Victorian political culture : 'habits of heart and mind' / Angus Hawkins.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hawkins, Angus, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Great Britain--Politics and government--1837-1901.

Great Britain.

Politics and government.

Great Britain--Politics and government--19th century.

Physical Description:

428 pages : illustrations (black and white) ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2015.

Summary:

Victorian Britain is often described as an age of dawning democracy and as an exemplar of the modern Liberal state; yet a hereditary monarchy, a hereditary House of Lords, and an established Anglican Church survived as influential aspects of national public life with traditional elites assuming redefined roles. After 1832, constitutional notions of 'mixed government' gradually gave way to the orthodoxy of 'parliamentary government,' shaping the function and nature of political parties in Westminster and the constituencies, as well as the relations between them. Following the 1867-8 Reform Acts, national political parties began to replace the premises of 'parliamentary government'. The subsequent emergence of a mass male electorate in the 1880s and 1890s prompted politicians to adopt new language and methods by which to appeal to voters, while enduring public values associated with morality community, and evocations of the past continued to shape Britain's distinctive political culture. This gave a particularly conservative trajectory to the nation's entry into the twentieth century. This study of British political culture from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century examines the public values that informed perceptions of the constitution, electoral activity, party partisanship, and political organization. Its exploration of Victorian views of status, power, and authority as revealed in political language, speeches, and writing, as well as theology, literature, and science, shows how the development of moral communities rooted in readings of the past enabled politicians to manage far-reaching change. This presents a new over-arching perspective on the constitutional and political transformations of the Victorian age. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 The Sovereignty of Parliament 29

2 A Constitutional Turning Point: 1828-1836 65

3 'Parliamentary Government and its Critics: 1832-1867 99

4 Constituency Politics: 1832-1867 155

5 The Dynamics of Voting: 1832-1867 177

6 The Moral Climate of Reform: 1848-1867 215

7 'Shooting Niagara': The 1867 Reform Acts 243

8 The Demise of 'Parliamentary Government': 1868-1884 273

9 Party, Society, and the State: 1886-1914 317

10 Epilogue 367.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 389-415) and index.

ISBN:

9780198728481

0198728484

OCLC:

913775027