Liberalism in nineteenth-century Europe: the political culture of limited suffrage

Abstract

In these two books, Alan S. Kahan and Laura E. Nym Mayhall provide stimulating accounts of the history of franchise reform. Kahan compares the language of exclusion used by nineteenth-century liberals in Britain, France, and Germany to justify only gradual, limited extensions of the right to vote. Mayhall's canvas is smaller, exploring in considerable detail aspects of the militancy of the twentieth-century women's suffrage movement in Britain in terms of its cultural and historical meanings. Kahan's discussion starts from a careful examination of the term liberalism