John Brewer

Early modern conceptions of property

In 1982 Neil McKendrick, John Brewer and J.H. Plumb helped to open up a new area of social and cultural history by publishing The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England (London, Europa). There had been earlier studies, but in economic history consumption had clearly caught the imagination less than production. Social historians had focused on the living standards of those who were supposed barely able to survive. But mass production at one end of the economy presupposes mass consumption at least somewhere else, in a domestic or foreign market, among workers or other classes. Production was in fact the vantage point of much early research in the history of consumption. The range and quality of goods produced gave at least some information about the buying public. As the title of the seminal work by McKendrick, Brewer and Plumb indicates, one of the questions which prompted the history of consumption is how (and when) mass consumption originated. Once, long ago, goods were typically produced for known customers, on demand and to their specifications, as single items or in small quantities, by workers they knew personally. Mass production, on the other hand, is production in large quantities for unknown markets. In the twentieth century, it has been argued, social classes distinguish themselves more by a different style of consumption than by their position at the production site. As research proliferated, the crucial change to a commercial or mass-consumption society, which had initially been thought to have coincided with the Industrial Revolution, was found in every part of the early modern and modern period. Consumption research spread not only in time, but also conceptually, profiting from trends in social history. Probate inventories threw light on the consumer durables people held at death. As research focused on the middle classes and women, two groups were highlighted which were supposed to be more typical consumers than working-class men. Consumption proved to be a gendered field. Cultural history raised questions about the meaning of goods and the mentality involved in buying and appropriating them. The debate was fuelled by a large research project on ‘‘Culture and Consumption in

The Police, public order and the state : policing in Great Britain, Northern Ireland, the Irish Republic, the USA, Israel, South Africa and China

This study identifies trends in public-order policing across a broad sample of seven countries: Britain, Northern Ireland, the Irish Republic, the United States of America, Israel, South Africa and China. It explains why the handling of disorder has become a controversial and topical issue in different parts of the world.

Some Go Backward, Some Go Forward: Police Work in Comparative Perspective@@@Policing the Empire: Government, Authority, and Control, 1830-1940@@@Policing and De-Colonisation: Nationalism, Politics, and the Police, 1917-1965@@@Inside the RUC.@@@On the Mersey Beat: Policing Liverpool Between the Wars@@@The English Police: A Political and Social History@@@Policing as though People Matter@@@Policing in Japan@@@Police as Problem Solvers@@@The Strong Arm of the Law

Strangers policing strangers the nightly round - updo, downdo discipline - more sticks than carrots controlling the street regulating the lower classes troubles - domestics, injuries, race and politics. Appendix: methodology.

The Sinews of Power: War, Money, and the English State, 1688-1783.

Under the later Stuarts, England became a major European military power, English armies and navies grew to an unprecedented size, civilian administration burgeoned and taxation, public borrowing and spending on war reached new heights. This work examines the causes of the emergence in England of this fiscal-military state and the features which distinguished it from European powers. It also charts the effect of these developments on society at large: their impact on the economy, on social structure and politics and their role in developing special interest groups and lobbies. Thus it provided an interpretative framework which links adminstration with politics, public finance with the economy and foreign policy with domestic affairs.

Party Ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession of George III

Part I. Introduction: 1. Hanoverian politics and the 1760s 2. Historiography and method Part II. The Reconfiguration of Politics: 3. Whig and tort 4. Opposition and the proprietary parties 5. From Old Corps to Rockinghamite whigs: the emergence of a party 6. Pitt and patriotism: a case study in political argument 7. Ministerial responsibility and the powers of the Crown Part III. An Alternative Structure of Politics: 8. The press in the 1760s Part IV. Focused Radicalism: 9. Personality, propaganda and ritual: Wilkes and the Wilkites 10. American ideology and British radicalism the case for parliamentary reform Part V. Two Political Nations: 11. The politicians, the press and the public 12. The present discontents party ideology and public unrest.