Reforming Expectations: Parliamentary Pressure and Moral Reform

Abstract

Abstract‘Reforming Expectations’ argues that English and British moral reformers’ agendas, including their relation to, and expectations of, parliament, were shaped, and increasingly so, by the world beyond England and Britain from the 17th to the early 20th century. Reformers’ efforts have fallen into three distinct eras of reform activity – the European phase, the Atlantic phase, and the global phase – which each had a distinct emphasis. In the European, early‐modern phase, activists participated in European conversations about the moral regulation and care of the poor, but they worked locally. In the Atlantic phase, from the Glorious Revolution to the American revolution, transatlantic ties supplanted European connections and activists aimed to reform morals both locally and at a distance. With the American revolution and the sustained attention it gave to parliament's role in governing the nation, reformers’ expectations about parliament's role in governing moral life expanded. In the global phase, from the end of the French revolutionary wars to the early 20th century, activists sought to have a worldwide impact. British reformers undertook moral improvement projects aimed at peoples throughout Britain's now more heterogeneous empire. Building on the new expectations of the previous era, they looked to parliament and foreign legislatures to achieve those aims. For over three centuries, English and British moral reformers’ approach to parliament was influenced by interactions with foreign colleagues.