Phillips
J.A. Phillips
J.A. Phillips
The aristocracy in England 1660-1914 (1986), part III
‘Public finance and political stability: the administration of the Land Tax, 16881720’, HJ (1974)
Aristocratic century: the peerage of eighteenth-century England (1984), chs 4, 6
English society 1688-1832 (1985, 2000)
‘The eighteenth-century debate on the sovereignty of Parliament’, TRHS (1976)
‘Influence, parties and the constitution: changing attitudes, 1783-1832’, HJ
(1974)
‘The electorate and the national will in the first age of party’, in G. Holmes,
Politics, religion and society in England 1679-1742 (1986)
‘Patterns of parliamentary legislation 1660-1800’, HJ (1996)
A pillar of the constitution: the House of Lords in politics 1640-1784 (1989)
A short history of Parliament (2009), ch 13, 14 and 22
King and Commons, 1660-1832 (1957)
Public life and the propertied Englishman 1689-1798 (1991)
‘Property and virtual representation in 18th-century England’, HJ (1988)
Order and equipoise: the peerage and the House of Lords, 1783-1806 (1978)
‘Peers, Patronage, and the Industrial Revolution, 1760-1800’, JBS (1976)
‘Samuel Garbett and the early development of industrial lobbying in Great Britain’,
EcHR, 10 (1958)
Voters, patrons, and parties: the unreformed electoral system of Hanoverian
England 1734-1832 (1989)
‘Campaign rituals and ceremonies: the social meaning of elections’, P&P (1992)
‘The unreformed electorate of Hanoverian England: the mid-eighteenth century
to 1832’, Soc Hist (1986)
‘Popular politics in unreformed England’, JMH (1980)
Electoral behaviour in unreformed England 1761-1802 (1986)
‘Participatory politics in Hanoverian England’, Soc Hist (1991)
28
Eric Robinson
‘Matthew Boulton and the Art of Parliamentary Lobbying’, HJ (1964)
(b) The monarchy, to 1830
J. Beattie
R. Bucholz
* L. Colley
The English court in the reign of George I (1967)
The Augustan court: Queen Anne and the decline of court culture (1993)
‘The apotheosis of George III: loyalty, royalty and the British nation 1760-1820’,
P&P (1984)
A.S. Foord
‘The waning of the influence of the crown’, EHR (1947)
R. Hatton
George I: elector and king (1978)
B.W. Hill
‘Executive monarchy and the challenge of parties, 1689-1832’, HJ (1970)
M. Morris
The British monarchy and the French Revolution (1998)
C.C. Orr
Queenship in Britain 1660-1837: royal patronage, court culture and dynastic
politics (2002)
R. Pares
King George III and the politicians (1953) [especially the last chapter]
E.A. Reitan
‘The civil list in eighteenth-century British politics: parliamentary supremacy
versus the independence of the crown’, HJ (1966)
E.A. Reitan
‘From revenue to civil list, 1689-1832’, HJ (1970)
H. Smith
‘The idea of a Protestant monarchy in Britain 1714–1760’, P&P (2004)
* H. Smith
Georgian monarchy: politics and culture 1714-1760 (2006)
H. Smith & S. Taylor ‘Hephaestion and Alexander’: Lord Hervey, Frederick, Prince of Wales, and the
Royal Favourite in England in the 1730s’, EHR (2009)
A.C. Thompson
George II, king and elector (2011)
A.C. Thompson
‘Early 18th-century Britain as a confessional state’, in H. Scott & B. Simms
(ed.), Cultures of power in Europe in the long eighteenth century (2007)
(c) The role of the monarchy after 1830
W.L. Arnstein
D. Cannadine
‘Queen Victoria opens parliament: the disinvention of tradition’, HJ (1990)
‘The last Hanoverian sovereign? The Victorian monarchy’ in A.L. Beier, D.
Cannadine and J.M. Rosenheim (ed.), The first modern society (1989)
D. Cannadine
‘The context, performance and meaning of ritual: the British monarchy and the
invention of tradition, c.1820-1977’ in E. Hobsbawm & T. Ranger (ed.), The
invention of tradition (1983) [and see Arnstein above]
J. Cannon
‘The survival of the British monarchy’, TRHS (1986)
* David Craig
‘The crowned republic? Monarchy and anti-monarchy in Britain,1760-1901’, HJ
(2003)
N. Gossman
‘Republicanism in nineteenth-century England’, IRHS (1980)
F. Hardie
The political influence of the British monarchy, 1868-1952 (1970)
* A. Olechnowicz (ed.) The monarchy and the British nation 1780 to the present (2007)
F.K. Prochaska
Royal bounty: the making of a welfare monarchy (1995)
* F.K. Prochaska
The republic of Britain, 1776-2000 (2000)
E. Royle
Radicals, secularists & republicans: popular freethought 1866-1915 (1980)
A. Taylor
‘Down with the Crown’: British anti-monarchism (1999)
D. Thompson
Queen Victoria: gender and power (1990)
29
12. The process of parliamentary reform, 1815-1886
During the nineteenth century the British political system was substantially
democratized. The number of people entitled to vote in national elections greatly
increased, and the relationship between the House of Commons and the electorate was
transformed by changes in the distribution of seats in parliament. How should we
account for these changes, and what were their effects? Was the political elite
generally in charge of the process, or was it swept along by social and political forces
outside parliament? Should the three major Reform Acts of 1832, 1867 and 1884-5 be
seen as reluctant concessions to prevent more radical measures, or were the leading
reformers keen and able to apply coherent approaches and defined principles of
representation? Can we legitimately talk of an English constitutional tradition, or of
whig or radical ideas of the constitution? Why was Reform so much more politically
significant at some times than others, and why did different reformers place differing
emphases on the franchise and distribution provisions of Reform Bills? What were the
relative consequences of the three Acts on the distribution of social and political
power? What was the impact of reform on the powers of the monarch, and on the
relative importance of the Lords and Commons? Was Britain still in essence run by a
small propertied class in 1886?
See also Topic 10 on popular politics after 1867, Topic 11 on the monarchy, Topic 16 on
urban politics, Topic 17 on discussions about reform in the 18th century, Topic 18 on Chartism
and Topic 19e on the debate about women’s suffrage.
(a) The 1832 Reform Act
D. Beales
A. Briggs
A. Briggs
‘The electorate before 1832’, Parl Hist (1992)
‘The parliamentary reform movement in three cities’, HJ (1952)
‘Thomas Attwood and the economic background of the Birmingham Political
Union’, HJ (1948) [these 3 articles reprinted in Collected Essays of Asa Briggs,
Vol.I (1985)]
A. Briggs
‘Middle-class consciousness in politics 1780-1846’, P&P (1956)
M. Brock
The Great Reform Act (1973)
* J. Cannon
Parliamentary reform 1640-1832 (1973)
J.R. Dinwiddy
Radicalism and reform in Britain, 1780-1850 (1992)
V.A.C. Gatrell
‘Incorporation and the pursuit of liberal hegemony in Manchester 1790-1839’ in
D. Fraser (ed), Municipal reform and the industrial city (1982)
Carl Griffin
The rural war: Captain Swing and the politics of protest (2012)
J. Hamburger
James Mill and the art of revolution (1963) (Chapter 4)
E.J. Hobsbawm & G. Rudé Captain Swing (1969)
A.D. Kriegel
‘Liberty and whiggery in early nineteenth-century England’, JMH (1980)
N. McCord
‘Some difficulties of parliamentary reform’, HJ (1967)
J. Milton-Smith
‘Earl Grey’s cabinet and the origins of parliamentary reform’, HJ (1972)
D.C. Moore
‘The other face of reform’, Vict Studs (1961)
D.C. Moore
‘Concession or cure: a sociological interpretation of the great reform act’, HJ
(1966)
I. Newbould
Whiggery and Reform 1830-41: the politics of government (1990) [Chapters 2-4]
J.A. Phillips
The Great Reform Bill in the boroughs: electoral behaviour 1818-41 (1992)
30
J.A. Phillips & C. Wetherell ‘Great reform act 1832: modernization of politics’, AmHR (1995)
P. Salmon
Electoral reform at work: local politics & national parties, 1832-41 (2002)
P. Salmon
‘Local politics and partisanship: the electoral impact of municipal reform, 1835’,
Parl Hist (2000)
P. Salmon
‘Political modernization 1832-41’, Parliaments, Estates, Representation (2003)
R. Sauders
‘God and the Great Reform Act: preaching against reform: 1831-2’ JBS (2014)
E.A. Wasson
‘The spirit of Reform, 1832 and 1867’, Albion (1980)
D.G. Wright
‘A radical borough: parliamentary politics in Bradford, 1832-1841’, Northern
History (1969)
(b) Reform after 1832
M. Cowling
* J.P.D. Dunbabin
1867, Disraeli, Gladstone, revolution: making of second Reform Act (1967)
‘Electoral reforms and their outcome in the United Kingdom, 1865-1900’ in T.
Gourvish & A. O’Day (ed.), Later Victorian Britain (1988)
J. Garrard
‘Parties, members and voters after 1867’ in T. Gourvish & A. O’Day, Later
Victorian Britain (1988)
B. Griffin
The politics of gender in Victorian Britain (2012), chs. 7-9.
B. Griffin
‘Women’s suffrage’ in D. Craig and J. Thompson, eds., Languages of politics
(2013)
C. Hall, K McClelland & J. Rendall Defining the Victorian nation: class, race, gender and the Reform
Act of 1867 (2000)
* H.J. Hanham
The reformed electoral system in Great Britain 1832-1914 (1968)
H.J. Hanham (ed)
Dod’s electoral facts from 1832 to 1853 (1972 edn) [Introduction]
R. Harrison
Before the socialists: studies in labour and politics 1861-81 (1965)
W.A. Hayes
The background and passage of the Third Reform Act (1982)
P.Hollis (ed)
Pressure from without in early Victorian England (1974) [especially chapters by
Harrison, Thompson, Martin, and Anderson]
K.T. Hoppen
‘The franchise in England and Ireland 1832-85’, History (1985)
C.C. O’Leary
The elimination of corrupt practices in British elections, 1868-1911 (1962)
J. Parry
The rise and fall of Liberal government in Victorian Britain (1993) [Chapters 9,
12]
K. Rix
‘Whatever passed in parliament ought to be communicated to the public’:
reporting the proceedings of the reformed Commons, 1833–50’ Parl Hist (2014)
M. Roberts
‘Resisting “arithmocracy”: Parliament, community, and the Third Reform Act’,
JBS (2011)
J. Roper
Democracy and its critics (1989)
R. Saunders
‘Lord John Russell and parliamentary reform, 1848-1867’, EHR (2005)
R. Saunders
‘The politics of reform & making of the 2nd Reform Act 1848-67’, HJ (2007)
R. Saunders
Democracy and the vote in British politics, 1848-1867 (2011)
F.B. Smith
The making of the Second Reform Bill (1966)
* J.K. Walton
The Second Reform Act (1987)
(c) Parliament and the constitution after 1832
Walter Bagehot
H. Berrington
* D. Cannadine
H.J. Hanham (ed)
G.H.L. Le May
The English constitution (1867, ed Crossman), Physics and politics (1872)
‘Partisanship & dissidence in the 19th-century House of Commons’, PA (1968)
The decline and fall of the British aristocracy (1990), pp.25-54
The 19th-century constitution 1815-1914: documents & commentary (1969)
The Victorian constitution: conventions, usages and contingencies (1979)
31
B. Kinzer
J.P. Mackintosh
John Stuart Mill
J. Parry
The ballot question in nineteenth-century English politics (1982)
The British cabinet (1962)
On liberty (1859)
‘The decline of institutional reform in nineteenth-century Britain’, in D.
Feldman & J. Lawrence (eds.), Structures and transformations in modern
British history (2011)
M. Pinto-Duschinsky British political finance, 1830-1980 (1981)
R. Saunders
‘Democracy’, in Languages of politics in nineteenth-century Britain, ed. D.
Craig & J. Thompson (2013)
E.A. Smith
The House of Lords in British politics and society 1815-1911 (1992)
J. Vernon
Politics and the people, 1815-1867 (1993)
J. Vernon, ed.
Re-reading the constitution (1996)
13. Patriotism and national identity
The notion of ‘national identity’ should not be taken for granted, since it has been and
still is the subject of debates among historians and social scientists. Therefore, it is
important to understand how complex and contested this notion was. Did new ideas
about the nation which emerged in the eighteenth century consolidate or weaken
traditional political hierarchies? Did conceptions of the nation depend on locality,
religious belief, class or gender? How did the political construction of the British
state after 1688 impact on the way people in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland
defined themselves and their relations to others? To what extent was Britishness a
euphemism for Anglicization? What were the political consequences of warfare on
British identities? What were the meanings of patriotism in the eighteenth century,
and how did they shift over time?
With the defeat of Napoleon, Britain found itself in a different geopolitical situation.
To what extent did notions of national identity in the nineteenth century build on
eighteenth-century traditions? Did Napoleon’s defeat, British constitutional stability,
and the spread of free trade lead to a specifically liberal conception of national
identity? In what ways were notions of national identity politically contested? What
lay behind the ‘medieval’ and ‘Tudorbethan’ enthusiasms of the second quarter of the
nineteenth century, and why was there so much interest in the nation’s Anglo-Saxon
inheritance? How nationalist was nineteenth-century Liberalism? When, why, and
how far did the association between radical politics and patriotism wane? How far
and why did a specific Welsh and Scottish nationalism emerge in the second half of
the nineteenth century? To what extent did the spread of constitutional regimes and
the emergence of imperial rivalry across Europe affect the sense of Britain’s political
uniqueness?
See also Topic 16b on the domestic impact of war, Topic 20 on religion, empire and
national identity, Topic 21 on eighteenth-century Scotland, Topic 22 on Ireland, and
Topic 23 on British attitudes to Europe.
(a) Some general works
B. Anderson
Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of
nationalism (1991)
32
*R. Brubaker and F. Cooper, ‘Beyond Identity’, Theory and Society 29 (2000)
L. Colley
‘Britishness and otherness’, JBS (1992)
* H. Cunningham
‘The language of patriotism’, in R. Samuel (ed.), Patriotism: the making and
unmaking of British national identity, volume 1 (1989)
J. Hutchinson & A.D. Smith (ed.), Nationalism (1994)
E. Hobsbawm & T. Ranger (ed.), The invention of tradition (1983)
E. Hobsbawm
Nations and nationalism since 1780: programme, myth, reality (1990)
P. Mandler
‘What is “national identity”?: definitions and applications in modern British
historiography’, Modern Intellectual History (2006)
(b) Mainly eighteenth century (1700-1815)
J.C.D. Clark
‘Protestantism, nationalism, and national identity, 1660-1832’, HJ (2000)
T. Claydon & I. McBride (ed.) Protestantism and national identity: Britain and Ireland. c. 1650-c.
1850 (1998)
J. Coffey
‘“Tremble, Britannia!”: fear, providence and the abolition of the slave trade,
1758-1807’, EHR (2012)
*L. Colley
Britons: forging the nation 1707-1837 (1992)
*L. Colley
‘Whose nation? Class and national consciousness 1750-1830’, P&P (1986)
S. Conway
‘War and national identity in the mid-eighteenth-century British Isles’, EHR
(2001)
R. Eagles
Francophilia in English society, 1748-1815 (New York, 2000)
D. Eastwood
‘Robert Southey and the meanings of patriotism’, JBS (1992)
* D. Eastwood
‘Patriotism and the English state in the 1790s’, in M. Philp (ed.), The French
revolution and British popular politics (1991)
B. Harris
‘Patriotic commerce and national revival : the Free British Fishery Society and
British politics, c. 1749-58’, EHR (1999)
B. Harris
‘Scotland’s herring fisheries and the prosperity of the nation, c. 1660-1760’, SHR
(2000)
D. Hayton
‘Anglo-Irish attitudes: changing perceptions of national identity among the
Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland c1690-1750’, Studies in Eighteenth-Century
Culture (1987)
C. Haydon
Anti-Catholicism in eighteenth-century England (1993)
C. Hill
‘The Norman yoke’, in J. Saville (ed), Democracy and the labour movement
(1954); also in C. Hill, Puritanism and revolution (1969)
T.L Hunt
Defining John Bull: caricature, politics and national identity in late Georgian
England (2003)
D. Jarrett
‘The myth of patriotism in eighteenth-century politics’, in J.S. Bromley & E.H.
Kossmann (ed.), Britain and the Netherlands (1975)
G. Jordan & N. Rogers ‘Admirals as heroes: patriotism and liberty in Hanoverian England’, JBS (1989)
C. Kidd
British identities before nationalism: ethnicity and identity in the Atlantic world,
1600-1800 (1999)
* C. Kidd
‘North Britishness and the nature of eighteenth-century British patriotisms’, HJ
(1996)
H. Kohn
‘The genesis and character of English nationalism’, Journal of the History of
Ideas (1940)
P. Langford
Englishness identified: manners and character, 1650-1850 (2000)
R. Morieux
‘Diplomacy from below and belonging: fishermen and cross-Channel relations in
the eighteenth century’, P&P (2009)
*A. Murdoch
British history 1660-1832: national identity and local culture (1998)
33
*G. Newman
C. Petley
M. Pittock
R. Romani
S. Semmel
S. Semmel
W. Stafford
M. Viroli
* K. Wilson
The rise of English nationalism: a cultural history 1740-1830 (1987)
‘“Devoted islands: and “The madman Wilberforce”: British proslavery patriotism
during the age of abolition’, JICH (2011)
Inventing and resisting Britain : cultural identities in Britain and Ireland 16851789 (1997)
National character and public spirit in Britain and France 1750-1914 (2002)
Napoleon and the British (2004)
‘Radicals, loyalists, and the Royal Jubilee of 1809’, JBS (2007)
‘Religion and the doctrine of nationalism in England at the time of the French
Revolution and Napoleonic wars’, Studies in Church History, (1992)
For love of country: an essay on patriotism and nationalism (1995)
The sense of the people: politics, culture and imperialism in England, 1715-85
(1995)
(c) After 1815
R. Colls & P. Dodd
R. Colls
H. Cunningham
Englishness: politics and culture 1880-1920 (1986)
Identity of England (2002)
The challenge of democracy: Britain 1832-1918 (2001) [Chapter 8:
‘Empire and nation: The British and their identities’]
J.H. Grainger
Patriotisms: Britain 1900-1939 (1986) [esp chs 1, 2, 4, 10-12]
A. Hastings
The construction of nationhood: ethnicity, religion, and nationalism (1997)
[ch 2]
R. Horsman
‘Origins of racial anglo-saxonism in Great Britain before 1850’, Journal of the
History of Ideas 37 (1976)
R. Koebner & H.D. Schmidt Imperialism: the story and significance of a political word, 1840-1960
(1964)
P. Mandler
The English national character (2006)
P. Mandler
‘ “Race” and “nation” in mid-Victorian thought’ in S. Collini et al (ed.),
History, religion, and culture: British intellectual history 1750-1950 (2000)
J.P. Parry
The politics of patriotism: English liberalism, national identity and Europe
(2006)
J.P. Parry
‘The impact of Napoleon III on British politics, 1851-1880’, TRHS (2001)
J. Parry
‘Patriotism’, in Languages of politics in nineteenth-century Britain, ed. D.
Craig & J. Thompson (2013)
B. Porter
The absent-minded imperialists: empire, society, and culture in Britain (2004)
* B. Porter
‘Bureau and barrack: early Victorian attitudes towards the continent’, Vict Studs
(1984)
B. Porter
‘Empire and British national identity, 1815-1914’, in H. Brocklehurst & R.
Phillips (ed.), History, nationhood, and the question of Britain (2004)
P. Readman
Land and nation in England: patriotism, national identity, and the politics of
land, 1880-1914 (2008)
P. Readman
‘The Liberal party and patriotism in early twentieth-century Britain’, 20th
Century British History (2001)
R. Samuel, ed.
Patriotism: the making and unmaking of British national identity (3 vols,
1989)
* M. Taylor
‘John Bull and the iconography of public opinion in England c.1712-1929’, P&P
(1992)
34
P. Thane
J. Vernon
P. Ward
P. Ward
P. Ward
B. Worden
‘The British imperial state and construction of national identities’ in B.
Melman (ed.), Borderlines: gender and identities in war and peace, 18701930 (1998)
‘Englishness: the narration of a nation’, JBS (1997)
Red flag and union jack: Englishness, patriotism, and the British left, 18811924 (1998) [ch 6]
‘Nationalism and national identity in British politics, c. 1880s to 1914’ in R.
Phillips & H. Brocklehurst (ed.), History, identity, and the question of Britain
(2004)
Britishness since 1870 (2004)
‘The Victorians and Oliver Cromwell’, in S. Collini et al (ed.), History,
religion, and culture: British intellectual history 1750-1950 (2000)
(d) Religion, politics and nationalism in Scotland and Wales, 1830-86
D.W. Bebbington
‘Religion and national feeling in nineteenth-century Wales and Scotland’ in S.
Mews (ed), Religion and national identity (1992)
S.J. Brown
Thomas Chalmers and the Godly Commonwealth (1982)
M. Cragoe
‘Welsh electioneering and the purpose of parliament: “from radicalism to
nationalism” reconsidered’, Parl Hist [special issue: ‘Parliament and Locality’]
(1998)
G. Day & R. Suggett ‘Conceptions of Wales and Welshness: aspects of nationalism in nineteenthcentury Wales’ in G. Rees, et al (ed.), Political action and social identity:
class, locality and ideology (1985)
T.M. Devine
The Scottish nation, 1700-2000 (1999)
C.J. Dewey
‘Celtic agrarian legislation and the Celtic revival: historicist implications of
Gladstone’s Irish and Scottish Land Acts 1870-1886’, P&P (1974)
A.L. Drummond & J Bulloch The Church in Victorian Scotland, 1843-1874 (1975)
A.L. Drummond & J Bulloch The Church in late Victorian Scotland, 1874-1900 (1978)
M. Fry (ed)
Scotland in the age of the disruption (1993)
W.B. George
‘Welsh disestablishment and Welsh nationalism’, Journal of the Historical
Society of the Church in Wales (1969)
C. Harvie
‘Nineteenth-century Scotland: political unionism and cultural nationalism,
1843-1906’ in R.G. Asch (ed), Three nations — a common history? England,
Scotland, Ireland and British history, c. 1600-1920 (1993)
M. Hechter
Internal colonialism: the Celtic fringe in British national development 15361966 (1975)
C. Kidd
‘Race, empire, and the limits of nineteenth-century Scottish nationhood’, HJ
(2003)
J.M. MacKenzie
‘Empire and national identities: the case of Scotland’, TRHS (1998)
R. Mitchison
‘Nineteenth-century Scottish nationalism’ in Mitchison (ed), The roots of
nationalism: studies in Northern Europe (1980)
K.O. Morgan
‘Welsh Nationalism: The Historical Background’, Journal of Contemporary
History (1971)
R.J. Morris & G. Morton ‘The Remaking of Scotland, 1850-1920’ in M. Lynch (ed), Scotland 18501979: society, politics, and the Union (1993)
R.J. Morris & G. Morton ‘Civil society, governance and nation, 1832-1914’ in R.A. Houston & W.
Knox (ed), The new Penguin history of scotland (2001)
M. Pittock
Scottish nationality (2001)
35
G.A. Williams
When Was Wales? (1985)
14. Political communication and the development of a ‘public sphere’ in the eighteenth
century
Eighteenth-century Britain inherited from the seventeenth century traditions and
habits of public debate in oral and printed forms. However, after the lapse of the
Licensing Act in 1695, the press expanded rapidly first in London and then in the
provinces. Moreover, the commercialisation of leisure and culture introduced new
settings for association and communication. How did the expansion of the press affect
the political culture? To what extent did the development of the press contribute to an
appetite and demand for information? What kinds of controls did authorities seek to
impose on public discussion in oral or printed forms? To what extent did governance
become more public and transparent in the eighteenth century? The ‘public sphere’
has been adduced as a way to characterize this domain of oral and written
communication. What habits and institutions contributed to the development of the
public sphere? What was the changing status of ‘public opinion’ in the eighteenth
century? While newspapers and pamphlets conveyed political ideas and attitudes most
directly, other forms of representation were channels of political conviction and
contestation. How did verse, fiction, historical writing, theatrical performances,
contribute to and/or reflect the political narratives and themes explored elsewhere in
Paper 5? How were ideas about culture itself (often articulated in terms of ‘politeness’
or ‘civilization’) politicized in the eighteenth century?
See also Topic 25 for ways in which the press and other communicative forms
articulated key ideas and convictions.
(a) Notions of ‘the public sphere’
H. Barker & S. Burrows (ed.) Press, politics and the public sphere in Europe and North America 17601820 (2002) [Introduction and Chapter 4]
* T. Blanning
The culture of power and the power of culture (2002) [Introdn, Chapters 4, 5, 7]
T. Claydon
‘The sermon, the “public sphere” and the political culture of late seventeenthcentury England’, in L.A Ferrell & P.E. McCullough (ed.), The English sermon
revised (2000)
B. Cowan
‘Mr Spectator and the Coffeehouse Public Sphere’, Eighteenth-Century Studies
(2004)
B. Cowan
‘Geoffrey Holmes and the public sphere’, Parl Hist (2009)
M. Harris
‘Parliament in the public sphere: a view of serial coverage at the turn of the
seventeenth century’, Parl Hist (2007)
Peter Lake & Steven Pincus (ed.) The politics of the public sphere in early modern England (2007)
[Chapters 1, 9, 11]
(b) The press, literature and politics in the eighteenth century
* H. Barker
H. Barker
Newspapers, politics, and public opinion in late eighteenth-century England
(1998)
Newspapers, politics and English society 1695-1855 (2000)
36
J. Black
The English press in the eighteenth century (1991)
J. Black
‘The press and politics in the eighteenth century’, Media History (2002)
G. Boyce, J. Curran & P. Wingate Newspaper history from the seventeenth century to the present day
(1978) [Chapters 1, 3, 6, 7]
J. E. Bradley
Popular politics and the American Revolution in England (1986)
J. Brewer
Party ideology and popular politics at the accession of George III (1976)
J. Cardwell
Arts and arms: literature, politics and patriotism during the Seven Years War
(2004)
J. Caudle
‘Preaching in Parliament: patronage, publicity and politics in Britain, 1701-60’, in
L.A Ferrell & P.E. McCullough (ed.), The English sermon revised (2000)
G.A. Cranfield
The development of the English provincial newspaper, 1700-60 (1962)
G.A. Cranfield
‘The London Evening Post 1727-44: a study in the development of the political
press’, HJ (1963)
J.A. Downie
Robert Harley and the press (1979)
C. Gerrard
The patriot opposition to Walpole: politics, poetry, and national myth, 1725-1742
(1994)
B.A. Goldgar
Walpole and the wits: the relation of politics to literature 1722-42 (1976)
M. Goldie & G. Kemp (ed.) Censorship and the press, 1580-1720: Volume IV, 1696-1720 (2009)
J.A.W. Gunn
Beyond liberty and property: the process of self-recognition in eighteenth-century
political thought (1983)
B. Harris
A patriot press: national politics and the London press in the 1740s (1993)
* B. Harris
Politics and the rise of the press: Britain and France 1620-1800 (1996)
M. Harris
London newspapers in the age of Walpole: a study in the origins of the modern
English press (1987)
E. Hellmuth
‘The palladium of all other English liberties: reflections on the liberty of the press
in England during the 1760s and 1770s’, in E. Hellmuth (ed.), The transformation
of political culture: England and Germany in the late eighteenth century (1990)
P.B.J. Hyland
‘Liberty and libel: Government and the press during the succession crisis in Britain
1712-16’, EHR (1986)
L.E. Klein
Shaftesbury and the culture of politeness (1994)
M. Knights
Representation and misrepresentation in later Stuart Britain: partisanship and
political culture (2005)
J. Loftis
The politics of Augustan drama (1963)
G. Newman
The rise of English nationalism: a cultural history 1740-1830 (1987)
K. Schweizer & J. Black (ed.) Politics and the press in Hanoverian Britain (1989)
W.A. Speck
Literature and society in eighteenth-century England (1998)
S. Targett
‘Government & ideology: Walpole’s newspaper propagandists’, HJ (1994)
A. Williams
Poetry and the creation of a whig literary culture 1681-1714 (2005)
K. Wilson
The sense of the people: politics, culture and imperialism in England, 1715-85
(1995)
15. The powers of the state: administrative and financial reform
Unlike France, Prussia or Spain, the eighteenth-century British state managed to raise
increasing resources for war without becoming absolutist: how can this be explained? Is
the ‘fiscal-military state’ a useful term, and how did this fiscal efficiency affect the
relations between centre and locality? Why did the size and shape of the state become
so politically contentious in the late eighteenth century? What drove the movement for
‘economical reform’? After 1815 fiscal pressures effectively forced Parliament to cut
37
public spending; some historians have seen the ‘fiscal-military state’ give way
gradually to the ‘Gladstonian minimal state’. Is this a reasonable generalization and
how disinterested was the mid-nineteenth-century state? Is there an ideological
connection between this process and the other striking fiscal change of the period after
1815, the movement towards free trade? Was this an internal reform driven by a
bureaucratic and intellectual elite, or the result of external pressures from financial
interest groups?
See also Topic 16 on local and urban politics and Topic 7e on economic policy
disputes 1834-46.
(a) The post-1688 state
G.E. Aylmer
‘From office-holding to civil service: the genesis of modern bureaucracy’,
TRHS (1980)
G.E. Aylmer
‘The peculiarities of the English state’, Journal of Historical Sociology
(1990)
M. Braddick
‘State formation and social change in early modern England’, Soc. Hist.
16 (1991)
*J. Brewer
The sinews of power: war, money and the English state, 1688-1783 (1989)
J. Brewer & E. Hellmuth (ed.) Rethinking Leviathan: the eighteenth-century state in Britain
and Germany (1999)
J.C.D. Clark
Revolution and rebellion: state and society in England in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries (1986)
P.G.M. Dickson
The financial revolution in England: a study of the development of public
credit 1688-1756 (1967)
T. Ertman
‘The Sinews of Power and European state-building theory’, in L. Stone
(ed.), An imperial state at war (1994)
T. Ertman
‘Explaining variation in early modern state structure: the cases of England
and the German territorial states’, in J. Brewer and E. Hellmuth (ed.),
Rethinking Leviathan: : the eighteenth-century state in Britain and
Germany (1999)
*G. Holmes
Augustan England: professions, state, and society, 1680-1730 (1982), Part
III
J. Hoppit
‘Reformed and unreformed Britain, 1689-1801’, in W. Doyle (ed.), The
Oxford history of the ancien regime (2011)
J. Innes
‘Legislation and public participation, 1760-1830’, David Lemmings (ed.),
The British and their laws in the eighteenth century (2005).
D.W. Jones
War and economy in the age of William III and Marlborough (1988)
D. W. Jones
‘Defending the Revolution: the economics, politics, and finance of
England’s war effort, 1688-1712’, in D. Hoak and M. Feingold, eds., The
world of William and Mary (1996)
P. Jupp
Governing of Britain 1688-1848: the executive, parliament, people (2006)
D. Lemmings
Law and Government in England during the Long Eighteenth Century: From
Consent to Command (2011)
P.K. O’Brien
‘The political economy of British taxation, 1660-1815’, EcHR (1988)
L. Stone (ed.)
An imperial state at war: Britain from 1689 to 1815 (1994)
38
(b) Administrative and economical reform 1780-1870
T.C.W. Blanning & P. Wende (ed.) Reform in Britain and Germany 1750-1850 (1999)
W. Bowden
‘The influence of the manufacturers on some of the early policies of William
Pitt’, AHR 29 (1924).
R.A. Chapman & J.R. Greenaway The dynamics of administrative reform (1980)
S.G. Checkland
British public policy 1776-1939 (1983)
J.E. Crowley
‘Neo-mercantilism and The Wealth of Nations: British Commercial
Policy after the American Revolution”, HJ (1990)
R. Davis
‘The rise of protection in England, 1689-1786’, EcHR 19 (1966)
D. Eastwood
‘“Amplifying the province of the legislature”: the flow of information and the
English state in the early nineteenth century’, HR (1989)
J. Ehrman
The British government and commercial negotiations with Europe 1783–
1793 (1962)
M. Daunton
Trusting leviathan: the politics of taxation in Britain 1799-1914 (2001)
*P. Harling & P. Mandler ‘From “fiscal-military” to laissez-faire state, 1760-1850’, JBS (1993)
P. Harling
‘Rethinking “old corruption”‘, P&P (1995)
P. Harling
The waning of “old corruption”: the politics of economical reform 17791846 (1996)
* P. Harling
‘Parliament, the state, and “old corruption”: conceptualizing reform, c. 17901832’ in A. Burns & J. Innes (ed.), Rethinking the age of reform: Britain 17801850 (2003)
J. Innes
‘Forms of government growth, 1780-1830’, in D. Feldman & J. Lawrence (ed.),
Structures and transformations in modern British history (2011)
H. Parris
Constitutional bureaucracy: the development of British central administration
since the eighteenth century (1969)
J. Parry
‘The decline of institutional reform in nineteenth-century Britain’, in D.
Feldman & J. Lawrence (eds.), Structures and transformations in modern
British history (2011)
W.D. Rubinstein
‘The end of “old corruption” in Britain 1780-1860’, P&P (1983)
J. Thompson
‘Good government’, in Languages of politics in nineteenth-century Britain, ed.
D. Craig & J. Thompson (2013)
(c)The free trade debate
W.J. Ashworth
L. Brown
S.G. Checkland
A. Gambles
A. Gambles
B. Hilton
B. Hilton
* A. Howe
A. Howe
P.J. Jupp
B. Semmel
Customs and excise: trade, production, consumption 1640-1845 (2003)
The Board of Trade and the free trade movement 1830-42 (1958)
British public policy 1776-1939 (1983)
Protection and politics: conservative economic discourse 1815-1852 (1999)
‘Free trade and state formation: the political economy of fisheries policy
in Britain and the United Kingdom ca. 1780-1850’, JBS (2000)
Corn, cash, commerce: the economic policies of the Tory governments 1815-30
(1977)
‘The political arts of Lord Liverpool’, TRHS (1988)
Free trade and liberal England 1846-1946 (1997)
‘Popular political economy’, in Languages of politics in nineteenth-century
Britain, ed. D. Craig & J. Thompson (2013)
‘The landed elite and political authority in Britain’, JBS (1990)
The rise of free trade imperialism: classical political economy, the empire of free
trade, and imperialism 1750-1850 (1970)
39
R.F. Teichgraeber III ‘“Less abused than I had reasons to expect”: the reception of the Wealth of
Nations in Britain, 1776-90’, HJ (1987)
F. Trentmann
Free trade nation: commerce, consumption, and civil society in modern Britain
(2008)
D. Winch
Riches and poverty: an intellectual history of political economy in Britain,
1750-1834 (1996)
D. Winch
‘The Burke-Smith problem and late eighteenth-century political and economic
thought’, HJ (1985)
D. Winch
‘Science and the legislator: Adam Smith and after’, The Economic Journal 93
(1983).
16. The powers of the state: central-local relations, the impact of war, and social reform
How did the relations between the state and society evolve in the eighteenth century?
Was there a drive towards centralization, a redistribution of power to the localities, or a
mixture of the two? How were policies of the central state implemented locally? How
autonomous were local politics, at the level of the parish or the borough, from national
politics? How did war impact on public order, on domestic policies and on statebuilding? How did the economical and parliamentary reform movements of the early
nineteenth century affect central-local relations and the power of the state to tackle
social problems? The social policies of the 1830s, together with local government
reform, the appointment of public commissions, the vogue for statistical inquiry, and
the provision for inspection of private businesses, are sometimes regarded as amounting
to a ‘revolution in government’, so that for the first time it was possible to talk about
‘the state’ as a coherent policy-making body, albeit one that was financed more by local
rates than national taxes. How far did the development of social policy (in areas such
as poor law, policing, public health, industrial regulation, and education) constitute a
national response to the challenges posed by hectic urbanization, rural over-population,
and the ‘Condition of England’ question generally? What role was played in policy
formation at central and local level by ideas and ideologies (e.g. utilitarianism,
evangelicalism, individualism, collectivism)? After this burst of activity, did
assumptions about the power of the state alter again before the end of the period?
NB. Paper 10 is also concerned with social policy in this period, though it focuses more
on the impact and effects of social policy, whereas Paper 5 is primarily interested in the
political pressures that led the state to act, the political ideas that lay behind action and
the perceived limits to the role of either central or local authority.
(a) Local governance in the eighteenth century
D.T. Andrew
D. Eastwood
*D. Eastwood
L. Glassey
L. Glassey
‘Aldermen and the big bourgeoisie of London reconsidered’, Soc Hist
(1981)
Governing rural England: tradition and transformation in local
government, 1780-1840 (1994)
Government and community in the English provinces, 1700-1870 (1997)
Politics and the appointment of justices of the peace, 1675-1720 (1979
‘Local government’, in C. Jones (ed.), Britain in the first age of party,
1680-1750 (1987)
40
M. Goldie
‘The unacknowledged republic: officeholding in early modern England’,
in T. Harris, ed., The Politics of the excluded, 1500-1850 (2001).
P. Griffiths, A. Fox, S. Hindle (ed.) The experience of authority in early modern England (1996)
P. Halliday
Dismembering the body politic: partisan politics in England’s towns
1650-1730 (1998)
T. Harris (ed.)
The politics of the excluded, c.1500-1850 (2001)
T. Hayter
The army and the crowd in mid-Georgian England (1978)
* J. Innes
‘The local acts of a national Parliament: Parliament’s role in sanctioning
local action in eighteenth-century Britain’, Parl Hist (1998)
J.R. Kent
‘The centre and the localities: state formation and parish government in
England, c.1640-1740’, HJ (1995)
N. Landau
The justices of the peace, 1679-1760 (1984)
P. Langford
Public life and the propertied Englishman 1689-1798 (1991)
J.M. Rosenheim
The emergence of a ruling order: English landed society, 1650-1750
(1998), ch. 5
K. Wrightson
‘Two concepts of order: justices, constables and jurymen in seventeenthcentury England’, in J. Brewer and J. Styles, eds., An ungovernable
people? (1980)
(b) Social policies in the eighteenth century
D. Andrew
J.M. Beattie
V.A.C. Gatrell
D. Green
D. Hay
B. Hilton
M. Ignatieff
* J. Innes
J. Innes
J.R. Poynter
P. Slack
Philanthropy and police: London charity in the eighteenth century (1989)
Crime and the courts 1660-1800 (1986)
The hanging tree: execution and the English people, 1770-1868 (1994)
Pauper capital: London and the poor law 1790-1870 (2010)
‘Property, authority and the criminal law’ in D. Hay et al eds, Albion’s fatal tree:
crime and society in eighteenth-century England (1975) [cf. Langbein P&P
(1983)]
The age of atonement: the influence of evangelicalism on social and economic
thought ca. 1785-1865 (1988)
A just measure of pain: the penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution (1978)
‘Parliament and the shaping of eighteenth-century English social policy,’
TRHS (1990), or reprinted in Inferior politics: social problems and social
policies in eighteenth-century Britain (2009)
‘The distinctiveness of the English poor laws, 1750-1850’, in D. Winch
and P. K. O’Brien, The political economy of British historical experience,
1688-1914 (2002), pp. 381-407.
Society and pauperism: English ideas on poor relief 1795-1834 (1969)
The English poor law 1531-1782 (1991)
(c)The domestic impact of war, 1688-1815
G. Atkins
J. Brewer
L. Colley
* S. Conway
S. Conway
J.E. Cookson
‘Christian heroes, providence and patriotism in wartime Britain, 17931815’, HJ (2015)
The sinews of power: war, money and the English state, 1688-1783 (1989)
Britons: forging the nation 1707-1837 (1992), ch. 7
War, state and society in mid-eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland
(2006)
The British Isles and the war of American independence (2000)
The British armed nation, 1793-1815 (1987)
41
J.E. Cookson
J.E. Cookson
C. Emsley
A. Gee
J. Innes
T. Jenks
R. Morieux
M. Philp
J. Robertson
N. Rogers
L. Stone, ed.
J.R. Western
The friends of peace: anti-war liberalism in England 1793-1815 (1982)
‘The English volunteer movement of the French wars’, HJ (1989)
British society and the French wars, 1793-1815 (1979)
The British volunteer movement 1794-1814 (2003)
‘The domestic face of the military-fiscal state’ in her Inferior politics: social
problems and social policies in eighteenth-century Britain (2009)
Naval engagements: patriotism, cultural politics, and the Royal Navy, 1793–
1815 (2006)
‘French prisoners of war, conflicts of honour and social inversions in England,
1744-1783’, HJ (2013)
Resisting Napoleon: the British response to the threat of invasion, 1797–
1815 (2006)
The Scottish Enlightenment and the militia issue (1985)
Mayhem: post-war crime and violence in Britain, 1748-53 (2013)
An imperial state at war: Britain from 1689 to 1815 (1993)
The English militia in the eighteenth century: the story of a political issue,
1660-1802 (1965)
(d) The Victorian state and social policy: general
P. Bartrip
P. Bartrip
A. Brundage
E.J. Evans (ed)
S.E. Finer
D. Fraser
L. Goldman
R. Gray
J.R. Greenaway
P. Harling
* E.P. Hennock
E.P. Hennock
* U. Henriques
B. Hilton
P. Johnson
R. Johnson
P. Jupp
B. Keith-Lucas
R.J. Lambert
O. Macdonagh
O. Macdonagh
J. Mokyr
J. Murphy
D.G. Paz
‘British government inspection 1832-75’, HJ (1982)
‘State intervention: fact or fiction?’, JBS (1983)
England’s ‘Prussian minister’: Edwin Chadwick and the politics of government
growth, 1832-1854 (1988)
Social policy 1830-1914: individualism, collectivism and the origins of the
welfare state (1978) [documents]
The life and times of Sir Edwin Chadwick (1952)
The evolution of the welfare state (1984 edn)
Science, reform, and politics: the Social Science Association 1857-86 (2002) [&
see important article in EHR (1986)]
The factory question and industrial England 1830-1860 (1996)
Drink and British politics since 1830: a study in policy-making (2003)
The modern British state (2001)
‘Central-local government relations in England: an outline, 1800-1950’, Urban
History Yearbook (1982)
Fit and proper persons: 19th-century urban government (1973)
Before the welfare state: social administration in industrial Britain (1979)
The age of atonement: the influence of evangelicalism on social and economic
thought ca. 1785-1865 (1988) [Chapters 3 and 4]
‘Class law in Victorian England’, P&P (1993)
‘Educational policy and social control’, P&P (1970)
Governing of Britain 1688-1848: the executive, parliament, people (2006)
British local government in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (1977)
Sir John Simon 1816-1904 and English social administration (1963)
Early Victorian government (1977)
‘The nineteenth-century revolution in government’, HJ (1958) [and see critique
by J. Hart, P&P (1965)]
The gifts of Athena: historical origins of the knowledge economy (2002)
Church, state and schools in Britain 1800-1970 (1971)
The politics of working-class education in Britain 1830-50 (1980)
42
M. Poovey
D. Roberts
D. Roberts
F.B. Smith
G. Sutherland (ed)
J.R. Walkowitz
Making a social body: British cultural formation 1830-1914 (1995)
Victorian origins of the British welfare state (1960)
Paternalism in early Victorian England (1979)
The people’s health 1830-1910 (1979)
Studies in the growth of nineteenth-century government (1972)
Prostitution and Victorian society: women, class and the state (1981)
(e) Poor relief, policing and punishment
D. Beales
A. Brundage
M.A. Crowther
P. Dunkley
C. Emsley
D. Fraser (ed)
V.A.C. Gatrell
M. Ignatieff
P. Mandler
M.E. Rose
M.E. Rose
G. Stedman Jones
* M. Wiener
‘Peel, Russell and reform’, HJ (1974)
The making of the new poor law 1832-39 (1978)
The workhouse system 1834-1929: an English social institution (1981)
‘The whigs and the poor law 1830-4’, JBS (1980-1)
Policing and its context 1750-1870 (1983)
The new poor law in the nineteenth century (1976)
The hanging tree: execution and the English people, 1770-1868 (1994)
A just measure of pain: the penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution (1978)
‘The making of the new poor law redivivus’, P&P (1987) [and debate with A.
Brundage and D. Eastwood in P&P (1990)]
The relief of poverty 1834-1914 (1986)
‘The crisis of poor relief in England, 1860-1880’ in W.J. Mommsen (ed), The
emergence of the welfare state in Britain and Germany (1981)
Outcast London (1972)
Reconstructing the criminal: culture, law and policy in England 1830-1914
(1990)
(f) Urban politics in the nineteenth century
D. Fraser
J. Garrard
S. Gunn
M. Hewitt
T.J.W. Hunt
A.J. Kidd
R.J. Morris (ed)
R.J. Morris
R.J. Morris
H. Perkin
W.D. Rubinstein
G.R. Searle
Urban politics in Victorian England: politics in Victorian cities (1976)
Leadership and power in Victorian industrial cities 1830-80 (1983)
The public culture of the Victorian middle class: ritual and authority in the
English industrial city 1840-1914 (2000)
The emergence of stability in the industrial city: Manchester 1832-67 (1996)
Building Jerusalem: the rise and fall of the Victorian City (2004)
‘The middle class in nineteenth-century Manchester’ in A.K. Kidd & K.W.
Roberts (ed.), City, class and culture (1985)
Class, power and social structure in nineteenth-century towns (1981)
‘Voluntary societies and British urban elites, 1780-1850’, HJ (1983)
‘Samuel Smiles and the genesis of self-help’, Historical Journal (1981)
The origins of modern English society, 1780-1880 (1969)
‘Wealth, elites and the class structure’, P&P (1977)
Entrepreneurial politics in mid-Victorian Britain (1992)
43
17. Extra-parliamentary politics and political debate in the long eighteenth century
Popular politics was sometimes oppositional and sometimes not; popular protest was
sometimes political but not always. How did riots evolve in their goals and
organisation between the Sacheverell affair in 1709-10 and the Gordon riots of 1780?
How did ‘the moral economy’ regulate public disorder in food riots and other kinds of
riot? How did local elites respond to varying kinds of public disorder? How did the
penal code function socially and politically? To what extent did industrial and
agrarian disputes represent a form of incipient ‘class’ violence? How do we explain
the link between artisan politics and ‘urban Toryism’ ca.1730-1760? What was the
changing role of religion (defensive Anglicanism, Methodism, Dissent) in relation to
protest? How did popular politics and protest evolve from Wilkes through Wyvill to
the agitations of the 1790s and early 1800s? How did the ambitions of ‘radicals’ and
‘reformers’ evolve over this period? Was there a coherent ideological platform of
radicalism? Can an intellectual continuity be identified between the early eighteenthcentury Country ideology and late eighteenth-century radicalism? Did the 1790s break
with an English tradition of radicalism to import French revolutionary principles, or
did different strands of radicalism coexist during this period? How do we explain the
importance of particular groups, such as dissenters, in the dissemination of
radicalism? What did the battle of ideas between loyalists and radicals, during the
1790s, hinge on?
Those studying a period such as 1770-1850 should take reading from Topic 18 on
Chartism as well as this list.
See also Topic 12 on parliamentary reform, Topic 19 on women and popular politics,
and Topic 25 on languages of politics.
(a) The crowd in the eighteenth century
B. Bushaway
H.T. Dickinson
I. Gilmour
E.F. Genovese
D. Hay et al (ed)
P. King
* N. Rogers
G. Rudé
R.B. Shoemaker
* J. Stevenson
E.P. Thompson
E.P. Thompson
E.P. Thompson
E.P. Thompson
C. Tilly
J. Walter
By rite: custom, ceremony and community in England 1700-1880 (1982)
Politics of the people in eighteenth-century Britain (1994)
Riots, risings & revolution: governance & violence in 18th-c England (1992)
‘The many faces of moral economy’, P&P (1973)
Albion’s fatal tree (1975) [essay by Hay; cf Langbein P&P (1983)]
‘Edward Thompson’s contribution to eighteenth-century studies: the patricianplebeian model re-examined’, Soc Hist (1996)
Crowds, culture, and politics in Georgian Britain (1998)
‘The London “mob” in the eighteenth century’, HJ (1959)
The London mob: violence and disorder in eighteenth-century England (2004)
Popular disturbances in England, 1700-1870 (1979; 2nd edition, 1992)
‘The moral economy of the English crowd in the 18th century’, P&P (1971)
‘Patrician society, plebeian culture’, J Soc Hist (1974)
‘Eighteenth-century English society: class struggle without class’, Soc Hist
(1978)
Customs in common (1991)
Popular contention in Great Britain 1758-1834 (1995)
Crowds and popular politics in early modern England (2006)
44
(b) Extra-parliamentary politics before Wilkes
L. Colley
J.L. Fitts
G. Holmes
G. Holmes
A. McInnes
N. Rogers
R.B. Shoemaker
K. Wilson
K. Wilson
*K. Wilson
‘Eighteenth-century radicalism before Wilkes’, TRHS (1981)
‘Newcastle’s mob’, Albion (1973)
The trial of Dr Sacheverell (1973)
‘The Sacheverell riots: the Church and the crowd in early eighteenth-century
London’, in G. Holmes, Politics, religion and society in England 1679-1742
(1986)
‘The Revolution and the People’, in G. Holmes, Britain after the Glorious
Revolution 1689-1714 (1969) [chap. 3]
Whigs and cities: popular politics in the age of Walpole & Pitt (1989).
‘The London “mob” in the early eighteenth century’, JBS (1987)
‘Empire, trade and popular politics in mid-Hanoverian Britain: the case of
Admiral Vernon’, P&P (1988)
‘Inventing revolution: 1688 and eighteenth-century popular politics’, JBS (1989)
The sense of the people: politics, culture and imperialism in England, 1715-85
(1995)
(c) From Wilkes to 1789
E.C. Black
* J. Brewer
J. Brewer
The association: extra-parliamentary political organisation 1769-93 (1963)
Party ideology and popular politics at the accession of George III (1976)
‘The Number 45: a Wilkesite political symbol’, in S.B. Baxter (ed.), England’s
rise to greatness, 1660-1763 (1983)
J. Brewer
‘Theatre and counter-theatre in Georgian politics’, History Today (1983)
J. Brewer
‘Commercialisation and politics’, in N. McKendrick et al., The birth of a
consumer society (1982)
J. Brewer
‘The Wilkites and the law’, in J. Brewer & J. Styles (ed.), An ungovernable
people (1980)
V. Cromwell
‘Presbyterian moral economy: the covenanting tradition of popular protest in
Scotland 1780-1815’, SHR (2010)
C. Haydon
‘The Gordon riots in the English provinces’, HR (1990)
I. Haywood & J. Seed (ed.) The Gordon riots: politics, culture and insurrection in late eighteenthcentury Britain (2012)
K. J. Logue
Popular disturbances in Scotland 1780-1820 (1979)
J. Money
‘Taverns, coffee houses and clubs’, HJ (1971)
J. Money
Experience & identity: Birmingham & the west midlands 1760-1800 (1977)
J. Money
‘The masonic moment; or, ritual, replica, and credit: John Wilkes, the macaroni
parson, and the making of the middle-class mind’, JBS (1993)
Steve Poole
The politics of regicide in England 1760-1850 (2000)
N. Rogers
‘Crowd and people in the Gordon riots’, in E. Hellmuth (ed), The transformation
of political culture (1990)
E. Royle & J. Walvin English radicals and reformers 1760-1848 (1982)
G. Rudé
Wilkes and liberty: a social study of 1768 to 1774 (1962)
W.J. Shelton
English hunger and public disorder: social conflict in the 1760s (1973)
P.D.G. Thomas
John Wilkes: a friend to liberty (1996)
C. Tilly
Popular contention in Great Britain 1758-1834 (1995)
W. Weber
‘The 1784 Handel commemoration as political ritual’, JBS (1989)
D.E. Williams
‘Morals, markets and the English crowd in 1766’, P&P (1984)
45
*K. Wilson
The sense of the people: politics, culture and imperialism in England, 1715-85
(1995)
(d) Extra-parliamentary politics in the Revolutionary era
J. Barrell
J. Bohstedt
J. Bohstedt
L. Colley
J.E. Cookson
* H.T. Dickinson
R. Dozier
M. Elliott
C. Emsley
C. Emsley
J.A. Epstein
J. Fulcher
A. Gee
D.E. Ginter
J. Graham
M. Harrison
Ian McCalman
R. Mc William
A. Mitchell
K. Navickas
K. Navickas
F. O’Gorman
J.R. Oldfield
S.H. Palmer
* M. Philp (ed)
I. Prothero
R. Reid
E. Royle
M.I. Thomis
E.P. Thompson
C. Tilly
J. Walvin
The spirit of despotism: invasions of privacy in the 1790s (2006)
Riots and community politics in England & Wales 1790-1810 (1983)
‘Gender, household and community politics: women in English riots 17901810’, P&P (1988)
‘The apotheosis of George III: loyalty, royalty and the British nation 17601820’, P&P (1984)
‘The English volunteer movement of the French wars’, HJ (1989)
Britain and the French revolution 1789-1815 (1989)
For king, constitution, and country: the English loyalists and the French
revolution (1983)
Partners in revolution: the United Irishmen and France (1982)
British society and the French wars, 1793-1815 (1979)
‘The military and popular disorder in England, 1790-1801’, Journal for the
Society for Army Historical Research (1983)
Radical expression: political language, ritual, and symbol in England, 17901850 (1994)
‘The loyalist response to the Queen Caroline agitation’, JBS 1995
The British volunteer movement 1794-1814 (2003)
‘The Loyalist Association movement of 1792-3’, HJ (1966)
The Nation, the Law and the King, Reform Politics in England, 1789-1799
(2000).
Crowds and history: mass phenomena in English towns, 1790-1835 (1988)
‘New Jerusalems: Prophecy, Dissent and Radical Culture in England, 17861830’, in Knud Haakonssen ed., Enlightenment and Religion (2006)
Popular Politics in nineteenth century England. (1998), special. chap. 5.
‘The Association movement of 1792-9’, HJ (1961)
Loyalism and radicalism in Lancashire 1798-1815 (2009)
‘“That sash will hang you”: political clothing and adornment in England, 17801840,‘ JBS (2010)
‘The Paine burnings of 1792-1793’, P&P (2006)
Popular politics and British anti-slavery: the mobilisation of public opinion against
the slave trade, 1787-1807 (1995)
Police and protest in England and Ireland, 1780-1850 (1988)
The French revolution and British popular politics (1991)
Artisans and politics in early nineteenth-century London: John Gast and his
times (1979)
The Peterloo massacre (1989)
Revolutionary Britannia? Reflections on the threat of revolution in Britain,
1789-1848 (2000)
The Luddites: machine-breaking in regency England (1970)
The making of the English working class (1963; revised edn 1968 with replies to
his critics)
Popular contention in Great Britain 1758-1834 (1995)
‘The rise of British popular sentiment for abolition, 1787-1832’, in C. Bolt and S.
Drescher (ed.), Anti-slavery, religion, and reform: essays in memory of Roger
46
R. Wells
R. Wells
D. Worrall
Anstey (1980)
Insurrection: the British experience 1795-1803 (1983)
Wretched faces: famine in wartime England 1763-1803 (1988)
Radical culture: discourse, resistance and surveillance, 1790-1820 (1992)
(e) The war of political ideas in the Revolutionary era
J. Belchem
‘Republicanism, popular constitutionalism and the radical platform in early
nineteenth-century England’, Soc Hist (1981)
J. Belchem
‘Orator Hunt’: Henry Hunt and English working-class radicalism (1985)
J. Belchem and J. Epstein ‘The 19th-century gentleman leader revisited’, Soc Hist (1997)
J. Brewer
Party ideology and popular politics at the accession of George III (1976)
M. Chase
‘From millennium to anniversary: the concept of jubilee in late eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century England’, P&P (1990)
* G. Claeys
‘The French revolution debate and British political thought’, HPT (1990)
G. Claeys
The politics of English Jacobinism (1995)
G. Claeys
Thomas Paine: Social and Political Thought (1989).
H.T. Dickinson
British radicalism and the French revolution (1985)
J.R.Dinwiddy
Radicalism and reform in Britain, 1780-1850 (1992)
J.R. Dinwiddy
‘Sir Francis Burdett and Burdettite radicalism’, History (1980)
J. R. Dinwiddy
‘English radicals and the French revolution, 1800-1850’, in J.R. Dinwiddy
Radicalism and reform in Britain, 1780-1850 (1992)
F.K. Donnelly and J.L. Baxter ‘Sheffield and the English revolutionary Tradition, 1791-1820’,
International Review of Social History (1975)
A. Goodwin
The friends of liberty: the English democratic movement in the age of the French
revolution (1979)
E. Hellmuth (ed.)
The transformation of political culture (1990) [essays by Dickinson, Dinwiddy,
Fitzpatrick]
R.J. Hole
Pulpits, politics and public order in England: 1760-1832 (1989)
J.A. Hone
For the cause of truth: radicalism in London 1796-1821 (1982)
J. Keane
Tom Paine: A Political Life (1995).
N.C. Miller
‘John Cartwright and radical parliamentary reform, 1808-1819’, EHR (1968)
D. Miles
Francis Place 1771-1854: the life of a remarkable radical (1988)cf
G. Newman
‘Anti-French propaganda and British liberal nationalism’, Vict Studs (1975)
L. Nattrass
William Cobbett: The Politics of Style (1995).
T. Parssinnen
‘Association, convention and anti-parliament in British radical politics, 17711848’, EHR (1973)
M. Philp
‘Vulgar conservatism, 1792-3’, EHR (1995)
M. Philp
Reforming ideas in Britain: politics and language in the shadow of the French
revolution, 1789-1815 (2013)
E. Royle & J. Walvin English radicals and reformers 1760-1848 (1982)
M.A. Rutz
‘The politicizing of evangelical dissent’, Parl Hist (2001)
T.P. Schofield
‘Conservative political thought in Britain in response to the French revolution’,
HJ (1986)
S. Semmel
‘British radicals and ‘legitimacy’: Napoleon in the mirror of history’, P&P
(2000).
O. Smith
The politics of language, 1791-1819 (1984)
W. Stafford
Socialism, radicalism, and nostalgia: social criticism in Britain, 1775-1830
(1987).
D.A. Wilson
Paine and Cobbett: The transatlantic connection (1988).
47
18. Chartism, class and the radical tradition, mainly after 1815
This topic focuses on Chartism but, like much recent historiography, seeks to set it
within broader historical processes since the French revolution. Popular radical
activity had entered a new and apparently more dangerous phase after 1792,
especially as many English Jacobins had underground links with Continental and Irish
revolutionaries. Historians have long debated the questions as to how close Britain
came to revolution in the first half of the nineteenth century, how far a consciousness
of being ‘working class’ superseded the older plebeian culture, and whether activities
based on the work place (such as trade unionism) displaced protests arising out of
attachment to the traditional ‘moral economy’ (e.g. food riots). Actual outbreaks of
violence were few and mainly confined to periods of acute depression and hunger
(e.g. 1794-6, 1799-1801, 1816-20, 1830-3, 1837-43, 1847-8). What looked like an
impending climacteric—the battle of Peterloo and Caroline riots of 1819-20—turned
out to be the prelude to several years of relative radical passivity. However a period of
more continuous agitation set in from 1830 and included rural and industrial unrest,
pressure exerted by the Political Unions during the ‘reform’ crisis, the AntiPoor Law movement, the war of the unstamped press, millenarian movements such as
Owenism and Utopianism, and then from 1837 onwards Chartism. The latter was a
protean movement which is notoriously difficult to define. You will need to consider
its occupational and geographical basis; its leadership, language, and visual culture;
its day-to-day role in helping the lower orders of society to participate in local politics
as well as in cultural and sociable activities. A number of questions remain highly
controversial. For example, what was the link between the pre-Reform radical
tradition and Chartism? What impact did the 1832 Reform Act have on it? Why did a
movement whose basic inspiration stemmed from social and economic hardship
concentrate so exclusively on achieving political reforms, notably an extension of the
franchise? How significant was the distinction between ‘moral force’ and ‘physical
force’? Was Chartism simply a backward-looking movement whose aim was to
protect declining sections of the community? Was the apparent failure of Chartism
due mainly to government repression or to government concession? What was the
Chartists’ legacy for later radical movements?
Though this is presented as a separate topic for the sake of clarity, the general rule
applying to thematic topics applies here, that a good chronological coverage is
required. Exam questions on Chartism will frequently require some knowledge of
popular political debate before 1815. Therefore it is essential also to read some of the
works in Topic 17d and 17e on popular politics and ideas in the Revolutionary era.
See also topic 12 on the Reform crisis of 1829-32.
(a) General
J. Belchem
J.R.Dinwiddy
J. Fulcher
E. Griffin
J.F.C. Harrison
‘Manchester, Peterloo and the radical challenge’, Manchester Region History
Review (1989)
Radicalism and reform in Britain, 1780-1850 (1992)
‘The loyalist response to the Queen Caroline agitation’, JBS 1995
‘The making of the Chartists: popular politics and working-class autobiography
in early Victorian Britain’ EHR (2014)
Robert Owen and the Owenites: the quest for a new moral world (1969)
48
E. Hellmuth (ed)
The transformation of political culture (1990) [essays by Dickinson, Dinwiddy,
Fitzpatrick]
N.D. LoPatin
Political unions, popular politics and the great Reform Act of 1832 (1999)
T. Parssinnen
‘Association, convention and anti-parliament in British radical politics, 17711848’, EHR (1973)
R. Quinault & J. Stevenson (ed.) Popular protest and public order: six studies in British history, 17901920 (1974)
E. Royle
Revolutionary Britannia? Reflections on the threat of revolution in Britain, 17891848 (2000)
E. Royle & J. Walvin English radicals and reformers 1760-1848 (1982)
J. Stevenson
Popular disturbances in England, 1700-1870 (1979; 2nd edition, 1992)
C. Tilly
Popular contention in Great Britain 1758-1834 (1995)
(b) Chartism
G.M. Young & W.D. Handcock (ed.) The People’s Charter (1842), English historical documents, Vol.
12, Part 1, pp. 442-51
O. Ashton, R. Fyson, & S. Roberts (ed.) The chartist legacy (1999)
A. Briggs (ed)
Chartist studies (1959) [Chapters 1 and 9]
J. Belchem
‘Beyond chartist studies: class, community and party’ in D. Fraser (ed), Cities,
class and communication (1990)
J. Belchem
‘Radical language, meaning and identity in the age of the Chartists’, Journal of
Victorian Culture (2005)
* M. Chase
Chartism: a new history (2007)
A. Clark
‘The rhetoric of chartist domesticity: gender, language and class in the 1830s and
1840s’, JBS (1992)
N.C. Edsall
The anti-poor law movement 1834-44 (1971)
* J. Epstein
The lion of freedom: O’Connor and the chartist movement 1832-42 (1982)
J. Epstein & D. Thompson (ed.) The chartist experience: studies in working-class radicalism and
culture, 1830-60 (1982)
M. Finn
After chartism: class and nation in radical politics 1848-1874 (1993)
D. Goodway
London chartism 1838-1848 (1982)
B. Harrison & P. Hollis ‘Chartism, liberalism and the life of Robert Lowery’, EHR (1967)
D. Jones
Chartism and the chartists (1975)
F.C. Mather
Public order in the age of the chartists (1959)
A. Messner
‘Land, leadership, culture, and emigration: some problems in chartist
historiography’, HJ (1999)
P.A. Pickering
Chartism and the chartists in Manchester and Salford (1995)
P. Pickering
‘Class without words: symbolic communication in chartism’, P&P (1986)
I. Prothero
‘William Benbow and the concept of the “general strike”‘ P&P (1974)
E. Royle
Chartism (3rd edition, 1996)
R. Saunders
‘Chartism from above: British elites and the interpretation of Chartism’ History
(2008)
J. Saville
1848: the British state and the chartist movement (1987)
D. Stack
‘William Lovett and the National Association for the Political and Social
Improvement of the People’, HJ (1999)
* G. Stedman Jones
‘Rethinking chartism’ in Stedman Jones, Languages of class (1983) [also in J.
Epstein & D. Thompson (ed.), The chartist experience, (1972)]
* M. Taylor
‘Rethinking the chartists: searching for synthesis’, HJ (1996)
M. Taylor
‘The Six Points, Chartism and the reform of parliament’ in O. Ashton, R. Fyson,
49
M. Taylor
D. Thompson
J.T. Ward
& S. Roberts (ed.) The chartist legacy (1999).
Ernest Jones, chartism, and the romance of politics (2003)
The chartists (1984) [Chapters 1, 5, 6, 10, 13]
Chartism (1973)
(c) The question of class consciousness
J. Foster
D. Gadian
N. Kirk
T.R. Tholfsen
E.P. Thompson
M. Winstanley
D.G. Wright
Class struggle in the industrial revolution: early industrial capitalism in three
English towns (1974) [reviewed by Musson, Soc Hist (1976)]
‘Radicalism and liberalism in Oldham: a study of conflict, continuity and change
in popular politics, 1830-52’, Soc Hist (1996)
‘In defence of class: a critique of recent revisionist writing upon the nineteenthcentury English working class’, IRHS (1987)
Working-class radicalism in mid-Victorian England (1978)
The making of the English working class (1963, revised edn 1968 with replies to
his critics)
‘Oldham radicalism: the origins of popular Liberalism 1832-52’, HJ (1993)
Popular radicalism: the working-class experience 1780-1880 (1988)
19. Gender and politics
Though Westminster politics seemed essentially an arena of male activity, women
were participants in the political culture in noticeable ways. What were the respective
roles of men and women at different social levels? Did these significantly change in
the course of the eighteenth century? What credit, if any, should we assign to the
notion of ‘a gendered separation of public and private spheres’? Aside from the actual
political activities of men and women, gender identities were harnessed within
political discourse through a vocabulary of virtue (etymologically descended from the
Latin word for ‘man’): manliness, effeminacy, domesticity, and so forth. How did
concepts, such as masculinity, femininity, and effeminacy, function in political
discourse? How did the gendering of political discourse shape notions of national and
political identity, citizenship, and political rights? Did the convention of ‘separate
spheres’ strengthen in the first half of the nineteenth century, as part of the political
backlash against the French Revolution? Or could it be said that evangelicalism gave
them a major role as shapers of morality in public as well as private spheres? How
far and why did women emerge as significant figures in local pressure group politics
in the 1825-50 period (e.g. anti-slavery, pacifism, the Anti-Corn Law League)? And
why, as the century wore on, was the exclusion of women from formal political
mechanisms directly challenged by a series of organised campaigns, which succeeded
in transforming the social, legal, and political status of women? These campaigns not
only led to greater direct involvement by women in politics, but also drew attention to
the ways in which the political system was underpinned by, and privileged, particular
sets of ideas about masculinity and femininity. How did ideas about masculinity shape
debates about citizenship? What arguments were used to justify and to challenge
women’s exclusion from the public sphere? What difference did the growth of party
and the growth of the state make to women’s participation in politics? Why did
women find it easier to involve themselves in certain aspects of political life than
others? To what extent did the social composition and organisational structure of
50
‘feminist’ campaigns resemble other popular political movements?
(a) Women and politics: mainly eighteenth century
D. Andrew
‘Popular culture and public debate: London 1780’, HJ (1996)
H. Barker & E. Chalus (ed.) Gender in 18th-century: roles, representation, responsibilities (1997)
* H. Barker & E. Chalus (ed.) Women’s History: Britain, 1700-1850. An introduction (2005)
J. Bohstedt
‘Gender, household and community politics: women in English riots 1790-1810’,
P&P (1988)
A. Campbell
Women and enlightenment in eighteenth-century Britain (2009)
E. Chalus
Elite women in English political life c.1754-1790 (2005)
E. Chalus
‘Invited in the political way: women, social politics and political society in
18th century England’ HJ (2000)
L. Colley
Britons: forging the nation 1707-1837 (1992) [ch 6]
K. Gleadle and S. Richardson (ed.) Women in British politics, 1760-1860: the power of the petticoat
(2000) [essays by Chalus, Richardson, Morgan, Cragoe]
L. Gordon
Mary Wollstonecraft: a new genus (2005)
M. Hunt
The middling sort: commerce, gender, and the family in England 16801780 [introduction and ch 8]
C.C. Orr (ed.)
Queenship in Britain 1660-1837: royal patronage, court culture and
dynastic politics (2002)
J. Rendall
The origins of modern feminism: women in Britain, France and the United
States 1780-1860 (1985)
K.M. Rogers
Feminism in eighteenth-century England (1982)
H.L. Smith
Women writers and the early modern British political tradition (1998)
A. Stott
Hannah More: the first Victorian (2003)
R.B. Shoemaker
Gender in English society 1650-1850: emergence of separate spheres? (1998)
S. Staves
Married women’s separate property in England, 1660-1833 (1990)
I. Tague
Women of quality: accepting and contesting ideals of femininity in
England, 1690-1760 (2002)
S. Tillyard
Aristocrats: Caroline, Emily, Louisa and Sarah Lennox 1740-1832 (1994)
A. Vickery
‘Golden age to separate spheres? a review of the categories and chronology
of English women’s history’, HJ (1993)
* A. Vickery (ed)
Women, privilege, and power: British politics 1750 to the present (2001)
[essays by Vickery, Chalus, Lewis, Gleadle]
(b) The gendering of politics: mainly eighteenth century
Julia Banister
‘The court martial of Admiral John Byng: politeness and the military man
in the mid-eighteenth century’, in Heather Ellis and Jessica Meyer
(ed.), Masculinity and the other: historical perspectives (2009)
G.J. Barker-Benfield The culture of sensibility: sex and society in 18th-century Britain (1992)
P. Carter
Men and the emergence of polite society, Britain 1660-1800 (2001)
A. Clark
‘The Chevalier d’Eon and Wilkes: masculinity and politics in the
eighteenth century’, Eighteenth-Century Studies (1998)
A. Clark
Scandal: the sexual politics of the British constitution (2004)
M. Cohen
Fashioning masculinity: national identity and language in the eighteenth
century (1996)
M. Cohen & T. Hitchcock (ed.) English masculinities, 1660-1800 (1999)
51
Brian Cowan
‘What was masculine about the public sphere? Gender and the coffeehouse
milieu in post-Restoration England’, History Workshop Journal (2001)
E. Eger (ed)
Women, writing and the public sphere 1700-1830 (2001)
H. Guest
Small change: women, learning, patriotism 1750-1810
K. Harvey
‘The history of masculinity, circa 1650-1800’, JBS (2008)
L.E. Klein
‘Gender and the public/private distinction in the eighteenth century: some
questions about evidence and analytical procedure’, Eighteenth-Century
Studies (1995)
P. Langford
‘Politics and manners from Sir Robert Walpole to Sir Robert Peel’, Proceedings
of the British Academy 94 (1997), pp. 103-25.
* J.S. Lewis
Sacred to female patriotism: gender, class and politics in late Georgian
Britain (2003)
* M. McCormack
The independent man: citizenship and gender politics in Georgian England
(2005)
M. McCormack (ed.) Public men: masculinity and politics in modern Britain (2007)
M. McCormack
‘The new militia: war, politics and gender in 1750s Britain’, Gender and
History (2007)
S. Moore
‘“A nation of harlequins”? Politics and masculinity in mid-eighteenthcentury England’, JBS (2010)
R.B. Shoemaker
‘Male honour and the decline of public violence in eighteenth-century
London’, Soc Hist (2001)
R. Weil
Political passions: gender, the family and political argument in England
1680-1714 (1999)
K. Wilson
The island race: Englishness, empire and gender in the eighteenth century
(2003)
(c) Women and politics: mainly nineteenth century
J. Bush
Women against the vote: female anti-suffragism in Britain (2007)
L. Davidoff & C. Hall Family fortunes: men and women of the middle class, 1780-1850 (1987)
K. Gleadle and S. Richardson (ed.) Women in British politics, 1760-1860: the power of the petticoat
(2000) [essays by Chalus, Richardson, Morgan, Cragoe]
* K. Gleadle
‘Revisiting Family Fortunes: reflections on the twentieth anniversary of the
publication of L. Davidoff & C. Hall’s Family Fortunes’, Women’s History
Review (2007), pp. 773-782.
* K. Gleadle
Borderline citizens: women, gender and political culture in Britain, 18151867(2009)
P. Hollis
Ladies elect: women in local government (1988)
J. Lewis
Women and social action in Victorian and Edwardian England (1991)
M. Luddy
‘Women and politics in nineteenth century Ireland’ in M.G. Valiulis and M.
O’Dowd (ed.), Women and Irish history (1997)
C. Midgley
Women against slavery: the British campaigns, 1780-1870 (1992)
F.K. Prochaska
Women and philanthropy in nineteenth-century England (1980)
M. Pugh
The Tories and the people (1985)
K.D. Reynolds
Aristocratic women and political society in Victorian Britain (1998)
S. Richardson
The political worlds of women: gender and politics in nineteenth century Britain
(2013)
H. Rogers
Women and the people: authority, authorship and the radical tradition in
nineteenth-century England (2000)
52
B. Taylor
P. Thane
* A. Vickery
A. Vickery (ed)
D. Wahrman
Eve and the New Jerusalem: socialism and feminism in the nineteenth century
(1983)
‘Women and the poor law in Victorian and Edwardian England’, History
Workshop (1978)
‘Golden age to separate spheres?: a review of the categories and chronology of
English women’s history’, HJ (1993)
Women, privilege and power: British politics 1750 to the present (2001) [essays
by Vickery, Gleadle, Mandler]
‘Middle-class domesticity goes public: gender, class and politics from Queen
Caroline to Queen Victoria’, JBS (1993)
(d) The gendering of politics; mainly nineteenth century
G. Atkins
‘Christian heroes, providence and patriotism in wartime Britain, 17931815’, HJ (2015)
M. Bentley
‘Gladstone’s heir’, EHR (1992).
L. Carter
‘British masculinities on trial in the Queen Caroline affair’, Gender & History
(2008)
A. Clark
The struggle for the breeches: gender and the making of the British working
class (1995)
A. Clark
‘Gender, class and the nation: franchise reform in England, 1832-1928’ in J.
Vernon, ed., Re-reading the constitution (1996) [pp. 62-88]
A. Davin
‘Imperialism and motherhood’, History Workshop (1978)
J. Fulcher
‘The loyalist response to the Queen Caroline agitations’ JBS (1995)
L. Goldman (ed)
The blind Victorian: Henry Fawcett and British liberalism (1989) (chapters by
Hilton and Collini]
* B. Griffin
The politics of gender in Victorian Britain: masculinity, political culture, and
the struggle for women’s rights (2012)
B. Griffin
‘Women’s suffrage’, in Languages of politics in nineteenth-century Britain, ed.
D. Craig & J. Thompson (2013)
B. Griffin
‘Class, gender and Liberalism in parliament, 1868-1882: the case of the Married
Women’s Property Acts’, HJ (2003)
T.L. Hunt
‘Morality and monarchy in the Queen Caroline affair’, Albion (1991)
P. Langford
‘Politics and manners from Sir Robert Walpole to Sir Robert Peel’, Proceedings
of the British Academy 94 (1997), pp. 103-25.
T.W. Laqueur
‘The Queen Caroline affair: politics and art in the reign of George IV’, JMH
(1982)
* J. Lawrence
‘Class and gender in the making of urban toryism, 1880-1914’, EHR (1993)
K. McClelland
‘England’s greatness, the working man’ in C. Hall, K. McClelland, and J.
Rendall (ed.), Defining the Victorian nation: class, race, gender and the British
Reform Act of 1867 (2000)
M, McCormack (ed.) Public men: masculinity and politics in modern Britain (Basingstoke, 2007).
J. Vernon
Politics and the people (1993) [Chapter 6]
(e) Nineteenth-century feminist movements
* B. Caine
B. Caine
English feminism, 1780-1980 (1997)
Victorian feminists (1993)
53
K. Gleadle
B. Griffin
B. Harrison
B. Harrison
* S. Holton
P. Levine
J. Lewis (ed.)
P. McHugh
M. Pugh
J. Rendall
J. Rendall
J. Rendall
M.L. Shanley
A. Summers
G. Sutherland
J. Walkowitz
The early feminists: radical Unitarians and the emergence of the women’s rights
movement 1831-1851 (1995)
‘Women’s suffrage’, in Languages of politics in nineteenth-century Britain, ed.
D. Craig & J. Thompson (2013)
Separate spheres: the opposition to women’s suffrage in Britain (1978)
‘Women’s suffrage at Westminster, 1866-1928’ in M. Bentley and J. Stevenson
(ed.), High and low politics in modern Britain (1983)
Suffrage days: stories from the women’s suffrage movement (1996).
Victorian feminism (1987)
Before the vote was won: arguments for and against women’s suffrage (1987)
Prostitution and Victorian social reform (1980)
The march of the women (2000)
The origins of modern feminism: women in Britain, France and the United States
1780-1860 (1985)
‘The citizenship of women and the Reform Act of 1867’ in C. Hall, K.
McClelland, & J. Rendall, Defining the Victorian nation: class, race, gender,
and the Reform Act of 1867 (2000)
‘John Stuart Mill, liberal politics, and the movements for women’s suffrage,
1865-1873’ in A. Vickery, ed. Women, privilege and power (2001)
Feminism, marriage and the law in Victorian England 1850-1895 (1989)
‘The constitution violated: the female body and the female subject in the
campaigns of Josephine Butler’, History Workshop Journal (1999)
‘The movement for the higher education of women’ in P.J. Waller (ed), Politics
and social change in modern Britain, ed. (1987)
Prostitution and Victorian society: women, class and the state (1981)
20. Religion and politics
In the last thirty years the relationship between religion, politics and society in the long
eighteenth century has been the subject of fierce historiographical debate. How far did the
events of 1688-9 redefine the relationship between Church and state? What were the
political implications of the institutional development and intellectual definition of
‘dissent’? Some historians have described Britain as an ancien regime, characterised by
divine right monarchy, a paternalist aristocracy, a deferential peasantry, and an
authoritative Church, raising the question: did eighteenth-century Britain have a
‘confessional state’? Others have emphasised modern and modernizing features: an
innovative and more ‘secular’ spirit, rapid commercialization and increasing consumption,
more participatory and collaborative dimensions to social, cultural, and political life.
Either way, most would now agree that political ideas of whatever stamp were usually
articulated within wider religious and theological frameworks. These debates in turn pose
questions about the status and state of the established churches. For while the churches
were, for the most part, allied with national and local social and political structures, the
expansion of religious dissent (old and new), the growth of heterodoxy and the explosion
of Methodist numbers raised new intellectual and practical challenges. Imperial expansion
provides further dimensions: how did religion – Protestantism especially, and Anglicanism
in particular – shape how people thought about Britain’s place in the world? To what
extent did British people participate in wider confessional allegiances and rivalries cutting
across national boundaries? The ‘established’ status of the Church of England was
resented by many Nonconformists, and this became a matter of controversy once
54
Nonconformists’ right to sit in parliament was formally clarified by the repeal of the Test
and Corporation Acts in 1828. Nonconformists then took up a variety of demands, on
disestablishment, Church rates, civil rights, and the control of educational provision.
These disputes became very contentious politically, not least because there was a close
connection between religious affiliation and voting behaviour. What was really at issue
between Nonconformists and Churchmen in these disputes? What did Nonconformists
want to achieve, and did they achieve it? How important was anti-Catholicism in Victorian
politics, and what impact did it have on disputes between Protestants? By the end of the
century, was there more in common between Churchmen and Nonconformists than
separated them?
NB. Although Paper 10 covers similar ground and similar reading, it is concerned more
with religious belief and religious practice and how they affected and were affected by
social, cultural and intellectual change. In dealing with the interaction between religion
and politics, Paper 5 is concerned more with institutions, ideology and legislative change.
(a) A confessional state?
E. Baigent & J. E. Bradley ‘The social sources of late eighteenth-century English radicalism: Bristol in
the 1770s and 1780s’, EHR (2010)
J.E. Bradley
Religion, revolution and English radicalism: non-conformity in eighteenth-century
politics and society (1990)
J. Bradley
‘The religious origins of radical politics in England, Scotland, and Ireland, 16621800’ in James E. Bradley and Dale Van Kley, eds., Religion and politics in
Enlightenment Europe (2001)
J. Champion
The pillars of priestcraft shaken (1992)
* J.C.D. Clark
‘Great Britain and Ireland’ in S. J. Brown and T. Tackett, Cambridge History of
Christianity vol. 7 (2006)
* J.C.D. Clark
English Society 1688-1832 (1985)
The second edition of this book (2000) elaborates on and differs from but does not supersede the
first, which it is necessary to read in order to understand the lively debate on Clark’s ideas.
Contributions to this debate include: J. Innes & J. Clark in Past & Present (1987); symposia in
Albion (1989), British Journal of 18th-Century Studies (1992); G.S. Rousseau in Age of Johnson
(1989); R.W. Davis in Parliamentary History (1990).
Jeremy Gregory & Jeffrey S. Chamberlain, The national Church in local perspective (2003)
K. Haakonssen (ed) Enlightenment and religion: rational dissent in 18th-C Britain (1996), esp chs 4,
6, 7, 8, 9
C. Holmes
Politics, religion, and society in England, 1679-1742 (1986)
J. Spurr
‘The Church of England, comprehension, and the Toleration Act of 1689’,
* A.C. Thompson
‘Early 18th-century Britain as a confessional state’, in H. Scott & B. Simms
(ed.), Cultures of power in Europe in the long eighteenth century (2007)
J. Walsh, C. Haydon, S. Taylor (ed.) The Church of England c.1689-c.1833 (1993), esp. ‘Introduction’
N. Yates
Eighteenth-century Britain: religion and politics, 1714-1815 (2008)
(b) Religion, empire and ‘national identity’
G.A. Bremner
Imperial gothic: religious architecture and High Anglican culture in the British
Empire, 1840-1870 (2013)
T. Claydon
Europe and the Making of England 1660-1760 (2007)
T Claydon & I McBride (ed.) Protestantism and national identity: Britain and Ireland, c.1650-c.1850
(1998), esp. ‘Introduction’ but see also chapters for case studies
* L. Colley
Britons: forging the nation 1707-1837 (1992), esp. ch 1
55
G. Glickman
J. Gregory
The English Catholic community 1688-1745 (2009)
‘The making of a Protestant nation’, in Nicholas Tyacke (ed) England’s long
reformation 1500-1800 (1998)
C. Haydon
Anti-Catholicism in eighteenth-century England (1993)
C. Kidd
British identities before nationalism; ethnicity and nationhood in the Atlantic
world, 1600-1800 (1999)
H. McLeod
Class and religion in the late Victorian city (1974)
G. Parsons & J. Wolffe (ed.) Religion in Victorian Britain (5 vols., 1988-97)
R. Strong
Anglicanism and the British Empire, 1700-1850 (2007)
M. Wheeler
The old enemies: Catholic and Protestant in nineteenth-century English culture
(2006)
J. Wolffe
God and greater Britain: religion and national life 1843-1945 (1994)
* J. Wolffe
‘Anglicanism, Presbyterianism and the religious identities of the United Kingdom’
in S. Gilley, ed. Cambridge History of Christianity vol. 8 (2005)
(c) Crisis, reaction and reform, 1780-1850
D.W. Bebbington
S.J. Brown
Evangelicalism in modern Britain, from the 1730s to the 1980s (1989)
Providence and empire: religion, society and politics in the United Kingdom,
1815-1914 (2008)
S.J. Brown
The national churches of England, Ireland, and Scotland 1801-46 (2001)
R.A. Burns
‘English “church reform” revisited, 1780-1840’, in Arthur Burns & Joanna Innes
(eds), Rethinking the age of reform: Britain, 1780-1850 (2003)
O. Chadwick
The Victorian church (2 vols, 1966-70)
C. Dewey
The Passing of Barchester (1991)
J. Hardwick
‘Vestry politics and the emergence of a reform ‘public’ in Calcutta, 1813–36’, HR
(2011)
R.J. Helmstadter & B. Lightman Victorian faith in crisis: essays on continuity and change in
nineteenth-century religious belief (1990)
* B. Hilton
The age of atonement: the influence of evangelicalism on social and economic
thought 1795-1865 (1988)
W. Hinde
Catholic emancipation: a shake to men’s minds (1992)
D. Hempton
Methodism and politics in English society 1750-1850 (1984)
D. Hempton
Methodism: empire of the spirit (2005)
R.J. Hole
Pulpits, politics and public order in England: 1760-1832 (1989)
C.D.A. Leighton
‘Antichrist’s revolution: Some Anglican apocalypticists in the age of the French
wars’, Journal of Religious History, 24 (2000), pp. 125-42
G.I.T. Machin
Politics and the churches in Great Britain 1832-68 (1977)
D. Madden
‘The religious politics of prophecy: or, Richard Brothers’s Revealed Knowledge
confuted’, History of European Ideas (2008)
I. McCalman
Prophets, revolutionaries and pornographers in London, 1795-1840 (1988)
M. Rutz
‘The politicizing of evangelical dissent, 1811-1813,’ Parl Hist (2001)
S. Skinner
Tractarians and the condition of England: social thought of the Oxford
movement (2004)
(d) Nonconformity in the nineteenth century
G. Alderman
O. Anderson
D.W. Bebbington
The Jewish community in British politics (1983)
‘Gladstone and the abolition of compulsory church rates’, JEcclH (1974)
The nonconformist conscience: chapel and politics 1870-1914 (1982)
56
C. Binfield
O. Brose
R.J. Helmstadter
D.A. Johnson
M.D. Johnson
T. Larsen
G.I.T. Machin
J.E.B. Munson
E.R. Norman
J. Parry
J. Seed
S. Thorne
M.R. Watts
D. Young
So down to prayers: studies in English nonconformity 1780-1920 (1977)
Church and parliament: reshaping of the Church of England 1828-60 (1950)
‘The nonconformist conscience’ in P.T. Marsh, The conscience of the Victorian
state (1979)
The changing shape of English nonconformity, 1825-1925 (1999)
The dissolution of Dissent 1850-1918 (1987)
Friends of religious equality: nonconformist politics (1999)
Politics and the Churches in Great Britain 1869-1921 (1987)
The nonconformists: in search of a lost culture (1991)
Anti-Catholicism in Victorian England (1968)
‘The disciplining of the religious conscience in nineteenth-century British
politics’, in I. Katznelson and G. Stedman Jones (eds), Religion and the political
imagination (2010)
‘Theologies of power: Unitarianism and the social relations of religious
discourse 1800-50’ in R.J. Morris (ed), Class, power and social structure (1986)
Congregational missions and the making of an imperial culture in nineteenthcentury England (1999)
The dissenters. Volume 2: the expansion of evangelical nonconformity (1995)
F.D. Maurice and Unitarianism (1992)
21. Scotland and Britain in the eighteenth century
One extended outcome of the 1688 Revolution was the Act of Union (1707). What
were the political and constitutional causes and consequences of this legislation? What
were the peculiarities of Scottish governance in the eighteenth century? And how did
the Scots contribute to British governance? In what senses can Scotland be deemed a
‘client state’? What was the fate of Scottish national identity in the new Great Britain?
How did political tensions between highland and lowland Scotland play themselves
out? Which regions, social groups, and religious denominations supported Jacobitism,
and which opposed it? Did Jacobitism create a civil war in Scotland? What was the role
of Jacobitism in Scottish politics and political culture? Was the Scottish Enlightenment
a response to the absorption of Scotland into Britain, and in what ways? Why did Scots
‘buy into’ empire to such a disproportionate extent?
For Scotland in the nineteenth century, see Topic 13d.
(a) Historiographical and general treatments of British history
B. Bradshaw & J. Morrill (ed.) The British problem 1534-1707: state formation in the Atlantic
archipelago (1996), essays by Goldie on Scotland and Smyth on Ireland
J.C.D. Clark
‘The Strange Death of British History? Reflections on Anglo-American
Scholarship’, HJ (1997)
A. Grant & K.J. Stringer (ed.) Uniting the kingdom? the making of British history (1995)
D. Hayton
‘Constitutional experiments and political expediency 1689-1725’, in S.G.
Ellis and S. Barber (ed.), Conquest and union: fashioning a British state
1485-1725 (1995)
J. Hoppit (ed.)
Parliaments, nations and identities in Britain and Ireland 1660-1850
(2003)
57
Allan Macinnes
J.G.A. Pocock
J.G.A. Pocock
J. Wormald
Union and empire: the making of the United Kingdom in 1707 (2007)
‘The limits and divisions of British history: in search of an unknown
subject’, AmHR (1982)
The discovery of islands : essays in British history (2005)
‘The creation of Britain: multiple kingdoms or core and colonies?’, TRHS
(1992)
(b) Scottish history and Anglo-Scottish relations
D. Allan
Scotland in the eighteenth century: union and enlightenment (2001)
T.M. Devine & R. Mitchison (ed.) People and society in Scotland: vol. 1, 1760-1830 (1988)
T.M. Devine & J.R. Young (ed.) Eighteenth-century Scotland: new perspectives (1998)
W. Ferguson
Scotland: 1689 to the present (Edinburgh History of Scotland, 4) (1978)
W. Ferguson
Scotland’s relations with England: a survey to 1707 (1977), chs 9-14
M. Fry
The Dundas despotism (1992)
B. Harris
‘The Anglo-Scottish Treaty of Union, 1707 in 2007: defending the revolution,
defeating the Jacobites’, JBS (2010)
R.A. Houston
Scottish society 1500-1800 (1969)
B.P. Lenman
Integration and enlightenment: Scotland 1746-1832 (1981)
B.P. Lenman
‘A client society: Scotland between the ‘15 and the ‘45’, in J. Black (ed.), Britain
in the age of Walpole (1984)
B. Levack
The formation of the British state (1987)
K.J. Logue
Popular disturbances in Scotland (1979)
A. Murdoch
The people above: politics and administration in mid-eighteenth-century Scotland
(1980)
T.I. Rae
The Union of 1707 (1974)
N.T. Phillipson & R. Mitchison Scotland in the age of improvement (1970)
Alasdair Raffe
‘1707, 2007 and the Unionist turn in Scottish history’, HJ (2010)
J.C. Robertson
‘Union, state and empire: the Britain of 1707 in its European setting,’ in L. Stone
(ed.), An imperial state at war: Britain from 1688 to 1815 (1994)
J.S. Shaw
The management of Scottish society 1707-1764 (1983)
J.S. Shaw
The political history of eighteenth-century Scotland (1999)
T.C. Smout
A history of the Scottish people (1969)
T.C. Smout (ed.)
Anglo-Scottish relations from 1603 to 1900 (2005).
D. Szechi & D. Hayton ‘John Bull’s other kingdoms: the English government of Scotland and
Ireland’, in C. Jones (ed.), Britain in the first age of party (1987)
C.A. Whatley
Scottish society 1707-1830: beyond Jacobitism, towards industrialisation
(2000), esp ch 3
C.A. Whatley
The Scots and the Union (2006)
(c) Jacobitism
E. Cruickshanks & J. Black (ed.) The Jacobite challenge (1988)
E. Cruickshanks (ed.) Ideology and conspiracy: aspects of Jacobitism, 1689-1759 (1990)
C. Kidd
‘The ideological significance of Scottish Jacobite Latinity’ in J. Black & J.
Gregory (ed.), Culture, politics, and society in Britain 1660-1800 (1991)
B.P. Lenman
The Jacobite risings in Britain, 1689-1746 (1980)
B.P. Lenman
The Jacobite clans of the Great Glen (1984)
B.P. Lenman
The Jacobite cause (1986)
A. Macinnes
‘Jacobitism in Scotland: episodic cause or national movement?’, SHR (2007)
58
F.J. McLynn
F.J. McLynn
F.J. McLynn
P.K. Monod
M.G.H. Pittock
W.A. Speck
M. Steele
D. Szechi
France and the Jacobite rising of 1745 (1981)
‘Issues and motives in the Jacobite rising of 1745’, The Eighteenth Century:
Theory and Interpretation (1982)
The Jacobite army in England: the final campaign (1983)
Jacobitism and the English people 1688-1788 (1989)
The myth of the Jacobite clans (1995)
The Butcher: the duke of Cumberland and the suppression of the 45 (1981)
‘Anti-Jacobite pamphleteering 1701-20’, SHR (1981)
The Jacobites: Britain and Europe 1688-1788 (1994)
(d) Culture and ideology
M. Ash
The strange death of Scottish history (1980)
C. Beveridge & R. Turnbull The eclipse of Scottish culture (1989)
D. Daiches
The paradox of Scottish culture: the 18th-century experience (1964)
J. Dwyer
Virtuous discourse (1987)
B. Harris
The Scottish People and the French Revolution (2008)
H. Kearney
The British Isles: a history of four nations (1989)
C. Kidd
Subverting Scotland’s past: creation of Anglo-British identity (1993)
C. Kidd
‘Conditional Britons: the Scots covenanting tradition and the eighteenth century
British state’, EHR (2002)
F. Lyall
Of presbyters and kings: church and state in the law of Scotland (1980)
A. Mackillop
‘Political culture of the Scottish highlands: Culloden to Waterloo’, HJ (2003)
R. Mitchison
‘Patriotism and national identity: 18th-c Scotland’, Historical Studies (1978)
G. Pentland
‘“We speak for the ready”: images of Scots in political prints, 1707-1832’, SHR
(2011)
N.T. Phillipson
‘The Scottish enlightenment’, in R. Porter & M. Teich (ed.), The enlightenment in
national context (1981)
M.G.H. Pittock
The invention of Scotland: Stuart myth and Scottish identity (1991)
M.G.H. Pittock
Poetry and Jacobite politics in 18th-century Britain and Ireland (1994)
J. Rendall
The origins of the Scottish enlightenment (1978)
K. Simpson
The protean Scot: the crisis of identity in 18th-century Scottish literature (1988)
C. A. Whatley
‘How tame were the Scottish lowlanders during the eighteenth century’, in T.M.
Devine (ed.), Conflict and stability in Scottish society 1700-1850 (1990)
22. Ireland, 1689-1885
The Revolution of 1688 was relatively ‘bloodless’ in Britain, but this was not true in
Ireland where William III had to fight a war. What was the Williamite settlement in
Ireland? What were the forms of social and political collaboration, competition and
conflict between Irish and English and between Protestant and Catholic? Was Ireland a
British colony? What was the character of Anglo-Irish identity in the eighteenth century?
What was the impact on Ireland of British imperial policy and engagements in the second
half of the eighteenth century? What were the sources of Irish resentment with British
rule, and how did these intensify into forms of open conflict? How effective was the
system known as ‘Undertaking’? What was the significance of ‘Grattan’s parliament’?
What was the impact of the French revolution on Ireland? Why did the relatively
ecumenical nationalist movement of 1790 become so embittered by sectarian strife
thereafter? What led to the 1798 rebellion and the Act of Union (1801)? It took a quarter
59
of a century after the Act of Union before a significant Irish reform movement developed.
However the successful campaign for Catholic emancipation in the mid-1820s created a
new dynamic between Irish MPs and the Westminster parliament. How serious was the
threat to the Union as a result? What did O’Connellism achieve and why did it not
achieve more? Was the effect of the 1832 Reform Act to create a vibrant system of
electoral politics centred on the parish pump rather than on national demands? How
closely did Young Ireland correspond to Continental romantic nationalism, and why was
there conflict between its leaders and O’Connell? Why did the Famine not lead to more
forceful expressions of Irish discontent? Was it nonetheless a turning-point in the longterm fortunes of the Union? What were the effects of urbanization, increasing literacy,
and relative prosperity on Irish politics after 1850, and why did Fenianism emerge? Why
did Ireland become a major theme in British politics in the mid-1860s and why did the
reforms of 1869-70 encourage rather than satisfy Irish political pressure? Did Irish
Roman Catholic priests inspire the nationalist movement, or were they forced to keep up
with it? Why was land such a sensitive political issue? What were the differences
between Parnell and earlier Irish leaders? Was the Union unsustainable on the eve of the
Home Rule crisis of 1885-6? How far did British politicians and officials understand Irish
problems? Were even their most radical proposals in fact shaped by British rather than
Irish ideas and conceptions? [Gladstone’s general motives for taking up Home Rule in
December 1885 can be studied here or in topic 9, but we cannot consider the political
impact of the 1885-6 crisis in Paper 5.]
(a) Historiographical debates
T. Bartlett et al. (ed.) The 1798 Rebellion: a Bicentennial Perspective (2003)
D.G. Boyce & A. O’Day (ed.) The making of modern Irish history: revisionism and the
revisionist controversy (1996)
T.C. Barnard
‘Farewell to Old Ireland’, HJ (1993)
T.C. Barnard
‘The gentrification of eighteenth-century Ireland’, Eighteenth-Century
Ireland (1997)
R. Foster
‘History and the Irish Question’, in Paddy and Mr Punch: connections in
English and Irish history (1993)
M.Hechter
Internal colonialism: the Celtic fringe in British national development
(1975)
I. McBride
‘Reclaiming the rebellion: 1798 in 1998’, IHS (1999)
(b) General histories; mainly eighteenth century
J. Bardon
A history of Ulster (1992)
T. Bartlett & D.W. Hayton (ed.) Penal era and golden age, 1690-1800 (1979)
T. Bartlett
Ireland: a history (2010)
J.C. Beckett
The making of modern Ireland, 1603-1923 (1966)
D. G. Boyce & A. O’Day (ed.) The making of modern Irish history (1996)
S.J. Connolly
Divided kingdom: Ireland 1630-1800 (2008)
S.J. Connolly
Religion, law and power: making of Protestant Ireland 1660-1760 (1992)
D. Dickson
New foundations: Ireland 1660-1800 (1990)
R.F. Foster
Modern Ireland 1600-1972 (1988)
D.W. Hayton
Ireland after the glorious revolution 1692-1715 (1976)
I. McBride
Eighteenth-century Ireland: the isle of slaves (2010)
60
R.B. McDowell
Ireland in the age of imperialism and revolution, 1760-1800 (1979)
T.W. Moody & W.E. Vaughan (ed.) A new history of Ireland, Vol 4: 1691-1800 (1986)
(c) General histories; mainly nineteenth century
P. Bew
D.G. Boyce
D.G. Boyce (ed)
D.G. Boyce
S.J. Connolly
V. Crossman
* K.T. Hoppen
K.T. Hoppen
A. Jackson
* A. Jackson
J. Lee
F.S.L. Lyons
F.S.L. Lyons
O. Macdonagh
T. McDonough (ed.)
Ireland: the politics of enmity 1789-2006 (2007)
Nineteenth-century Ireland: the search for stability (1990)
The revolution in Ireland 1879-1923 (1988)
Nationalism in Ireland (1982; 2nd edn, 1991)
Religion and society in nineteenth-century Ireland (1985)
Local government in nineteenth-century Ireland (1994)
Ireland since 1800: conflict and conformity (1989)
Elections, politics, and society in Ireland 1832-85 (1984)
Ireland, 1798-1998 (1999)
Home rule: an Irish history 1800-2000 (2004)
The modernisation of Irish society 1848-1918 (1973)
Ireland since the famine (revised edn. 1973)
Culture and anarchy in Ireland 1890-1939 (1982)
States of mind: a study of Anglo-Irish conflict 1780-1980 (1982)
Was Ireland a colony? economics, politics and culture in Nineteenth-Century
Ireland (Dublin, 2005)
R.B. McDowell
Public opinion and government policy in Ireland, 1801-46 (1952)
G. O’Tuathaigh
Ireland before the famine 1798-1848 (1972)
W.E. Vaughan (ed) A new history of Ireland: Vol. 5: Ireland under the union, I, 1800-70 (1989)
W.E. Vaughan (ed) A new history of Ireland: 5: Ireland under the union, II, 1870-1921 (1996)
(d) Politics before 1780
T. Barnard
R.E. Burns
D.W. Hayton
D.W. Hayton (ed.)
Improving Ireland: projectors, prophets and profiteers 1641-1786 (2008)
Irish parliamentary politics in the 18th century, 1700-60 (2 vols, 1990)
‘Walpole and Ireland’, in J. Black (ed.), Britain in the age of Walpole (1984)
‘The Irish parliament in the 18th century: the long apprenticeship’, Parl Hist
(2001), special volume
D.W. Hayton
Ruling Ireland 1685-1742: politics, politicians and parties (2004)
F.G. James
Ireland in the empire, 1688-1770 (1973)
C.I. McGrath
The making of the eighteenth-century Irish constitution: government,
Parliament and the revenue 1692-1714 (2000)
G. O’Brien (ed.)
Parliament, politics and people: eighteenth-century Irish history (1989)
J.G. Simms
War and politics in Ireland 1649-1730 (1986)
D. Szechi & D. Hayton ‘John Bull’s other kingdoms: the English government of Scotland and
Ireland’, in C. Jones (ed.), Britain in the first age of party (1987)
(e) Religion and national identity in the eighteenth century
T.C. Barnard
A New Anatomy of Ireland: the Irish Protestants, 1649-1770 (2003)
T.C. Barnard
Improving Ireland: projectors, prophets and profiteers 1641-1786 (2008)
P. Brooke
Ulster Presbyterianism: the historical perspective (1987)
T. Claydon & I. McBride (ed.) Protestantism and national identity: Britain and Ireland, c.1650c.1850 (1998)
L. Cullen
‘Catholics under the penal laws’, Eighteenth-Century Ireland (1986)
61
D.W. Hayton
‘Anglo-Irish attitudes: changing perceptions of national identity among the
Protestant Ascendancy, 1690-1750’, Studies in 18th-Century Culture (1987)
J.R. Hill
‘Popery and Protestantism, civil and religious liberty: the disputed lessons of
Irish history 1690-1812’, P&P (1988)
J.R. Hill
From patriots to Unionists: Dublin civic politics and Irish Protestant patriotism
1660-1840 (1997)
P. Higgins
A nation of politicians: gender, patriotism and political culture in late
eighteenth-century Ireland (2010)
M. MacCurtain & M. O’Dowd (ed.) Women in early modern Ireland (1991)
I. McBride
Scripture politics: Ulster Presbyterianism and Irish radicalism in the late
eighteenth century (1998)
J. McMinn
‘A weary patriot: Swift and the formation of Anglo-Irish identity’, EighteenthCentury Ireland (1987)
D.W. Miller
‘Presbyterianism and “modernisation” in Ulster’, P&P (1978)
T.P. Power & K. Whelan (ed.) Endurance and emergence: Catholics in Ireland in the 18th-century
(1990)
(f) Revolution and Union, 1780-1815
T. Bartlett
T. Bartlett
G.C. Bolton
M. Brown et al. (ed.)
N. Curtin
The fall and rise of the Irish nation: Catholic question 1690-1830 (1992)
‘An end to moral economy: Irish militia disturbances of 1793’, P&P (1983)
The passing of the Irish Act of Union (1966)
The Irish Act of Union: bicentennial essays (2003)
‘The transformation of the United Irishmen into a mass-based organisation
1794-96’, IHS (1984)
N. Curtin
The United Irishmen: popular politics in Ulster and Dublin 1791-1798 (1994)
D. Dickson & H. Gough (ed.) Ireland and the French revolution (1990)
D. Dickson et al. (ed.) The United Irishmen (1993)
M. Elliott
Partners in revolution: the United Irishmen and France (1982)
M. Elliott
Wolfe Tone: prophet of Irish independence (1989)
P.M. Geoghegan
The Irish Act of Union (2001)
P. Jupp & E. Magennis (ed.) Crowds in Ireland, c. 1720-1920 (2000)
J. Kelly
‘The origins of the Act of Union, 1650-1800’, IHS (1987)
J. Kelly
Prelude to Union: Anglo-Irish politics in the 1780s (1992)
D. Mansergh
Grattan’s failure: parliamentary opposition and the people in Ireland, 17771800(2005)
P. Mirala
Freemasonry in Ulster, 1783-1813 (2008)
G. O’Brien
Anglo-Irish politics in the age of Grattan and Pitt (1987)
G. O’Brien
‘Illusion and reality in late 18th-century politics’, Eighteenth-Century Ireland
(1988)
T. Pakenham
The year of liberty (1982)
J. Smyth
The men of no property: Irish radicals and popular politics in the late
eighteenth century (1992)
A.T.Q. Stewart
A deeper silence: the hidden roots of the United Irish movement (1993)
(g) The O’Connell era
T. Bartlett
The fall and rise of the Irish nation: the Catholic question 1690-1830 (1992)
62
J. Bew
The glory of being Britons: civic unionism in 19th-century Belfast (2008)
D. Bowen
The Protestant crusade in Ireland 1800-70 (1978)
D. Hempton & M. Hill Evangelical Protestantism in Ulster society 1740-1890 (1992)
K.T. Hoppen
‘An incorporating union? British politicians and Ireland 1800-1830’, EHR
(2008)
B. Jenkins
Era of emancipation: British government of Ireland 1812-30 (1988)
D.A. Kerr
Peel, priests and politics: Sir Robert Peel’s administration and the Roman
Catholic Church in Ireland 1841-6 (1982)
D.A. Kerr
‘A nation of beggars?’: priests, people, and politics 1846-1852 (1994)
K.B. Nowlan
The politics of repeal: a study of the relations between Britain and Ireland 184150 (1965)
M.R. O’Connell (ed) Daniel O’Connell: political pioneer (1991)
O. MacDonagh
Daniel O’Connell 1775-1847 (2 vols., 1988-9)
O. MacDonagh
The emancipist: Daniel O’Connell 1830-47 (1989)
A. Macintyre
The liberator: Daniel O’Connell and the Irish party 1830-47 (1965)
F. O’Ferrall
Daniel O’Connell (1981)
F. O’Ferrall
Catholic emancipation: Daniel O’Connell and the birth of Irish democracy
1820-30 (1985)
H. Senior
Orangeism in Ireland and Britain 1795-1836 (1966)
(h) The politics of the famine
R. Davis
J.S. Donnelly
P Gray
C. O Grada
C. Poirteir (ed)
C. Woodham-Smith
The Young Ireland movement (1987)
‘The great famine: its interpreters, old and new’, History Ireland (1993)
Famine, land & politics: British government & Irish society 1843-1850 (1999)
The great Irish famine (1989)
The great Irish famine (1995)
The great hunger: Ireland 1845-1849 (1962)
(i) Nationalism and politics after the famine
P. Bew
Land and the national question in Ireland, 1858-82 (1978)
P. Bew
C.S. Parnell (1980)
D.G. Boyce & A. O’Day (ed.) Parnell in perspective (1991)
E.F. Biagini
British democracy and Irish nationalism 1878-1906 (2007)
D.G. Boyce
Nationalism in Ireland (1982; 2nd edn, 1991)
R.V. Comerford
The Fenians in context (1985)
R.F. Foster
Charles Stewart Parnell: the man and his family (1979)
T. Garvin
The evolution of Irish nationalist politics (1981)
T. Garvin
Nationalist revolutionaries in Ireland, 1858-1928 (1987)
M. Kelly
‘Irish nationalist opinion and the British Empire in the 1850s and 1860s’, P&P
(2009)
M. Kelly
‘Irish nationalism and the disciplining of dissent’, in F.McGarry & J.McConnel,
The Black Hand of Irish Republicanism: Fenianism in modern Ireland (2009)
M. Kelly
‘Irish nationalism’, in Languages of politics in nineteenth-century Britain, ed. D.
Craig & J. Thompson (2013)
T.W. Moody
Davitt and Irish revolution, 1846-82 (1981)
B. O’Cathaoir
John Blake Dillon, Young Irelander (1990)
A. O’Day
The English face of Irish nationalism: Parnellite politics 1880-6 (1977)
C.H.E. Philpin (ed) Nationalism and popular protest in Ireland (1987)
63
C. Reid
C. Townshend
D. Thornley
‘An Experiment in Constructive Unionism’: Isaac Butt, Home Rule and
Federalist Political Thought during the 1870s’, EHR (2014)
Political violence in Ireland since 1848 (1983)
Isaac Butt and home rule (1964)
23. Britain and Europe
As her political, military and economic power grew through the eighteenth century,
Britain naturally had extensive dealings with Europe, through wars, diplomacy and
trade. The determinants of foreign policy included concerns with religion, dynasty,
commerce, empire, security, and balance of power. How did these factors shape
attitudes to different European powers and situations? What role did foreign policy play
in party politics? Who had influence over foreign policy? Was it the privileged arena of
a few aristocratic ministers (and their royal boss) or did wider ‘interests’ have a role in
shaping policy? How were particular policies received and interpreted by society at
large? How far did victory – such as in the Seven Years’ War – and catastrophe – like
the loss of America - lead to a reconstruction of foreign policy and of perception of
Britain’s standing on the continent? Did the course of foreign relations and policy
shape a British national identity? More broadly, was there a coherent British discourse
about Europe? In fact, was Europe viewed differently in England, in Scotland and in
Ireland? How did the prolonged experience of war with revolutionary and Napoleonic
France, and then Britain’s nineteenth-century status as an ‘island refuge’ for dissidents
from continental regimes, help to define British conceptions of nationhood and
subjecthood? What part did Britain play in the peace of 1815 and what did she gain by
it, both in Europe and beyond? What were now the diplomatic, ideological and
commercial objectives of successive foreign secretaries? Why did the integrity of the
Ottoman Empire emerge as an important British interest, and why did Britain enter the
Crimean War, only to change her policy in the East in the 1870s? How did a country
that boasted of its liberalism seek to maintain the balance of power in the west until
1848, cope with the unstable international politics of the 1850s and 1860s, and react to
German and Italian unification? On what occasions did the course of domestic politics
turn on issues in foreign and imperial policy? In what ways did revival of the fear of
invasion after 1850 affect strategic priorities? How far did popular attitudes to foreign
intervention, and constitutional movements abroad influence policy?
See particularly Topic 13 on patriotism and national identity, which deals with
overlapping themes.
(a) Britain’s relations with Europe
Dom. A. Bellenger
* J. Black
* J. Black
J.S. Bromley
S. Burrows
‘Fearless resting place: the exiled French clergy in Great Britain, 1789-1815’, in
K. Carpenter and P. Mansel (ed.), The French émigrés in Europe and the struggle
against Revolution, 1789-1814 (1999)
Convergence or divergence: Britain and the continent (1994)
Natural and necessary enemies: Anglo-French relations in the eighteenth century
(1986)
‘Britain and Europe in the eighteenth century’, History (1981)
French exile journalism and European politics 1792-1814 (2000)
64
K. Carpenter
T. Claydon
* L. Colley
S. Conway
S. Conway
F. Crouzet
J.R Dinwiddy
David Feldman
J.A. Garrard
Clive Holmes
C. Holmes
D.J. Jeremy
E. V. Macleod
R. Morieux
M. Peters
M. Philp
Bernard Porter
Bernard Porter
Bernard Porter
H.M. Scott
F.B. Smith
C. Smout
E. Sparrow
Daniel Statt
*Daniel Statt
Refugees of the French Revolution: émigrés in London, 1789-1802 (1999)
Europe and the making of England 1660-1760 (2007)
Britons: forging the nation 1707-1837 (1992)
‘Continental connections: Britain and Europe in the eighteenth century’, History
(2005)
Britain, Ireland and Continental Europe in the eighteenth century: similarities,
connections and identities (2011)
‘The second hundred years’ war: some reflections’, French History (1996)
‘The use of the Crown’s power of deportation under the Aliens Act, 1793-1826’,
in J.R. Dinwiddy, Radicalism and reform in Britain, 1780-1850 (1992)
Englishmen and Jews (1994)
The English and immigration 1880-1910 (1971)
John Bull’s island: immigration and British society 1871-1971 (1988)
Anti-semitism in British society 1876-1939 (1979)
‘Damming the flood: British government efforts to check the outflow of
technicians and machinery, 1780-1830’, Business History Review, 51 (1977)
A war of ideas: British attitudes to the wars against revolutionary France, 17921802 (1998)
‘Diplomacy from below and belonging. Fishermen and cross-Channel relations in
the eighteenth century’, P&P (2009)
‘Early Hanoverian consciousness: empire or Europe?’, EHR (2007)
Resisting Napoleon: The British response to the threat of invasion, 1797–
1815 (2006).
The refugee question in mid-Victorian politics (1980)
Plots and paranoia: a history of political espionage in Britain 1790-1988 (1989)
‘The Freiheit prosecutions 1881-2’, HJ (1980)
‘The second “hundred years war”, 1689-1815’, HJ (1992)
‘British post-office espionage in 1844’, Historical Studies (1970)
‘The Culture of migration: Scots as Europeans 1500-1800’, History Workshop
Journal (1995)
‘The Alien Office, 1792-1806’, HJ (1990)
‘The City of London and the controversy over immigration, 1660-1722’, HJ,
(1990)
Foreigners and Englishmen: the controversy over immigration and population,
1660-1760 (1995)
(b) Foreign policy: 1688-1815
i. General works
D.A. Baugh
J. Black
J. Black
J. Black (ed)
J. Black
J. Black
J. Black
D. French
P. Langford
‘Great Britain’s “blue-water” policy, 1689-1815’, IHR (1988)
A system of ambition: British foreign policy 1660-1793 (1991)
Parliament and foreign policy in the eighteenth century (2004)
Knights errant and true Englishmen: foreign policy 1600- 1800 (1989) [essays by
Blanning & Haase, Scott]
‘British foreign policy in the eighteenth century’, JBS (1987)
‘Britain’s foreign alliances in the 18th century’, Albion (1988)
Debating foreign policy in eighteenth-century Britain (2011)
The British way in warfare 1688-2000 (1990)
Modern British foreign policy: the 18th century, 1688-1815 (1976)
65
* D. McKay & H.M. Scott The rise of the great powers (1983) [chs 2, 4, 6]
W. Mulligan & B. Simms (eds) The primacy of foreign policy in British history 1660-2000 (2010) [esp
articles by A. Thompson and B. Simms]
M. Peters
‘Early Hanoverian consciousness: empire or Europe?’, EHR (2007)
N. Rodger
The command of the ocean: a naval history of Britain 1649-1815 (2004)
* H.M. Scott
The birth of the great power system 1740-1815 (2005)
B. Simms & T. Riotte (ed.) The Hanoverian dimension in British history, 1714-1837 (2007)
B. Simms
Three victories and a defeat: rise and fall of the first British empire, 1714-83 (2007)
ii. From the War of the Spanish Succession to the Seven Years’ War
F. Anderson
M.S. Anderson
D. Baugh
D.C. Coleman
G.C. Gibbs
G.C. Gibbs
G.C. Gibbs
W. Mediger
R. Middleton
K.W. Schweizer
F.A.J. Szabo
A.C. Thompson
Crucible of war: the seven years’ war and the fate of the empire (2000)
The War of the Austrian Succession (1995)
The Global Seven Years War 1754-1763 (2011).
‘Politics and economics in the age of Anne : the case of the Anglo-French trade
treaty of 1713”, in Id. et A.H. John, eds., Trade, government and economy in preindustrial England (1976).
‘Parliament and foreign policy in the age of Stanhope and Walpole’, EHR (1962)
‘The revolution in foreign policy’, in G. Holmes (ed.), Britain after the glorious
revolution (1969)
‘English attitudes to Hanover and the Hanoverian succession in the first half of the
eighteenth century’, in A.M. Birke and K. Kluxen (ed.), England and Hanover
(1986)
‘Great Britain, Hanover and the rise of Prussia’, in R. Hatton and M.S. Anderson,
(ed.), Studies in diplomatic history: essays in memory of David Bayne Horn (1970)
The bells of victory: the Pitt-Newcastle ministry and the seven years’ war (1985)
England, Prussia and the seven years’ war (1989)
The Seven Years War in Europe (2008)
Britain, Hanover and the Protestant interest 1688-1756 (2006)
iii. From the Peace of Paris to the Congress of Vienna
See also the following topic on the British Empire.
T.C.W. Blanning
T.C.W. Blanning
Witt Bowden
M. Duffy
J. Ehrman
M. Roberts
H.M. Scott
P. Schroeder
S. Semmel
B. Simms
‘ “That horrid Electorate” or “Ma patrie germanique”? George III, Hanover and
Fürstenbund of 1785’, HJ (1977)
The origins of the French revolutionary wars (1986) [chs 4 and 5]
‘The English Manufacturers and the Commercial Treaty of 1786 with France’,
AHR (1919).
Soldiers, sugar and seapower: the British expeditions to the West Indies and the
war against revolutionary France (1987)
The British government and commercial negotiations with Europe 1783–
1793 (1962)
Splendid isolation 1763-1780 (1970)
British foreign policy in the age of the American revolution (1990)
The Transformation of European Politics, 1763-1848 (1994).
Napoleon and the British (2004)
‘Britain and Napoleon’, HJ (1998)
66
(c) Foreign policy, 1815-86
i.
General works
C.J. Bartlett (ed)
Britain pre-eminent: studies of Britain’s world influence in the nineteenth
century (1969)
C.J. Bartlett
‘Britain and the European balance 1815-48’ in A. Sked (ed), Europe’s
balance of power 1815-48 (1979)
K. Bourne (ed)
The foreign policy of Victorian England 1830-1902 (1970)
S.J. Brown
Providence and empire: religion, society and politics in the United Kingdom,
1815-1914 (2008)
* M. Chamberlain
Pax Britannica? British foreign policy 1789-1914 (1988)
P. Hayes
Modern British foreign policy: the nineteenth century 1814-80 (1975)
C.H.D. Howard
Britain and the casus belli 1822-1902: a study of Britain’s international
position from Canning to Salisbury (1974)
A.H. Imlah
Economic elements in the pax Britannica (1958)
* P. Kennedy
The realities behind diplomacy: background influences in British external policy
1865-1980 (1981)
P. Kennedy
The rise and fall of British naval mastery (1976)
W. Mulligan & B. Simms (eds) The primacy of foreign policy in British history 1660-2000 (2010)
[esp. articles by A. Howe, D. Bell, T. Otte, P. Readman]
T.G. Otte
The Foreign Office mind: the making of British foreign policy, 1865-1914
(2011)
J. Parry
The politics of patriotism: English liberalism, national identity and Europe,
1830-1886 (2006)
D.C.M. Platt
Finance, trade and politics in British foreign policy, 1815-1914 (1968)
B. Porter
Britain, Europe and the world 1850-1986: delusions of grandeur (1987)
K.M. Wilson (ed)
British foreign secretaries and foreign policy 1854-1914 (1987)
ii. Studies of specific regions and periods
D.E.D. Beales
K. Bourne
M. Chamberlain
G. Clayton
G.B. Henderson
P. Kennedy
R.T. Shannon
D. Southgate
M. Swartz
A.J.P. Taylor
M. Taylor
H.W.V. Temperley
C.K. Webster
C.K. Webster
England and Italy 1859-60 (1961)
Palmerston: the early years 1784-1841 (1982)
British foreign policy in the age of Palmerston (1980) [with documents]
Britain and the Eastern question from Missolonghi to Gallipoli (1971)
Crimean war diplomacy and other essays (1947)
The rise of the Anglo-German antagonism 1860-1914 (1980)
Gladstone and the Bulgarian agitation (1963)
‘The most English minister’: policies and politics of Palmerston (1966)
The politics of foreign policy in the age of Gladstone and Disraeli (1985)
The trouble-makers: dissent over foreign policy 1792-1939 (1957)
‘The 1848 revolutions and the British empire’, P&P (2000)
The foreign policy of Canning 1822-27 (1925)
The foreign policy of Castlereagh 1815-22 (2 vols., 1947 edn)
The foreign policy of Palmerston 1830-41: Britain, the liberal movement
and the eastern question (2 vols., 1951)
67
24. Britain and Empire
The ‘new imperial history’ which has developed in the last thirty years has modified the
understanding of the relations between Britain and its Empire in the eighteenth century.
New questions have been raised about the long-established distinction between the first
and the second British Empires. What was the nature of the political and constitutional
relationship between Britain and its colonies? What were the repercussions of imperial
conquest on British identities? Was the relationship of Scotland and Ireland to the
British Empire different from England’s and, if so, how? What was the significance of
the loss of the American colonies in 1783, in the short term and in the long term? How
did the relationship between Britain and its American colonies compare with its
relationship with its Indian colonies? Has the role of Empire on political debates in the
metropolis been exaggerated? How prominent was the consciousness of imperial
issues among British men and women? How did the prolonged debates about slavery
affect attitudes to empire? To what extent was British foreign and military policy, in
the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, shaped by imperial as distinct from European
considerations? Do you agree with those historians who argue that Britain acquired its
second (nineteenth-century) empire in a ‘fit of absence of mind’? Or with those who
believe that British public culture was defined (at whatever level of consciousness) by
the country’s imperial role? How powerful were the anti-imperial elements in public
life? Why did ‘imperialism’ become a controversial question after 1874, and why did
empire apparently feature so rarely in political debate before then? Why did Britain
occupy Egypt in 1882 and what were the implications of this for her diplomatic
freedom of manoeuvre?
NB. Papers 21 (Empires and World History) and 22 (American history) deal with the
acquisition, retention, and internal governance of overseas territories. Paper 5 deals
with imperial problems primarily as they had an impact on British politics and culture.
(a) The eighteenth century
AmHR Forum
‘The New British History in Atlantic Perspective’, AmHR (1999) [articles
by D. Armitage, Ned C. Landsman, Eliga H. Gould]
D. Armitage ed.
Theories of empire, 1450-1800 (1998)
D. Armitage & M. Braddick (ed.) The British Atlantic world (2002)
P.J. Cain & A.G. Hopkins British imperialism: innovation and expansion 1688-1914 (1993)
N. Canny & A. Pagden (ed.) Colonial identity in the Atlantic world 1500-1800 (1987)
N. Canny
Kingdom and colony: Ireland in the Atlantic world 1560-1800 (1988)
M. Daunton & R. Halpern (ed.) Empire and others: British encounters with indigenous peoples
1600-1830 (1999)
L. Colley
Britons: forging the nation 1707-1837 (1992)
L. Colley
Captives: Britain, empire and the world 1600-1850 (2002)
T. Devine
Scotland’s empire 1600-1815 (2003)
N. Harding
Hanover and the British empire 1700-1837 (2007)
V.T. Harlow
The founding of the second British empire 1763-1793 (2 vols, 1952-64)
S. Howe
Ireland and empire: colonial legacies in Irish history and culture (2002)
B. Lenman
Britain’s colonial wars 1688-1783 (2001)
*P.J. Marshall (ed.)
The Oxford history of the British Empire. Vol 2: the eighteenth century (1998)
P.J. Marshall
‘The first and second British empires: a question of demarcation’, History (1964)
P.J. Marshall
The impeachment of Warren Hastings (1965)
68
P.J. Marshall
P.J. Marshall
P.J. Marshall
M. Ogborn
F. Shyllon
* K. Wilson
Problems of empire: Britain and India, 1757-1813 (1968)
‘A free though conquering people’: eighteenth-century Britain and its empire
(2003)
The making and unmaking of empires: Britain, India and America c. 1750-1783
(2005)
Global live: Britain and the world 1550-1800 (2008)
Black people in Britain 1555-1833 (1977)
The sense of the people: politics, culture and imperialism in England, 1715-85
(1995)
(b) From the War of the Spanish Succession (1702) to the War of the American Independence
(1776)
J.L. Bullion
‘British ministers and American resistance to the Stamp Act, October-December
1765’, William & Mary Quarterly (1992)
I.R. Christie & B.W. Labaree Empire or independence, 1760-1776: a British-American dialogue on the
coming of the American revolution (1976)
*B. Harris
‘“American idols”: empire, war and the middling ranks in mid-eighteenth-century
Britain’, P&P (1996)
P. Mapp
‘British culture and the changing character of mid-eighteenth-century British
empire’, in W.R. Hofstra (ed.), Cultures in conflict: the Seven Years’ War in North
America (2007)
S. Pincus
‘Addison’s Empire: Whig Conceptions of Empire in the Early Eighteenth
Century’, Parl. Hist. (2012)
P.D.G. Thomas
British politics and the Stamp Act crisis, 1763-7 (1975)
P.D.G. Thomas
The Townshend duties crisis: American revolution, 1767-1773 (1987)
P.D.G. Thomas
Tea party to independence: the American revolution, 1773-1776 (1991)
P.D.G. Thomas
Revolution in America: Britain and the colonies, 1763-1776 (1992)
N. Tracy
Navies, deterrence, and American independence: Britain and sea power in the
1760s and 1770s (1988)
(c) The American Revolution and its impact on British politics
C.A. Bayly
C.A. Bayly
Imperial meridian: the British empire and the world 1780-1830 (1989)
The birth of the modern world 1780-1914: global connections and comparisons
(2004)
C. Bonwick
English radicals and the American revolution (1977)
H.V. Bowen
‘British conceptions of global empire, 1756-83’, JICH (1988)
J.E. Bradley
Religion, revolution and English radicalism: non-conformity in eighteenthcentury politics and society (1990)
J.E. Bradley
Popular politics and the American revolution in England (1986)
J. Brewer
Party ideology and popular politics at the accession of George III (1976)
S. Conway
The American War of Independence 1775-1783 (1995)
S. Conway
The British Isles and the war of American independence (2000)
J.W. Derry
English politics and the American revolution (1976)
H.T. Dickinson (ed.) Britain and the American Revolution (1998)
B. Donoughue
British politics and the American revolution: 1773-1775 (1964)
D.K. Fieldhouse
‘British imperialism in the late eighteenth century’, in K. Robinson & F. Madden
(ed.), Essays in imperial government (1963)
E.H. Gould
‘American independence and Britain’s counter-revolution’, P&P (1997)
69
E.H. Gould
P. Langford
P. Lawson
P.J. Marshall
D. McKay
V. Morley
J.J. Sainsbury
P.D.G. Thomas
The persistence of empire: British political culture in the age of the American
revolution (2000)
‘Old Whigs, old Tories and the American revolution,’ JICH (1980)
Imperial challenge: Quebec & Britain in the American revolution (1989)
‘Empire and authority in the later eighteenth century’, JICH (1987)
‘Direction and purpose in British imperial policy 1783-6’, HJ (1974)
Irish opinion and the American Revolution (2003)
Disaffected patriots: London supporters of revolutionary America (1987)
‘George III and the American revolution’, History (1985)
(d) Religion, empire and the anti-slavery movement
R. Anstey
C.L. Brown
S. Drescher
T. Glasson
C. Hall
T.C. Holt
R. Strong
Michael Taylor
The Atlantic slave trade and British abolition 1760-1810 (1975)
Moral capital: foundations of British abolitionism (2006)
‘Whose abolition? popular pressure and the ending of the British slave trade’,
P&P (1994)
Mastering Christianity: missionary Anglicanism and slavery in the Atlantic world
(2011)
Macaulay and son: architects of imperial Britain (2012)
‘Explaining abolition’, J Soc Hist (1990)
Anglicanism and the British Empire, c. 1700-1850 (2007), esp chs 2 & 3
‘Conservative political economy and the problem of colonial slavery, 1823–1833’
HJ (2014)
(e) The nineteenth century
C.A. Bayly
J. Belich
Imperial meridian: the British empire and the world 1780-1830 (1989)
Replenishing the earth: the settler revolution and the rise of the Anglo-World,
1783-1939 (2011)
D. Bell
‘Empire and international relations in Victorian political thought’, HJ (2006)
P.J. Cain
Economic foundations of British overseas expansion 1815-1914 (1980)
P.J. Cain & A.G. Hopkins British imperialism: innovation and expansion 1688-1914 (1993)
L. Colley
Captives: Britain, empire and the world 1600-1850 (2002)
J. Darwin
The empire project: the rise and fall of the British world-system 1830-1970 (2009)
C.C. Eldridge
England’s mission: the imperial idea in the age of Gladstone & Disraeli (1973)
J. Gallagher & R. Robinson ‘The imperialism of free trade’, EcHR (1953) [and replies by MacDonagh,
EcHR (1961) and Platt, EcHR (1968)]
C. Hall
Civilising subjects: metropole and colony in the English imagination, 1830-1867
(2002)
R. Hyam
Britain’s imperial century 1815-1914 (1976)
R. Koebner & H.D. Schmidt Imperialism: the story and significance of a political word (1964)
P. O’Brien
‘Costs and benefits of British expansion’, P&P (1988) [and comment by P.
Kennedy P&P (1989)]
P. Padfield
Maritime power and the struggle for freedom: naval campaigns that shaped the
modern world 1788-1851 (2003)
A.N. Porter (ed)
The Oxford history of the British empire: Vol 3 The nineteenth century (1999)
A.N. Porter
Religion versus empire? British Protestant missionaries and overseas expansion,
1700-1914 (2004)
B. Porter
The absent-minded imperialists: empire, society and culture in Britain (2004)
B. Porter
The lion’s share: a short history of British imperialism 1850-1983 (1984)
70
A.S. Thompson
A.S. Thompson
J. Wilson
K.M. Wilson
Imperial Britain: the empire in British politics (2000)
The empire strikes back: the impact of imperialism on Britain from the midnineteenth century (2005)
‘The silence of empire: imperialism and India’, in Languages of politics in
nineteenth-century Britain, ed. D. Craig & J. Thompson (2013)
Imperialism and nationalism in the middle east 1882-1982 (1983) [especially
Wilson’s essay on ‘Constantinople or Cairo?’]
25. Languages of politics: an overview
Language is part of the political process. Politicians and citizens use language to explain
their ambitions, legitimate their enterprises, identify their opponents and define opposing
viewpoints. Of course, some thinkers and writers are interested in answering abstract
questions about the nature of politics and society and developing comprehensive
arguments: such arguments are studied in the political thought papers of the Tripos. The
political history papers look at how language is used in everyday political life, both in
formal institutions, such as Parliament, and in the wider public sphere, as in the press and
public speeches. As noted for the constitutional topics, ideas about the ‘balanced’ or
‘mixed’ constitution (with its components, monarchy, aristocracy, democracy) or
alternatives to it (the idea of a republic) were vigorously debated. Key terms of political
allegiance and recruitment have complex meanings: Whig and Tory, Court and Country,
conservative, radical and liberal. It is common for Tripos papers to ask questions which
require a sense of the coherence or otherwise of such party or factional or group identities,
and how they changed over time. Were there definite traditions of thought and principle
(perhaps sometimes separate from or transcending party)? To what extent were political
actors constrained by them? Other terms were also central to political discussion, such as
liberty, corruption, independence, character, and patriotism - though politicians who used
them often did not mean the same things by them. It is helpful to think about the usage
and meaning of such concepts whenever one encounters them.
This topic can be studied on its own, or you can use some of the books to enrich and
enhance your understanding of the topics in the chronological section of the list, and to
make connections between them and trace continuities across time.
Some of these key terms could be related to larger frameworks of religious understanding:
see Topic 20 on religion and politics. Some were gendered: see Topic 19. The word
‘patriotism’ had a particularly complex evolution: see also Topic 13 on national identity.
R. Browning
J. Burrow
Political and constitutional ideas of the Court Whigs (1982)
Whigs and liberals: continuity and change in English political thought
(1988)
S. Burtt
Virtue transformed: political argument in Britain, 1688-1740 (1992)
J.C.D. Clark
The language of liberty 1660-1832: political discourse and social dynamics in
the Anglo-American world (1993)
Stefan Collini
‘The idea of “character” in Victorian political thought’, TRHS (1985)
S. Collini, R. Whatmore, & B Young (ed.) Economy, polity, and society 1750-1950 (2000)
S. Collini, R. Whatmore, & B Young (ed.) History, religion, and culture 1750-1950 (2000)
S. J. Connolly(ed. ) Political ideas in eighteenth-century Ireland (2000)
71
David Craig
‘The crowned republic? Monarchy and anti-monarchy in Britain,1760-1901’, HJ
(2003)
D. Craig & J. Thompson Languages of politics in nineteenth-century Britain (2013)
H. Cunningham
‘The language of patriotism’ in R. Samuel (ed), Patriotism: the making and
unmaking of British national identity (1989: Vol. 1)
H.T. Dickinson
Liberty and property: political ideology in 18th-century Britain (1977)
M. Goldie & R. Wokler (ed.) The Cambridge history of 18th-century political thought (2006)
M. Goldsmith
Private vices, public benefits: Bernard Mandeville’s social and political thought
(1985)
A. Goodrich
‘Understanding a language of ‘aristocracy’’, HJ (2013)
N. Gossman
‘Republicanism in nineteenth-century England’, IRSH (1980)
E.H. Gould
‘To strengthen the king’s hands: dynastic legitimacy, militia reform and ideas of
national unity in England 1745-1760’, HJ (1991)
J.A.W. Gunn
Beyond liberty and property (1983)
R. Hamowy
‘Cato’s Letters, John Locke, and the republican paradigm’, HPT (1990)
B. Hilton
The age of atonement: the influence of evangelicalism on social and
economic thought 1795-1865 (1988)
Istvan Hont, Jealousy of Trade (2005), introduction
J.P. Kenyon
Revolution principles: the politics of party 1689-1720 (1977)
L.E. Klein
Shaftesbury and the culture of politeness (1994)
I. Kramnick
Bolingbroke and his circle: the politics of nostalgia (1968)
I. Kramnick
Republicanism and bourgeois radicalism (1990)
A.D. Kriegel
‘Liberty and whiggery in early nineteenth-century England’, JMH (1980)
M. Ledger-Lomas
‘The character of Pitt the Younger and party politics, 1830-1860’, HJ (2004)
P. Mandler
Aristocratic government in the age of reform: whigs & liberals 1830-52 (1990)
P. Mandler (ed.)
Liberty and authority in Victorian Britain (2006)
P.N. Miller
Defining the common good: empire, religion, philosophy in the eighteenth century
(1994)
N. Phillipson & Q. Skinner (ed.) Political discourse in early modern Britain (1993)
J.G.A. Pocock
The Machiavellian moment: Florentine political thought and the Atlantic
republican tradition (1975)
J.G.A. Pocock
‘Varieties of whiggism’ in Pocock, Virtue, commerce, and history (1985)
J.G.A. Pocock
Virtue, commerce, and history (1985)
J.G.A. Pocock (ed.) The varieties of British political thought 1500-1800 (1993), part III
F.K. Prochaska
The republic of Britain, 1776-2000 (2000)
C. Robbins
The eighteenth-century commonwealthman: studies in the transmission,
development and circumstance of English liberal thought 1660-1780 (1959)
J.J. Sack
From Jacobite to Conservative: reaction and orthodoxy in Britain c17601832 (1993)
J. Sekora
Luxury: the concept in western thought, Eden to Smollett (1977)
R.J. Smith
The gothic bequest: medieval institutions in British thought, 1688-1863 (1987)
D. Spadafora
The idea of progress in eighteenth-century Britain (1990)
D. Wahrman
Imagining the middle class: political representation of class 1780-1840 (1995)
72