Union and Disunion in the Nineteenth Century, edited by James Gregory and Daniel J.R. Grey

Abstract

Reviewed by: Union and Disunion in the Nineteenth Century ed. by James Gregory and Daniel J. R. Grey Katherine Haldane Grenier (bio) Union and Disunion in the Nineteenth Century, edited by James Gregory, and Daniel J. R. Grey; pp. xii + 282. London and New York: Routledge, 2020, $160.00. Union and Disunion in the Nineteenth Century, a wide-ranging and interdisciplinary collection of essays, uses ideals and expressions of union and disunion as a lens through which to examine the nineteenth century, focusing mostly on Great Britain and the United States. The editors, James Gregory and Daniel J. R. Grey, describe their book as exploring "episodes, institutions, sites and representations concerned with union, concord and bonds of sympathy, but also … moments of secession, separation, discord and disjunction" (1). These are broad themes which could encompass a wide assortment of topics, and indeed, the essays in this volume are varied. Their topics include marriage, political unions, jury trials, popular travel, church disestablishment, the administration of the 1834 Poor Law, and the selection of art for the Houses of Parliament. Such diverse topics can seem disjointed, and the book might benefit from a stronger elucidation of the connections which tie these essays together. Yet ideas in many of the individual essays do engage with each other in intriguing ways, and offer some valuable examples of the many ways that union and disunion played out in nineteenth-century people's lives and political structures. The collection is divided into five sections: artistic representations of union and disunion; transnational diplomacy between Britain and Europe; the politics of union and disunion in Great Britain; union and disunion in the United States; family division and union. A key argument that runs through these organizational divisions is that unions, even those that seemed the most stable, were subject to a constant process of contestation, negotiation, and redefinition. Gordon Pentland and Gary D. Hutchison demonstrate this point in discussions of the Anglo-Scottish union. Pentland's study of three Scottish political leaders during the nineteenth century shows the nuance with which they approached the political relationship with England and the impreciseness of simple characterizations of "unionist" and "nationalist" when applied to Scottish political thought of this era (108). Hutchison finds that the Conservative Party was more influential in Scottish governance and politics in this period than has been recognized, [End Page 144] and that their lack of success in electoral politics as the century went on led to innovative approaches to administrative reform of the union. Turning to the United States, Lawrence T. McDonnell provides another example that unity could not be taken for granted. While South Carolina politics are often considered to have been particularly cohesive in the 1850s, McDonnell's assessment of the legacy of John C. Calhoun shows how that unanimity was forged. South Carolina politicians in the 1850s were consumed by the effort to achieve cohesion within the various factions that emerged after Calhoun's death; whether or not that internal unity would lead to disunity from the North was not a sure thing. Other essays usefully remind us that elite politicians were not the only actors who helped to establish and maintain unions. Gregory examines an 1849 visit of 250 middle-class British excursionists to Paris, a trip which was intended to promote good Anglo-French relations after recent tensions. While the trip demonstrated the eagerness of many middle-class people to play a role in their nation's international affairs, it also opened a debate in the press about who should most properly represent British interests abroad. Rachel Egloff's contribution to the volume also examines ways in which Britons outside the political class endeavored to participate in international politics, in this case through literary activity. Rose Blaze de Bury, a British writer married to a French diplomat and the subject of Egloff's essay, was deeply interested in international politics and was concerned with strengthening Britons' understanding of the need for increased political unity in the German-speaking world. Egloff analyzes the textual strategies through which Blaze de Bury claimed authority as an expert in the "masculine" (87) world of "hard" European politics (89). Kim Stevenson and Judith Rowbotham investigate how...