The age of uncertainty: Britain in the early-nineteenth century

Transactions of the Royal Historical Society

Volumn 8, Issue , 1998, Pages 91-115

  Eastwood, David ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 33646238107     PISSN: 00804401     EISSN: 14740648     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3679290     Document Type: Review

References (181)

1. Geoffrey Elton, The Practice of History (1967), 120, cf. 11-20.
2. This position has been restated, albeit with refinements and a more apparently sympathetic reception of the role of Theory, in Richard J. Evans, In Defence of History (1997).
3. Giambattista Vico, The New Science [3rd edn. , 1744] (trans T. G. Bergin and M. H. Fisch, Ithaca and London, 1984);
4. Isaiah Berlin, Vico and Herder. Two Studies in the History of Ideas (1976), 3-142;
5. and Bruce A. Haddock, 'Vico and the Methodology of the History of Ideas', in Vico: Past and Present, ed. Giorgio Tagliacozzo (Atlantic Highlands, 1981), 227-39.
6. John Dunn, 'Revolution', in Terence Ball, James Farr, and Russell L. Hanson eds. , Political Innovation and Conceptual Change (Cambridge, 1989), 333-56, esp. 334-5;
7. idem, Modern Revolutions: An Introduction to the Analysis of a Political Phenomenon (Cambridge, 1972).
8. Burke's most neutral characterization of the Revolution as 'the late proceedings in France' was uncharacteristically understated, but it captured the idea of process for all that: Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France [1790] (ed. C. C. O'Brien, Harmondsworth, 1969), 85.
9. Elie Halévy, England in 1815 (1913, first English edn. 1923);
10. The Liberal Awakening (1923, first English edn. , 1926);
11. The Triumph of Reform (1830-1841) (1923, first English edn. , 1927).
12. Interestingly in the cases of volumes two and three a rather different English title was superimposed, indicating the influence of an existing Liberal teleology. The French titles of volumes two and three were: Du lendemain de Waterloo à la veille du Reform Bill and De la crise du reform Bill a l'avenement de Sir Robert Peel. See Myrna Chase, Elie Halévy. An Intellectual Biography (New York, 1980).
13. Llewellyn Woodward, The Age of Reform 1815-1870 [1938] (2nd edn. , Oxford, 1962), 629.
14. Asa Briggs, The Age of Improvement, 1783-1867 (1959).
15. Addison Longman Wesley, History Catalogue (1997), p. 12.
16. Eric. J. Evans, The Forging of the Modern State. Early Industrial Britain 1783-1870 (1983), 177-269.
17. John Derry, Reaction and Reform. England in the Early Nineteenth Century (1963), 4.
18. Norman Gash, Aristocracy and People. Britain 1815-1865 (1979), 7,8, 350 and passim;
19. cf. Norman McCord, British History, 1815-1906 (Oxford, 1991).
20. G. B. A. M. Finlayson, Britain in the Eighteenth Thirties. Decade of Reform (1969), 107.
21. William C. Lubenow, The Politics of Government Growth. Early Victorian Attitudes Towards State Intervention 1833-1848 (Newton Abbot, 1971), 188.
22. Ian Newbould, Whiggery and Reform 1830-41. The Politics of Government (Basingstoke and London, 1990), 321.
23. As a reading this is a more persuasive account of Peelism than Whiggism, and insights into Peelite Conservatism were perceptively developed in Ian Newbould, 'Sir Robert Peel and the Conservative Party, 1831-41: A Study in Failure?', English Historical Review, xcviii (1983), 527-57.
24. Richard Brent, Liberal Anglican Politics. Whiggery, Religion, and Reform 1830-1841 (Oxford, 1987).
25. G. I. T. Machin, Politics and the Churches in Great Britain 1832 to 1868 (Oxford, 1977), 28-111;
26. R. J. Smith, The Gothic Bequest. Medieval Institutions in British Thought, 1688-1863 (Cambridge, 1980), 171-200;
27. Norman Gash, Reaction and Reconstruction in English Politics 1832-1852 (Oxford, 1965), 60-118.
28. Peter Mandler, Aristocratic Government in the Age of Reform. Whigs and Liberals 1830-1852 (Oxford, 1990), esp. 110-99, 275-82 and passim.
29. See also Jonathan Parry's always suggestive and subtle The Rise and Fall of Liberal Government in Victorian Britain (New Haven and London, 1993).
30. Mandler, Aristocratic Government in the Age of Reform, 119-20.
31. Boyd Hilton, The Age of Atonement. The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought 1785-1865 (Oxford, 1988), 3.
32. See also A. C. M. Waterman, 'The Ideological Alliance of Political Economy and Christian Theology, 1798-1833', Jnl. Ecclesiastical History, xxiv (1983), 231-44;
33. A. C. M. Waterman, Revolution, Economy, and Religion. Christian Political Economy, 1798-1833 (Cambridge, 1991);
34. R. A. Soloway, Prelates and People. Ecclesiastical Social Thought in England 1783-1852 (1969).
35. See for example his treatment of Perceval, Copleston, Ashley, Sadler, and Oastler; Hilton, Age of Atonement, pp. 29-30, 212-13, 219.
36. Briggs, Age of Improvement, 2-3.
37. For a striking and persuasive broadening of the terrain of contemporary debate see A. C. Gambles, 'The Boundaries of Political Economy: Tory Economic Argument 1806-1847' (University of Oxford, D. Phil. thesis, 1996);
38. and idem, 'Rethinking die Politics of Protection: Conservatism and the Corn Laws, 1830-52', EHR forthcoming, Sept. 1998.
39. Harold Perkin's classic The Origins of Modern English Society 1780-1880 (1969), 237-52, remains as sane and satisfying as ever.
40. Differently cast are James J. Sack, From Jacobite to Conservative. Reaction and Orthodoxy in Britain c. 1760-1832 (Cambridge, 1993);
41. and Robert Hole, Pulpits, Politics and Public Order in England 1760-1832 (Cambridge, 1989).
42. J. C. D. Clark, English Society 1688-1832 (Cambridge, 1985), 64-75, quotation at p. 65. I am uncertain what 'belated' can mean in this context.
43. G. S. Veitch, Genesis of Parliamentary Reform (1913);
44. H. T. Dickinson, Liberty and Propety. Political Ideology in Eighteenth-Century Britain (1977).
45. CIaTk, English Society, 199-200.
46. Clark, English Society, 262.
47. For rather different readings see J. R. Dinwiddy, Radicalism and Reform in Britain 1780-1850 (1992), 195-206, 229-52;
48. and David Eastwood, 'Patriotism and die English State in the 1790s', in The French Revolution and British Popular Politics, ed. Mark Philp (Oxford, 1991), 146-68.
49. N-F-R. Crafts, British Economic Growth During the Industrial Revolution (Oxford, 1985).
50. For critiques see Julian Hoppit, 'Counting the Industrial Revolution', Ec[onomic] History R[eview], xliii (1990), 173-93;
51. Maxine Berg and Pat Hudson, 'Rehabilitating the Industrial Revolution', Ec. H. R. , xlv (1992), 24-50;
52. Pat Hudson, The Industrial Revolution (1992).
53. David Cannadine, 'The Past and the Present in the Industrial Revolution 1880-1980', Past and Present, 103 (1984), 131-72;
54. A. Toynbee, Lectures on the Industrial Revolution (1884);
55. J. L. and B. Hammond, The Town Labourer, 1760-1832 (1917);
56. J. L. and B. Hammond, The Rise of Modern Industry (1925);
57. T. S. Ashton, The Industrial Revolution, 1760-1830 (1948);
58. W. W. Rostow, The British Economy of the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1948).
59. For figures see Crafts, British Economic Growth, p. 32.
60. E. A. Wrigley, Continuity, Chance and Change. The Character of the Industrial Revolution in England (Cambridge, 1988).
61. Richard Rodger, Housing in Urban Britain 1780-1314 (new edn. , Cambridge, 1995), 19. The expenditure of such as high proportion of national capital on what was often poor-quality housing is explained partly by the sheer pace of urbanisation and partly by the still modest rates of capital formation.
62. Robert Southey, Letters from England [1807] ed. and intro Jack Simmons (Gloucester, 1984), 203.
63. For Southey as a social critic see David Eastwood, 'Robert Southey and the Intellectual Origins of Romantic Conservatism', English Historical Review, civ (1989), 308-31;
64. idem, '"Ruinous Prosperity".
65. Robert Southey's Critique of the Commercial System', The Wordsworth Circle, xxv (1994), 72-76;
66. Alfred Cobban, Edmund Burke and the Revolt Against the Eighteenth Century (2nd edn. , 1960), 197-232.
67. Southey, Letters from England, 210-11.
68. H. C. Escher, 'Escher's Letters from England in 1814', in Industrial Britain under the Regency 1814-18, ed. W. O. Henderson (New York, 1968), 34-5.
69. [Gustave d'Eichthal], A French Sociologist Looks at Britain. Gustave d'Eichthal and British Sockty in 1828 eds. Barrie M. Radcliffe and W. H. Chaloner (Manchester University Press, 1977), 7.
70. Leon Faucher, Manchester in 1844. Its Present Condition and Future Prospects ed. and trans. J. P. Culverwell (London and Manchester, 1844), 3-4.
71. Geoffrey Canrnell, Robert Southey and His Age - The Development of a Conservative Mind (Oxford, 1960);
72. Jack Simmons, Southey (1945);
73. Robert Southey. The Critical Heritage, ed. Lionel Madden (London and Boston, 1972);
74. Kenneth Curry, Southey (London and Boston, 1975);
75. Jonathan Mendilow, The Romantic Tradition in British Political Thought (1986), 47-82;
76. Eastwood, 'Robert Southey and the Intellectual Origins of Romantic Conservatism'.
77. Macaulay's unsigned review appeared in the Edinburgh Review, 1 (Jan. 1830), 528-65,
78. and was widely reprinted: see Lord Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays (3 vols, 1878), i, 217-69;
79. Biancamaria Fontana, Rethinking the Politics of Commercial Society. The Edinburgh Review 1802-32 (Cambridge, 1985), 76-8.
80. Robert Southey, Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society (2 vols. , 1829), i, 166, 169-70.
81. Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain [1842] (ed. and intro. M. W. Flinn, Edinburgh, 1965), 78-9.
82. For the Report and its influence see R. A. Lewis, Edwin Chadwick and the Public Health Movement 1832-1854 (1952), esp. 29-105;
83. S. E. Finer, The Life and Times of Sir Edwin Chadwick (1952), 209-42;
84. Anthony Brundage, England's "Prussian Minister". Edwin Chadwick and the Politics of Government Growth, 1832-1854 (University Park Pennsylvania and London, 1988), 79-172.
85. Itself an expanded version of Gaskell's The Manufacturing Population of England (1833).
86. See also J. P. Kay, The Moral and Physical Condition of the Working Classes Employed in Cotton Manufacture in Manchester (1832);
87. Andrew Lees, Cities Perceived. Urban Society in European and American Thought 1820-1940 (Manchester, 1985), 16-39;
88. and Michael Turner, Reform and Respectability. The Making of a Middle-Class Liberalism in Early Nineteenth-Century Manchester (Manchester, Chetham Society, 3rd ser. , xl, 1995), 164-208.
89. Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England [1845] (Eng. trans. W. O. Henderson and W. H. Chaloner, Stanford, 1958), 311-12.
90. See also Steven Marcus, Engels, Manchester and the Working Class (1974);
91. Terrell Carver, Friedrich Engels. His Life and Thought (Basingstoke and London, 1989), 95-132.
92. Thomas Carlyle, 'Signs of the Times' [1829], reprinted in Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (4 vols. , 1857), ii, 100-1.
93. George Eliot, Passages Selected from the Writings of Thomas Carlyle (1855)
94. quoted in Gertrude Himmelfarb, The Idea of Poverty. England in the Early Industrial Age (London and Boston, 1984), 202.
95. We currendy lack the necessary modern critical study of Carlyle which attends to his inner voice and properly maps his influence, but see Himmelfarb, Idea of Poverty, 191-206;
96. J. A. Froude, Thomas Carlyle: A History of the First Forty Years of his Life (2 vols. , 1882);
97. J. A. Froude, Thomas Carlyle: A History of His Life in London 1834-1881 (2 vols. , 1881);
98. Philip Rosenberg, The Seventh Hero: Thomas Carlyle and the Theory of Political Activism (Cambridge Mass. , 1974);
99. Thomas Carlyle: The Critical Heritage ed. J. P. Seigel (1971).
100. Thomas Carlyle, Chartism [1839]
101. reprinted in Carlyle, Sartor Resartus. Lecture on Heros. Chartism. Past and Present (1894), 37-8.
102. David Eastwood, '"Amplifying the Province of the Legislature": the Flow of Information and the English State in the Early Nineteenth Century', Historical Research, 62 (1989), 276-94;
103. Re-Reading the Constitution. New Narratives in the Political History of England's Long Nineteenth Century, ed. James Vernon (Cambridge, 1996);
104. David Eastwood, Making Public Policy in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Swansea, 1998);
105. Karel Williams, From Pauperism to Poverty (London, Boston, and Henley, 1981), esp. 235-308.
106. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (ed. Edwin Cannan, 1904), esp. bk. 1 chs. 1, 3, 8,; bk. 2 ch. 1; bk. 4 chs. 7, 8, 9.
107. Donald Winch, Riches and Poverty. An Intellectual History of Political Economy in Britain, 1750-1834 (Cambridge, 1996);
108. William Petersen, Malthus (1979), 38-134, 218-40;
109. Patricia James, Population Malthus. His Life and Times (London, Boston, and Henley, 1979), 55-159;
110. E. A. Wrigley, 'Malthus and the Prospects for the Labouring Poor', Historical Jnl. , 31 (1988), 813-29.
111. T. R. Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population [1798 edn. ]. ed. and intro. , A. Flew (Harmondsworth, 1970);
112. T. R. Malthus, An Essay in the Principle of Population [1803 edn. ], ed. and intro. T. H. Hollingsworth (Everyman edn. , 1973);
113. T. R. Malthus, Principles of Political Economy Considered with a View to their Practical Application (1820);
114. T. R. Malthus, Observations on the Effects of the Com Laws . . . (2nd edn. , 1814).
115. David Ricardo, Principles of Political Economy [1817], ed. P. Sraffa (Cambridge, 1951);
116. Maxine Berg, The Machinery Question and the Making of Political Economy 1815-1848 (Cambridge, 1980).
117. Stefan Collini, Donald Winch, and John Burrow, That Noble Science of Politics. A Study in Nineteenth-Century Intellectual History (Cambridge, 1983), 63-89.
118. Hilton, Age of Atonement, esp. 203-51;
119. Boyd Hilton, Com, Cash, Commerce. The Economic Policies of the Tory Governments 1815-1830 (Oxford, 1977);
120. Boyd Hilton, 'Peel: A Reappraisal', Historical Jnl. , 22 (1979), 585-614;
121. Alexander Brady, William Huskisson and Liberal Reform (Oxford, 1928);
122. Brian Jenkins, Henry Goulbum 1784-1856. A Political Biography (Liverpool, 1996); esp. 150-2, 185-214, 288-356;
123. W. D. Jones, 'Prosperity' Robinson. The Life of Viscount Goderich 1782-1859 (1967), 65-134.
124. See, e. g. , The Trial of Feargus O'Connor and Fifty-Eight Others on a Charge of Sedition, Conspiracy, Tumult and Riot (Manchester and London, 1843), vii.
125. Martin Wiener, Reconstructing the Criminal. Culture, Law, and Policy in England, 1830-1914 (Cambridge, 1990), 29.
126. Report from His Majesty's Commissioners for Inquiring into the Administration and Practical Operation of the Poor Laws, Parliamentary Papers, xxvii (44), 36-55.
127. David Eastwood, Government and Community in the English Provinces 1700-1870 (1997), 123-70;
128. David Eastwood, 'Rethinking the Debates on the Poor Law in Early Nineteenth-Century England', Utilitas, 6 (1994), 97-116.
129. William Godwin, Of Population. An Enquiry Concerning the Power of Increase of the Numbers of Mankind (1820);
130. William Godwin, Thoughts Occasioned by a Perusal of Dr Parr's Spital Sermon . . . [1801], in Political and Philosophical Writings of William Godwin ed. Mark Philp (7 vols. , 1993), ii, 163-208;
131. Michael Thomas Sadler, The Law of Population . . . In Disproof of the Superfercundity of Human Beings and Developing the Real Principle of their Increase (2 vols. , 1830);
132. Perkin, Origins of Modern English Society, 137-52;
133. G. R. Porter, The Progress of the Nation (3 vols. , 1836-43);
134. Lucy Brown, The Board of Trade and the Free-Trade Movement 1830-42 (Oxford, 1958), 27-31, 76-93;
135. Roger Prouty, The Transformation of the Board of Trade (1957), 3-10, 99.
136. Michael J. Cullen, The Statistical Movement in Early Victorian Britain. The Foundations of Empirical Social Science (Hassocks, 1975);
137. Thomas S. Ashton, Economic and Social Investigations in Manchester, 1833-1933 (1934).
138. Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population, 251-4;
139. R. A. Lewis, Edwin Chadwick and the Public Health Movement 1832-1854 (1952), 17-18, 62-6;
140. S. E. Finer, The Life and Times of Edwin Chadwick (1952), 22-3.
141. Census of England and Wales (1861),
142. 'Report', Parliamentary Papers, 1863, liii, 24-7, quotation at 27.
143. Chartism, 26-7, orig. italics.
144. cf. 'Signs of Times', 116-18. Carlyle's Chartism was conceived whilst working on his French Revolution, and this conjunction is crucial to understanding both the language and sense of revolutionary imminence which infuse Chartism.
145. T. B. Macaulay, 'Mirabeau' [1832], reprinted in The Miscellaneous Wirings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay (1889), 275.
146. See also John Clive, Thomas Babington Macaulay. The Shaping of the Historian (1973), 142-76.
147. Macaulay, 'Mirabeau', 630.
148. John Burrow, A Liberal Descent. Victorian Historians and the English Past (Cambridge, 1981), 11-93;
149. Collini, Winch, and Burrow, That Noble Science of Politics, 91-126;
150. Peter Ghosh, 'Macaulay and the Heritage of the Enlightenment', EHR, cxii (1997), 358-95.
151. Roland Quinault, 'The French Revolution of 1830 and Parliamentary Reform', History, 79 (1994), 377-93;
152. cf. Carlos Flick, The Birmingham Political Union and the Movements for Reform in Britain 1830-1839 (Folkestone, 1978), 54-92;
153. Michael Brock, The Great Reform Act (1973), 161-313;
154. John Cannon, Parliamentary Reform, 1660-1832 (Cambridge, 1972), 204-41.
155. Edward Baines, The Life of Edward Baines (London and Leeds, 1851), 157-61;
156. Philip Salmon, 'Electoral Reform at Work. Local Politics and National Parties, 1832-1841', (University of Oxford D. Phil. thesis, 1997);
157. Charles Seymour, Electoral Reform in England and Wales. The Development and Oparation of the Parliamentary Franchise 1832-1885 (new edn. , Newton Abbot, 1971), 7-164;
158. John Prest, Politics in the Age of Cobden (1977).
159. In a large literature see esp. Dorothy Thompson, The Chartists. Popular Politics in the Industrial Revolution (1984);
160. Paul Pickering, Chartism and the Chartists in Manchester and Salford (1995).
161. Trial of Feargus O'Connor, vi.
162. Gareth Stedman Jones, Languages of Class. Studies in English Working Class History 1832-1982 (Cambridge, 1983), 90-178;
163. James Epstein, Radical Expression. Political Language, Ritual, and Symbol in England 1790-1850 (Oxford, 1994);
164. Miles Taylor, The Decline of British Radicalism 1847-1860 (Oxford, 1995), esp. 19-123;
165. Margot Finn, After Chartism. Class and Nation in English Radical Politics, 1848-1974 (Cambridge, 1993).
166. Hilton, Corn, Cash, Commerce, 171-302;
167. Boyd Hilton, 'The Ripening of Robert Peel' in Public and Private Doctrine: Essays in British History Presented to Maurice Cowling ed. M. Bentley (Cambridge, 1993), 63-84;
168. Barry Gordon, Economic Doctrine and Tory Liberalism 1824-1830 (1979);
169. W. R. Brock, Lord Liverpool and Liberal Toryism 1820 to 1827 (2nd edn. , 1967);
170. Norman Gash, Lord Liverpool (1984), 171-91, 217-30.
171. R. C. O. Matthews, A Study in Trade-Cycle History. Economic Fluctuations in Great Britain, 1833-1842 (Cambridge, 1954), 164, cf. 142-7, 219-20;
172. A. D. Gayer, W. W. Rostow, and A. J. Schwartz, The Growth and Fluctuation of the British Economy, 1790-1850 (2 vols. , Oxford, 1953), i, 276-303;
173. G. Kitson Clark, 'Hunger and Politics in 1842', Jnl. Modern History, xxv (1953). 355-74.
174. Hansard, 3rd ser. , xlv, 543, my ital. ; see also William Hardy, 'Conceptions of Manufacturing Advance in British Politics c. 1800-1847, with special reference to Parliament, Governments and their Advisers' (Univ. of Oxford, D. Phil. thesis, 1994), 279-95.
175. Hansard, 3rd sen, lxi (1842), 422-66.
176. Sir Stafford Northcote, Twenty Years of Financial Policy (1862), 1-58;
177. Sydney Buxton, Finance and Politics. An Historical Study 1783-1885 (2 vols. , 1888), i, 43-63;
178. David Eastwood, '"Recasting Our Lot": Peel, the Nation, and the Politics of Interest', in A Union of Multiple Identities. The British Isles, c. 1750-c. 1850 (Manchester, 1997). 29-44, esp. 32-5.
179. For a different and important reading see Hilton, 'Peel: A Reappraisal'.
180. Peel to Croker, 3 Aug. 1841, pr. in Sir Robert Peel from his Private Papers ed. C. S. Parker (3 vols. , 1899), ii, 529.
181. See also Hilton, Age of Atonemnet, pp. 255-97.