275/280C.001 – Imperial Britain and the Making of the Modern World
Wednesday 2-4pm, Dwinelle 3104.
This course will examine why imperial Britain's history was long seen as a model for how the modern world was made. Each week it will, accordingly, focus on familiar historical processes – the demographic revolution, the modern family form, urbanization and secularization, the industrial revolution, the creation of modern economic practices, the creation of national and imperial state structures, the emergence of civil society and representative politics, the invention of modern cultural institutions - and their treatment by the big theorists of modernity. It will ask how, where and even when Britain became modern. Drawing upon a selection of canonical and more recent works, we will consider how historians' answers to these questions have changed, and whether British history still matters now that we have provincialized its peculiar path to modernity. The class is designed for all those considering Britain as a first or second field in their qualifying exams. It is also open to all those whose own field has been shaped, historically or historiographically, by the imperial British model of modernity.
Office Hours: Monday 2-4, Dwinelle 2214
Requirements: Weekly questions responding to the reading posted on bspace chatroom and a final paper due by 14 December. Papers can be historiographical or historical. Either way they will need to be developed in conversation with me and a brief description of the topic, an explanation of its importance, and a bibliography is due by 4 November.
Set Texts
Roy Porter, The Creation of the Modern World
C.A.Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World
Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes
Judith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight
Joyce, The Rule of Freedom
Robert Allen, The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective
Eric Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire
Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation
Frank Trentmann, Free Trade Nation
John Brewer, The Sinews of Power
David Edgerton, Warfare State
Nicholas Dirks, Castes of Mind
Chris Otter, The Victorian Eye
James Vernon, Politics and the People
+ bspace
26 August. Introductions
What was Modernity?
2 September. Britain as Exemplary and First Modern
+Harold Perkins, The Origins of Modern English Society, 1780-1880
Roy Porter, The Creation of the Modern World
9 September. Provincial and Plural Moderns
+Fred Cooper, "Modernity" in his Colonialism in Question, ch.3.
C.A.Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World
+Richard Price, British Society 1680-1880
Society
16 September. Population Growth and the Family.
+ Extracts from Malthus, McKeown and MacFarlane
+Roger Schofield, "British population change, 1700-1871" in Floud and McCloskey (eds.), The Economic History of Britain Since 1700, 60-95.
+Michael Anderson, "The social implications of demographic change" in F. M. L. Thompson (ed.), The Cambridge Social History of Britain, vol.2,1-71.
Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes 1,7&8.
Amanda Vickery, "Golden ages to separate spheres: a review of the categories and chronologies of women"s history" Historical Journal, 36 (1993), 383-414
+Simon Szreter, Fertility, Class and Gender in Britain 1860-1940, chs1,9&10.
23 September. Urbanization and Secularization
+ Extracts from Engels and Simmel
+F.M.L.Thompson, "Town and City", Cambridge Social History of Britain, Vol.1., 1-86
+M.J.Daunton, "Introduction", Cambridge Urban History of Britain, Vol.3: 1840-1950, 1-58.
+Judith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight, chs.1-4.
Patrick Joyce, The Rule of Freedom, chs.2,4&5.
+James Secord, Victorian Sensation, chs.5-8.
+Callum Brown, The Death of Christian Britain, chs.2&7.
Jeremy Morris, "The strange death of Christian Britain" Historical Journal, 46, 4 (2003):963-76
30 September. Sciences of the Social
+ Extracts from Foucault
+Mary Poovey, Making a Social Body, chs.1-3.
Patrick Joyce, The Rule of Freedom, ch.3.
Lawrence Goldman, "Victorian Social Science: From Singular to Plural" in M.J.Daunton (ed.), The Organization of Knowledge in Victorian Britain, 87-114
James Vernon, "The Ethics of Hunger and the Assembly of Society", American Historical Review, 110, 3 (2005).
Nicholas Dirks, Castes of Mind, chs.1-3, 8&10.
+Cannadine, Ornamentalism, chs.1,7,8&10
+Nikolas Rose, Governing the Soul, chs.5-15
Economy
7 October. First Industrial Nation
+ Extracts from Marx
Robert Allen, The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective
Jan de Vries, "The Industrial Revolution and the Industrious Revolution" Journal of Economic History, 54, 2 (1994): 249-270.
Raphael Samuel, 'Workshop of the World: steam power and hand technology in mid- Victorian Britain', History Workshop, no.3 (spring 1977), 6-72.
Cain and Hopkins, "Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Overseas Expansion - Part I 1688-1850, Economic History Review 39(4), 1986: 501-525
M.Berg and P.Hudson, "Rehabilitating the Industrial Revolution" Economic History Review, XLV, 1 (1992):24-50.
Eric Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire, chs. 6,7&10.
14 October. Making Markets, Creating Capitalism
+Karl Polanyi, Great Transformation, 35-135.
Alan MacFarlane, 'The Cradle of Capitalism: The Case of England'
*E.P. Thompson, "The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century", Past and Present, 50 (1971).
*Boyd Hilton, Age of Atonement, chs.2,4,5&9.
Frank Trentmann, Free Trade Nation, chs.4-7???
+Mary Poovey, The Financial System in Nineteenth Century Britain, 1-33.
+Mitchell, The Rule of Experts, chs.2&3.
Jim Tomlinson, "Managing the economy, managing the people: Britain circa 1931-1970' Economic History Review 58 (2005), 555-585.
21 October. Forms of Production, Exchange and Affect
+ Extracts from Callon
+Miles Ogborn, Indian Ink, chs.3&5.
+Patrick Joyce, Work Society and Politics, chs.2,4&5.
+Richard Biernacki, The Fabrication of Labor, chs.2-5&7.
+Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, chs.4&5.
+James Taylor, Creating Capitalism, 1-53.
+Ritu Birla, Stages of Capital, chs.1,2&5.
Polity
28 October. The Modern State
+Extracts from Weber
John Brewer, The Sinews of Power (1989) chs.2-5&8.
+M.J.Daunton, Trusting Leviathan, chs.3,4,7&10.
+Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India, 1-81.
Oliver MacDonagh, "The nineteenth century revolution in government" Historical Journal ,1 (1958), 52-67.
Tom Crook, "Sanitary inspection and the public sphere in Victorian and Edwardian Britain", Social History, 32 (4) (2007), 369-393.
+James Cronin, The Politics of State Expansion, 1-15
David Edgerton, Warfare State, 1-145.
+David Vincent, The Culture of Secrecy, chs.2&3.
Bernard Cohn, An Anthropologist Amongst Historians, 500-553.
4 November. Civil Society
+Extracts from Habermas
+T.B.Macaulay, History of England, ch3
+Peter Clark, British Clubs and Societies, chs.3-4.
M.J.D.Roberts, Making English Morals: Voluntary Association and Moral Reform in England 1787-1886, chs.4-6.
+Laqueur, "Bodies, Details, and the Humanitarian Narrative" in L.Hunt and V.Bonnell (eds.) The New Cultural History, 176-204
+Kitson Clark, Making Victorian England, ch.6.
Chris Otter, Victorian Eye, chs.2-4.
Antoinette Burton, Burdens of History, chs.1&5.
Akira Iriye, Global Community, chs.1&2.
11 November. Representative Systems: Elections and Parties
+Namier, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III
Plumb, "The Growth of the Electorate in England from 1600 to 1715" Past and Present, 45 (1969), 90-116.
Frank O'Gorman, "The unreformed electorate of Hanoverian England" Social History, 11, I (1986).
Vernon, Politics and the People, chs.1,2,3,5&6.
+Jon Lawrence, "Class, paternalism and the antinomies of British liberalism" (forthcoming)
+Nicoletta Gullace, The Blood of Our Sons, 167-94
+Mrinalini Sinha, Specters of Mother India
, chs.1&5.
18 November. Representative Systems: Political Parties
+Plumb, The Growth of the Political Stability
+Brewer, Party Ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession of George III, chs.9-12.
James Epstein and John Belchem, "The nineteenth century gentleman leader reconsidered" Social History, 22, 2 (1997)
+John Vincent, Formation of the Liberal Party, 1-140.
+Patrick Joyce, Work, Society and Politics, chs.6-8.
+Ross McKibbin, "Class and conventional wisdom: the Conservative party and the 'public' in inter-war Britain" in his Ideologies of Class, 259-94.
+S.Fielding, P.Thompson and N.Tiratsoo, England Arise! chs.1,2,3 & 5
25 November. Work on Paper
2 December. Making Modern Culture
+Extracts from Williams
+Cunningham, Leisure in the Industrial Revolution, chs.1,2&5.
+Joyce, Visions of the People, ch.6
Peter Bailey, "Entertainmentality. Liberalising modern pleasure in the Victorian leisure industry" (forthcoming)
+Hobsbawm, "The Formation of British Working Class Culture" in Worlds of Labour.
+Dodd, "Englishness and National Culture" in Colls and Dodd (eds.), Englishness, 1-29.
+Le Mahieu, A Culture for Democracy, 138-54, 178-97, 273-91.
9 December. Paper Presentations