Richard Cobden, Independent Radical / Nicholas C. Edsall.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Edsall, Nicholas C., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Legislators--Great Britain--Biography.

Legislators.

Social reformers--Great Britain--Biography.

Social reformers.

Cobden, Richard, 1804-1865.

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

HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain.

HISTORY / General.

HISTORY / Modern / 19th Century.

Local Subjects:

Cobden, Richard, 1804-1865.

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

HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain.

HISTORY / General.

HISTORY / Modern / 19th Century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (479 p.): 1 Frontispiz

Edition:

Reprint 2013

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2014]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

On Richard Cobden's death, Charles Francis Adams noted in his diary that Cobden "had fought his way to fame and honor by the single force of his character. He had nothing to give. No wealth, no honors, no preferment. He first taught the multitude by precept and example that the right of government was not really to the few, but to the many." Disraeli was no less acute when he remarked that Cobden was "the greatest political character that the pure middle class of this country has yet produced." In this biography Nicholas Edsall demonstrates how Cobden dominated middle-class radicalism from its high-water mark in the turbulent 1840s to the quieter years immediately before the emergence of the Gladstonian Liberal party in the 1860s. Cobden headed the movement for the incorporation of his adopted city, Manchester; he was the leader of the most successful of Victorian mass agitations, the Anti-Corn Law League, and chief adviser to the movement for the repeal of newspaper taxes; he was a founder of the mid-nineteenth-century peace movement and a vocal opponent of the Crimean War; he was the chief English negotiator of the Anglo-French Commercial Treaty of 1860; and he was one of the earliest critics of the modern arms race. This is the first full-length biography since the publication of the official life more than a century ago. Not only has a good deal of new material become available, but the passage of time has served to underscore Cobden's significance both as a spokesman for the middle class in an era of acute class conflict and as a critic of the aims of great-power diplomacy at a time when his own country was the greatest of powers.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Preface

Acknowledgments

Contents

PART I. Manchester Manufacturer 1832-1838

CHAPTER 1. Family and Finances

CHAPTER 2. Education, Travel, and Authorship

CHAPTER 3. The Political Setting

CHAPTER 4. Political Beginnings

CHAPTER 6. The Incorporation of Manchester

PART II. Agitator 1838-1846

CHAPTER 7. Founding the Anti-Corn Law League

CHAPTER 8. Building an Agitation

CHAPTER 9. The League and Electoral Politics

CHAPTER 10. The Crisis of 1842

CHAPTER 11. The Long Haul

CHAPTER 12. The Key to Victory?

CHAPTER 13. Victory

PART III. Schoolmaster 1846-1856

CHAPTER 14. Transitions

CHAPTER 15. The Manchester School and Post-Repeal Politics

CHAPTER 16. The Manchester School and Educational Reform

CHAPTER 17. The Pursuit of Peace

CHAPTER 18. Protecting the Peace

CHAPTER 19. War

PART IV. Diplomatist 1856-1865

CHAPTER 20. Postwar Casualties

CHAPTER 21. Negotiating a Treaty

CHAPTER 22. The Third French Invasion Panic

CHAPTER 23. Britain and the American Civil War

CHAPTER 24. The Elder Statesman of Radicalism

ABBREVIATIONS. SELECTED. BIBLIOGRAPHY. NOTES. INDEX

ABBREVIATIONS

Selected Bibliography

Notes

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Mai 2019)

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

0-674-33081-1

OCLC:

1013954395