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The two centuries after 1800 witnessed a series of sweeping changes in the way in which Britain was governed, the duties of the state, and its role in the wider world. Powerful processes--from the development of democracy, the changing nature of the social contract, war, and economic dislocation--have challenged, and at times threatened to overwhelm, both governors and governed. Such shifts have also presented challenges to the historians who have researched and written about Britain's past politics. This Handbook shows the ways in which political historians have responded to these challenges, providing a snapshot of a field which has long been at the forefront of conceptual and methodologic...
This book examines a decade of extraordinary ferment in ideas, and the battles about those ideas out of which emerged the Britain of the late-twentieth century.
Following the Brexit vote, this book offers a timely historical assessment of the different ways that Britain’s economic future has been imagined and how British ideas have influenced global debates about market relationships over the past two centuries. The 2016 EU referendum hinged to a substantial degree on how competing visions of the UK should engage with foreign markets, which in turn were shaped by competing understandings of Britain’s economic past. The book considers the following inter-related questions: - What roles does economic imagination play in shaping people’s behaviour and how far can insights from behavioural economics be applied to historical issues of market selection? - How useful is the concept of the ‘official mind’ for explaining the development of market relationships? - What has been the relationship between expanding communications and the development of markets? - How and why have certain regions or groupings (e.g. the Commonwealth) been ‘unimagined’- losing their status as promising markets for the future?
'An empowering read . . . it is refreshing to see somebody celebrate the role that black Britons have played in this island's long and complicated history' DAVID LAMMY, author of Tribes, in 'The best books of 2020', the Guardian 'Timely and so important . . . recognition is long overdue . . . I would encourage everyone to buy it!' DAWN BUTLER MP A long-overdue book honouring the remarkable achievements of key Black British individuals over many centuries, in collaboration with the 100 Great Black Britons campaign founded and run by Patrick Vernon OBE. 'Building on decades of scholarship, this book by Patrick Vernon and Dr Angelina Osborne brings the biographies of Black Britons together and ...
A Companion to Contemporary Britain covers the key themesand debates of 20th-century history from the outbreak of the SecondWorld War to the end of the century. Assesses the impact of the Second World War Looks at Britain’s role in the wider world, including thelegacy of Empire, Britain’s ‘specialrelationship’ with the United States, and integration withcontinental Europe Explores cultural issues, such as class consciousness,immigration and race relations, changing gender roles, and theimpact of the mass media Covers domestic politics and the economy Introduces the varied perspectives dominating historicalwriting on this period Identifies the key issues which are likely to fuel futuredebate
Horatio Bottomley and the Far Right Before Fascism examines Bottomley’s life and politics, and what made him one of the great figures of Edwardian life. During the first World War, his magazine John Bull sold two million copies a week. Bottomley addressed huge crowds urging them to wage a way of extermination against ordinary Germans. The first chairman of the Financial Times, the inspiration for Toad in The Wind in the Willows, Bottomley was also a major figure in post-1918 politics, urging Conservative voters to dump their leaders and try something new. This carefully researched biography, the first new life of Bottomley for 50 years, shows how he began on the centre-left of Edwardian politics and then moved to the margins, becoming a leading figure on the Edwardian far right, and pre-empting the non-fascist far right of our own days. This book will appeal to scholars and students with interests in political history, fascism and the far right.
In today's world, many believe that everyday life has become selfish and atomised--that individuals live only to consume. Jon Lawrence argues that they are wrong, and that whilst community has changed, it is far from dead. It is time to embrace new communities, and let go of nostalgia for the past.
Since the end of the Second World War, society has been characterised by rapid and extensive political, economic, scientific, and technological change. Opportunities for education, employment, human relations, and good health, have all been greatly affected by those changes, as have all aspects of life. Consequently, each post-war generation has been like no other before or since. Britain, uniquely, has five large-scale life course studies that began at intervals throughout that period. They have shown how lives are shaped by individual characteristics, their past and current experiences and opportunities, and so reflect their times. This book describes those fundamental changes that affecte...
Providing a full discussion of cultural issues in left-wing politics during the 1945-1979 period, this text assesses the legacy of social democracy and maps out its future prospects in view of the challenges of affluence and the decline of organised labour movements.
A new approach to ideas about war, from one of the UK's leading strategic thinkers In 1912 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a short story about a war fought from underwater submersibles that included the sinking of passenger ships. It was dismissed by the British admirals of the day, not on the basis of technical feasibility, but because sinking civilian ships was not something that any civilised nation would do. The reality of war often contradicts expectations, less because of some fantastic technical or engineering dimension, but more because of some human, political, or moral threshold that we had never imagined would be crossed. As Lawrence Freedman shows, ideas about the causes of war and ...