Abstract
Some would say that the study of nineteenth-century politics is just now in a curiously unsatisfactory condition. Other areas seem more dynamic. Many scholars have moved towards research in twentieth-century history while others now focus principally upon Victorian culture. Undergraduate courses feature less nineteenth-century British politics than was once the case. It would be wrong, though, to attribute the problematic state of the field simply to neglect. After all, a fair amount of work continues to be produced on nineteenth-century political history. Those coming to the period for the first time are unlikely to be struck by the absence of writing on late Victorian liberalism or on the career of Disraeli. Indeed, the last 30 years have seen the publication of numerous important works that taken together have fundamentally altered our picture of the political history of nineteenth-century Britain. And yet few would deny that the field faces difficult times.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
C. Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries (Durham NC, 2004).
L. Hunt, ed., The New Cultural History (Berkeley, 1989)
TJ. McDonald, ed., The Historic Turn in the Human Sciences (Ann Arbor, 1996)
L. Hunt and V. E. Bonnell, eds, Beyond the Cultural Turn: New Directions in the Study of Society and Culture (Berkeley, 1999).
G. Stedman Jones, Languages of Class: Studies in English Working Class History (Cambridge, 1983), p. 22.
W. Sewell, Work and Revolution in France: The Language of Labor from the Old Regime to 1848 (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 11.
L. Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley, 1984), p. 10.
J.G.A. Pocock, Political Thought and History: Essays on Theory and Method (Cambridge, 2009), p. 17.
A. Pagden, ‘Introduction’ in idem, ed., The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 1–17.
M. Richter, The History of Political and Social Concepts: A Critical Introduction (Oxford, 1995).
Q. Skinner, Visions of Politics I: Regarding Method (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 175–87.
M. Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach (Oxford, 1996).
Q. Skinner, ‘Some Problems in the Analysis of Political Thought and Action’ in J. Tully, ed., Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and His Critics (Cambridge, 1988), p. 107.
P. Burke cited in M. Sonenscher, ‘The Sans-Culottes of the Year II: Rethinking the Language of Labour in Revolutionary France’, Social History 9 (1984), 302.
W. Steinmetz, ‘Introduction’ in idem, ed., Political Languages in the Age of Extremes (Oxford, 2011), pp. 49–50.
M. Sonenscher, ‘Enlightenment and Revolution’, Journal of Modern History 70 (1998), 308.
A point made by J. Lawrence and M. Taylor, ‘The Poverty of Protest: Gareth Stedman Jones and the Politics of Language — A Reply’, Social History 18 (1993), 1–15.
M. Francis and J. Morrow, A History of English Political Thought in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1994), pp. 3–4.
G. Claeys, Citizens and Saints: The Politics and Anti-Politics in Early British Socialism (Cambridge, 1989)
E.F. Biagini, Liberty, Retrenchment and Reform: Popular Liberalism in the Age of Gladstone, 1860–1880 (Cambridge, 1992)
D. Wahrman, Imagining the Middle Class: The Political Representation of Class in Britain, c. 1780–1840 (Cambridge, 1995).
L. Colley, Namier (London, 1989), pp. 46–71.
D.M. Craig, ‘“High Politics” and the “New Political History”’, Historical Journal 53 (2010), 453–75.
B. Hilton, ‘Peel: A Reappraisal’, Historical Journal 22 (1979), 585–614
J. Parry, The Politics of Patriotism: English Liberalism, National Identity and Europe, 1830–1886 (Cambridge, 2006).
P. Joyce, Visions of the People: Industrial England and the Question of Class, 1848–1914 (Cambridge, 1991)
J. Vernon, Politics and the People: A Study in English Political Culture, c. 1815–1867 (Cambridge, 1993).
J. W. Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York, 1988)
C. Hall et al., Defining the Victorian Nation: Class, Race, Gender and the Second Reform Act of 1867 (Cambridge, 2000).
L. Goldman, Science, Reform, and Politics in Victorian Britain: The Social Science Association 1857–1886 (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 7–11
J. Lawrence, ‘Political History’ in S. Berger et al., Writing History: Theory and Practice (London, 2003), pp. 183–202.
E. F. Biagini and A. J. Reid, eds, Currents of Radicalism: Popular Radicalism, Organised Labour and Party Politics in Britain, 1850–1914 (Cambridge, 1991).
M. Freeden, Liberal Languages: Ideological Imaginations and Twentieth-Century Progressive Thought (Princeton, 2005).
J. Lawrence, Speaking for the People: Party, Language and Popular Politics, 1867–1914 (Cambridge, 1998).
Philip Harling, Peter Baldwin, and Margot Finn in P. Mandler, ed., Liberty and Authority in Victorian Britain (Oxford, 2006).
J. Thompson, ‘“Pictorial lies”?: Posters and Politics in Britain, 1880–1914’, Past and Present 197 (2007), 177–210.
O. MacDonagh, ‘The Nineteenth Century Revolution in Government: A Reappraisal’, Historical Journal 1 (1958), 52–67.
S. Gunn and J. Vernon, eds, The Peculiarities of Liberal Modernity in Imperial Britain (Berkeley, 2011).
H. Cunningham, ‘The Language of Patriotism, 1750–1914’, History Workshop Journal 12 (1981), 24.
J. Parry, The Rise and Fall of Liberal Government in Victorian Britain (New Haven, 1993).
S. Collini, D. Winch and J. Burrow, That Noble Science of Politics (Cambridge, 1983)
B. Hilton, The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1795–1865 (Oxford, 1988)
E.H.H. Green, The Crisis of Conservatism: The Politics, Economics and Ideology of the British Conservative Party, 1880–1914 (London, 1995).
A. Howe, Free Trade and Liberal England, 1846–1946 (Oxford, 1997)
F. Trentmann, Free Trade Nation: Commerce, Consumption, and Civil Society in Modern Britain (Oxford, 2008).
Vernon, Politics and the People; idem, ed., Re-Reading the Constitution (Cambridge, 1996).
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2013 David Craig and James Thompson
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Craig, D., Thompson, J. (2013). Introduction. In: Craig, D., Thompson, J. (eds) Languages of Politics in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137312891_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137312891_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-33843-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-31289-1
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)