Roland Quinault

The Industrial Revolution and British Society

The Industrial Revolution and British Society is an original and wide-ranging textbook survey of the principal economic and social aspects of the Industrial Revolution in Britain in the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-centuries. The distinguished international team of contributors each focus on topics at the very centre of scholarly interest, and draw together the prevailing research in an accessible and stimulating manner: the intention throughout is to introduce a broad student readership to important, but less familiar aspects and consequences of the first Industrial Revolution. A variety of different disciplinary skills are employed in the analysis of empirical and conceptual data, and each chapter opens up its subject with indications for further reading. The Industrial Revolution and British Society offers a topical overview on perspectives of this central historical problem, and will be widely used as a course text by teachers in the field.

The Cult of the Centenary, c.1784–1914

Despite recent interest in collective memory, the modern ‘cult of the centenary’ has been neglected by historians. Centennial commemorations of important events or famous people were rare before 1850, but thereafter they increased rapidly in number and scale, both in Britain and throughout the Western world. Centenary commemorations initially grew out of neo-classical culture, but thereafter, their character evolved in response to new political economic and social developments. Centenary celebrations were a barometer of contemporary esteem and reflected popular and elite attitudes to both the past and the present. Centennialized heroes were variously regarded as secular saints, national icons and local tourist attractions. Some commemorations had a lasting influence and the practice still remains popular today.

1848 and Parliamentary Reform

1848 has gone down in history – or rather in history books – as the year when England was different. In that year a wave of revolution on the Continent overthrew constitutions, premiers and even a dynasty but in England, by contrast, the middle classes rallied round the government and helped it preserve the status quo. This interpretation of 1848 has long been the established orthodoxy amongst historians. Asa Briggs took this view thirty years ago and it has lately been endorsed by F. B. Smith and Henry Weisser. Most recently, John Saville, in his book on 1848, has concluded that events in England ‘demonstrated beyond question and doubt, the complete and solid support of the middling strata to the defence of existing institutions’. He claims that ‘the outstanding feature of 1848 was the mass response to the call for special constables to assist the professional forces of state security’ which reflected a closing of ranks among all property owners. Although some historians, notably David Goodway, have recently stressed the vitality of Chartism in 1848 they have not challenged the traditional view that the movement failed to win concessions from the establishment and soon declined. Thus 1848 in England is generally regarded as a terminal date: the last chapter in the history of Chartism as a major movement. Thereafter Britain experienced a period of conservatism – described by one historian as ‘the mid-Victorian calm’–which lasted until the death of Palmerston in 1865.

GLADSTONE AND SLAVERY

William Gladstones views on slavery and the slave trade have received little attention from historians, although he spent much of his early years in parliament dealing with issues related to that subject His stance on slavery echoed that of his father, who was one of the largest slave owners in the British West Indies, and on whom he was dependent for financial support. Gladstone opposed the slave trade but he wanted to improve the condition of the slaves before they were liberated. In 1833, he accepted emancipation because it was accompanied by a period of apprenticeship for the ex-slaves and by financial compensation for the planters. In the 1840s, his defence of the economic interests of the British planters was again evident in his opposition to the foreign slave trade and slave-grown sugar. By the 1850s, however, he believed that the best way to end the slave trade was by persuasion, rather than by force, and that conviction influenced his attitude to the American Civil War and to British colonial policy. As leader of the Liberal party, Gladstone, unlike many of his supporters, showed no enthusiasm for an anti-slavery crusade in Africa. His passionate commitment to liberty for oppressed peoples was seldom evident in his attitude to slavery.

Lord Randolph Churchill and Home Rule

‘If we wish to maintain the Act of Union we must abide by the conditions of the Act of Union.’ Lord Randolph Churchill 1883 ‘It is rather in these old speeches that we find instruction than in anything said at the present day.’ Lord Randolph Churchill 1883 Controversy has always surrounded the Irish policy of Lord Randolph Churchill. In particular, he played an important part in opposing Gladstone’s home rule bill of 1886, when he ‘played the Orange card’. But despite this episode there has been much varied speculation about his real attitude towards home rule. Was he a sincere and consistent opponent of home rule, as his son and his friend, Rosebery, claimed, or was he, as Wilfred Blunt alleged, a secret sympathiser with home rule? Alternatively, did Churchill merely adopt an opportunist attitude towards home rule as Robert Rhodes James has implied? In their recent book, entitled The Governing Passion , A. B. Cooke and J. R. Vincent have produced a new and idiosyncratic interpretation of Churchill’s involvement with Ireland and home rule in the period 1885-6. The purpose of this enquiry is to re-examine these interpretations, especially Cooke and Vincent’s.

London and the Land Question, c .1880–1914

Victorian and Edwardian Britain was the most urbanized country in the world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and there was a distinctly urban aspect to the land question in that period. Yet historians have paid relatively little attention to the urban land question. In the 1950s and early 1960s, Jim Dyos pioneered the scholarly study of Victorian urban history, but he paid little attention to urban politics and none to the land question.1 In 1961, David Reeder, another pioneer, published an article on the politics of urban leaseholds, but he did not follow it up with any more general study of the urban land question.2 In 1976, Roy Douglas published a good general history of the land question from the late Victorian period, but he concentrated mainly on rural rather than urban aspects of the land reform movement.3 In his Property and Politics (1981), Avner Offer examined the urban land issue in the context of legal and economic ideas and developments.4 In 1983, David Englander, Martin Daunton and Philip Waller all published useful books considering various aspects of the urban land question.5 Since then, however, there have been few further studies of the topic, partly because the focus of much Victorian urban history has shifted from economic and political topics to social and cultural ones.

CHURCHILL AND DEMOCRACY

CHURCHILL’S views on democracy – both in theory and in practice – are of interest for many reasons. He played a leading role in the ideological battles between democracy and dictatorship in the first half of the twentieth century and he was one of the principal architects of the modern democratic world order. Yet Churchill was widely regarded, particularly in the middle phase of his career, as a reactionary and anti-democratic figure. This conundrum will be examined by considering Churchill’s attitude to the concept of democracy and democratic reform – both at home and abroad – over his long career. Churchill was born in 1874 when the great majority of adults in Britain were still disenfranchised and he died in 1965 the year when the Voting Rights Act ended electoral racial discrimination in the United States. Thus his life roughly spanned the period during which universal suffrage democracy became the basis of political legitimacy in the western world.

From National to World Metropolis: Governing London, 1750–1850

Abstract Between 1750 and 1850 London grew rapidly in size and importance but remained a conurbation of disparate communities that lacked any unitary local government. The City Corporation was the most democratic local government authority in any British city. In the early Victorian period the Corporation carried out an effective programme of sanitary reform but its reputation was undermined by the lack of constitutional reform. Outside the City, parish vestries remained the principal local authorities throughout the nineteenth century but were increasingly criticised as corrupt, ineffective, oligarchic and sectarian. Parliament devolved many local responsibilities to improvement commissions, which led to some administrative confusion but also to real improvements, notably in regard to sewerage. Public order was maintained partly because Londoners were well fed and partly because the government professionalized both the magistracy and the police force, but the changes effected by the Metropolitan Police have been exaggerated. Local government in London from 1750 to 1850 reflected local and national realities and was more successful than has generally been recognized.

Churchill and Russia

Abstract‘You cannot deal with this question of Russia apart from the historic aspect.’ Winston Churchill 1919