British Reform Research Articles

Adam Smith’s influence on British reform movements of the early-to-mid-19th century

Adam Smith’s influence on British reform movements of the early-to-mid-19th century

Economic Transformations in British Colonial Punjab and the Feudal Identity of District Jhang

Jhang a historic city of Punjab is situated at the junction of two rivers Jehlum and Chenab. Its fertile lands have always been a big source of prosperity. During British rule, colonial authorities in Punjab made many reforms in this region. They not only reformed the agriculture sector but also improved infrastructure. Construction of a road network, railway line, postal and telegraph system as well as supply of electricity had positive impacts on the social and economic life of Jhang. Although all these developments were made for colonial interests ultimately these benefitted the peoples of Jhang. Among British reforms, the most important were agricultural reforms. These reforms had a deep impact on the future and socio-economic and political setup of Jhang. After agricultural reforms and establishing canal colonies, Jhang was neglected in terms of establishing agro-based and other industrial units and new agricultural research and science and technology institutions. As a result, the Jhang was denied the chances for advancement and growth that could have driven and propelled it to become a more prosperous and progressed region. Here the question arises of whether the actual purpose of agricultural reforms in district Jhang was only to create certain classes to protect colonial interests and reward them for their loyalties? Did the British Colonial agrarian reforms lay the foundation for the Feudal system in Jhang?

Will the latest British reforms to rail passenger service procurement work?

In the 1990s Great Britain embarked on one of the most radical railway reforms undertaken anywhere in the world, with full vertical separation and privatisation of all aspects of the railway and the introduction of competition throughout the sector. However, since then Britain's railways have been plagued with multiple problems, most notably a failure to control costs, as well as multiple franchise failures and problems with developing sensible timetables, with consequent impacts on train performance. Multiple attempts to reform the initial model have failed and in 2018/2019 a fundamental review was undertaken which culminated in the publication of the Williams–Shapps plan for rail which proposes a major step back towards vertical integration with the establishment of a new government owned organisation to take charge both of infrastructure and services, although the latter will be operated by private companies under concessions. This paper reviews the reasons behind the problems experienced by Britain's railways – which led to the review – before setting out the proposed reforms and discussing whether they might solve the problems and what some of the critical success factors might be.

‘Our sacred and civil obligations as Christians and as Citizens’: religion, charity and governance in early nineteenth-century Dublin and Edinburgh

AbstractRecent historiography gives an increasingly nuanced picture of interactions between religion and wider society in nineteenth-century Ireland. Yet, when considering the relationships between religion and philanthropy, something central to everyday life in urban centres, emphasis is still placed on the role of the institutional Catholic Church, and there is a sense that lay Catholics were less involved in charity than their Protestant counterparts. Connected with this is the idea that Protestant charities used open forms of governance, but Catholic charities were secretive, an assertion that parallels claims about tensions between Catholicism and democracy. This historiography, however, also suggests that the situation in the early nineteenth century may have been different from later in the century. This article compares small-scale Catholic and Protestant parochial charities in early nineteenth-century Dublin, while also considering similar institutions associated with Presbyterian congregations in Edinburgh. It indicates that some Catholic parochial charities were at least as committed to open procedures and lay participation as their Anglican and Presbyterian counterparts. By exploring these charities and making comparisons, the article shows that some of Dublin's middle-class Catholics were dedicated to the same ideals as early nineteenth-century British reformers.

British Nationality and Borders Bill and the international protection of refugees in the light of the concept of community interest in international law

The crisis that Europe faced in 2015 has never been resolved and countries have adopted different strategies to deal with the influx of migrants . Some of them raise serious legal doubts for good reason. One of the new national solutions currently in the process of passing is the new migration plan announced by the United Kingdom in the Nationality and Borders Bill last year. The aim of the reform is to improve the British asylum system and to fight effectively illegal immigration and people smuggling.The aim of the article is to present the most important assumptions of the British reform in the field of grant- ing refugee status. The analysis would allow to assess the compliance of the designed solutions with international obligations, the fulfilment of which should form the basis of the asylum policy of each State being a party to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. The main aim of the article, however, is to draw attention to the fact that the international protection of refugees should be equated with community interests and referring to the individual interest of the State is an erroneous and dangerous assumption.

Colonial origins of modern bureaucracy? India and the professionalization of the British civil service

AbstractThis article examines the diffusion of meritocratic practices as a potential instance of policy transfer by scrutinizing the introduction of open and competitive examinations during the mid‐nineteenth century in the British Civil Service. Scholars have argued that British reformers were inspired by meritocratic practices in British‐ruled India. In order to assess this claim, we combine qualitative analysis of archival material documenting the interdepartmental debates on meritocratic reforms in the British Home Civil Service as well as in the Indian Civil Service with quantitative analyses of unique data on the implementation of examinations with open competition in British public offices and the India experience of Heads of Departments. Our qualitative and quantitative analyses largely reject the idea that the Indian Civil Service was a key source of inspiration for British merit reforms. While our quantitative analyses show some, albeit weak, evidence, no such evidence was found in the qualitative analysis.

Michael Questier, Dynastic Politics and the British Reformations, 1558–1630. Oxford, Oxford University Press 2019

Article Michael Questier, Dynastic Politics and the British Reformations, 1558–1630. Oxford, Oxford University Press 2019 was published on June 1, 2021 in the journal Historische Zeitschrift (volume 312, issue 3).

Women Writing Creole Masculinity

ABSTRACT This article explores changing constructions and representations of creole masculinity within private and published texts by female authors living in Britain and its colonies during the late eighteenth and nineteenth century. Its analysis of Lady Maria Nugent’s private diary (1801–1805), Sarah Scott’s A Description of Millenium Hall (1762), and The History of Sir George Ellison (1766), Maria Edgeworth’s Belinda (1801), and Mrs William Noy Wilkins’ Slave Son (1854) highlights the ways in which female authors used literary signifiers of creole masculinity to reflect different social attitudes towards British colonial ideology, racial integration, and gender reform in the years immediately preceding the passing of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act (1807) and during the post-emancipatory era following the Act for the Abolition of Slavery Throughout the British Colonies (1833).

Regenerating the ‘Stock’ of the Empire: Biopower and Physical Culture in English Garden City Planning Discourse, 1898-1903

In 1898, British social reformer Ebenezer Howard published To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, calling for ‘garden city’ communities based on the principles of decentralized industry, urban resettlement, low-density housing, and a ‘healthy’ combination of town and country life. To-morrow catalyzed an international movement that continues to influence urban planning. To date, historians have devoted scant attention to the role of physical culture in garden city history and the lead up to the first garden city at Letchworth in 1903. For Howard and movement supporters, the healthfulness of garden cities depended on surrounding each community, its social activities, and its prescribed forms of physical culture with preserved English countryside. This idealizing of bucolic spaces led industrialists and political leaders to embrace the model and incorporate it in their broader political agendas centered on working-class degeneration and strengthening the physical ‘stock’ of the British Empire. This essay examines the role of physical culture in the history of garden city movement discourse between 1898 and 1903. By examining the history through the lens of physical culture, it is argued that garden cities represented a spatialized strategy of modern biopower, as planners sought to regulate working-class life.

The Chicago School and City Planning

While sociology and urban planning might seem respectively to represent the theory and the practice of knowledge about cities, their relation has usually been distant. British sociology and urban planning were closely related before 1914, but largely because sociology was not a bounded specialty: community investigation methods were common throughout the British reform world, finding particular and successful application via city planning’s focus on housing and industrial location. In the United States, by contrast, sociology early became a clearly-defined academic discipline, and sociological empirical methods, although widely shared, supported only generalized reform demands, because local planning of housing and industry was politically impossible outside industrial communities. Most prewar city planning aimed at middle-class and aesthetic values rather than socially ameliorative community design. Between the wars, British academic sociology continued to develop slowly, and community sociological investigation fell largely to the rapidly developing profession of city planning, whose success and power culminated in the masterful plans for postwar London. In the United States, by contrast, sociology rapidly evolved towards national survey analysis, distancing itself even further from practical application in city planning. In general, then, the theory and practice of knowledge about cities remained separate in the first half of the twentieth century in Britain and the United States.

Robert Owen’s influence on French republicanism in the first half of the nineteenth century: the role of former Saint-Simonians and their networks (Pierre Leroux, Jean Reynaud, and George Sand)

ABSTRACT Robert Owen’s ideas and achievements largely shaped French republicanism in the 1830s and 1840s, particularly through the action of former Saint-Simonian socialists. This article explores this process, focusing on two of its major actors: the philosophers Pierre Leroux and Jean Reynaud, who joined the Republican Party in 1833. The two friends formulated an ambitious and influential republican doctrine in their Encyclopédie Nouvelle, in which Owen’s philosophy was largely mobilised, most particularly when Leroux theorised his religion de la fraternité on the model of the ‘Religion of Charity’. Furthermore, Reynaud implemented key elements of Owen’s educational principles in the Second Republic’s policies when he became a leading figure of Hippolyte Carnot’s Ministère de l’instruction publique et des cultes in 1848. Finally, as the two men had a great influence on George Sand, sometimes described as Leroux’s ‘prophetess’, they introduced her to Owen’s ideas, which she presented and discussed in her novels. Thus, even if they sometimes remained ambivalent towards the British reformer, Leroux and Reynaud introduced parts of his thought and ideals into French republicanism, be it in terms of ideology, policies, or literary mythologies.

Does longer compulsory schooling affect mental health? Evidence from a British reform

In this paper, we examine whether longer compulsory schooling has a causal effect on mental health, exploiting a 1972 reform which raised the minimum school leaving age from age 15 to 16 in Great Britain. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that the reform did not improve mental health. We provide evidence that extending the duration of compulsory schooling impacts mental health through channels other than increased educational attainment. We argue that these effects may mitigate or offset the health returns to increased educational attainment.

Dynastic Politics and the British Reformations, 1558–1630, written by Michael Questier

Dynastic Politics and the British Reformations, 1558–1630, written by Michael Questier

British public employment service reform: activating and civilising the precariat?

A post-industrial ‘precariat’ has emerged characterised by social insecurity to which the state’s response has been to secure habituation to insecure labour. This article provides new empirical evidence regarding how the precariat encounter and experience the reformed welfare delivery system. It seeks to explore theoretically whether the precariat is being ‘activated’ and/or ‘civilised’. The author finds that the primary role of Jobcentre Plus is to assess whether the unemployed are ‘active’. This has been interpreted by Marxist scholars as a class disciplinary project which renders labour more dependent upon precarious work. However, the evidence presented here suggests that an inappropriate white-collar model of support combined with sanctions frequently results in ill-discipline and disentitlement from benefits. Furthermore, support cannot be conceptualised as a ‘civilising offensive’ because it is not a deliberate and targeted attempt at inculcating ‘civilised’ behaviour. Moreover, rather than enforcing the norms of civilised behaviour it drives many into destitution and crime.

Succession: Fearful Anxiety, Exhilarating Hope

Succession: Fearful Anxiety, Exhilarating Hope Arthur Williamson (bio) Paulina Kewes and Andrew McRae, editors Stuart Succession Literature: Moments and Transformations oxford: oxford university press, 2019 xv + 371 pages; isbn: 9780198778172 Michael Questier Dynastic Politics and the British Reformations, 1558–1630 oxford: oxford university press, 2019 xvii + 499 pages; isbn: 9780198826330 in 1590 anna of denmark was crowned queen (consort) of Scotland. To celebrate the occasion King James asked the preacher, professor, and poet Andrew Melville to compose some suitable verses. Despite short notice, Melville produced the complicated Στεϕανισκιον ad Scotiae Regem, habitum in coronation Reginae (Little garland given to the king of Scotland on the coronation of the queen). In it he specifically declined to say whether the king had been “selected as the best from the people, or born from your ancestors onto the throne, whether by new law, or ancient custom.” But he was emphatic: the legitimate king was bound by law, and, yet more salient, brought the people with him through assent, not compulsion. If monarchy was firmly grounded, so too was civic engagement. Melville went further still. Anna marked a great turning point, literally the “hinge” to the future, not only securing the dynasty but also readying it for the decisive struggle against “the seven citadels and ramparts of Rome.”1 James was thrilled and ordered the Στεϕανισκιον published immediately. [End Page 483] Succession studies have become quite fashionable in recent years, and understandably so, for regime change inherently raises questions of legitimacy, the nature of the polity, the selection process, and—not least—the mission and defining purposes of the dynasty or of the realm it led. We will find this true even for relatively modest successions like Anna’s. Yet the Edinburgh celebration seems to differ strikingly from the focus and preoccupations of modern historiography. Today’s analyses, as varyingly illustrated by the two books under consideration, labor to show that nothing with regard to succession was at all inevitable or in any way automatic. The matter of Elizabeth’s successor was gravely fraught, “dangerous and doubtful” in the language of contemporaries; the prospect of civil war and foreign intervention loomed as very real possibilities. James’s accession was in no way assured, and, with the exception of his son, that of every successor through the coming of the Hanoverians proved problematic if not openly contested. The watchword was deep anxiety rather than high aspiration, insecurity far more than hope. This style of inquiry finds itself anchored in the “revisionist” perspective that emerged as part of a much larger, indeed tectonic cultural shift in reaction against the 1960s. It involved a vast retreat from public culture and civic identities. Anti-Marxist, anti-liberal, and anti-Protestant, all often blanketed under the rubric of Whig teleology, revisionism emphasized tradition, conservatism, and the resilience (and importance) of authority—while discounting ideology, religious doctrine, and vocabularies of social change. Continuity in outlook closely coexisted with contingency in the event. Revisionism emphasized functional comparisons rather than deeper cultural connections or intellectual transformations. Modernity emerged as an inadvertent and problematic phenomenon, while a preoccupation with blood and tradition—dynastic or tribal—frequently fueled authoritarian, irredentist, and nationalist counter-historiographies. More recent qualifications, often very loosely termed “post-revisionism,” failed to overturn revisionist assumptions. ________ To be sure, historical writing within this frame can lead to powerful insight, and the volume edited by Paulina Kewes and Andrew McRae is one such. Each of the sixteen essays in the collection will prove significant, but Richard McCabe’s analysis of 1603 panegyrics and David Colclough’s discussion of accession sermons for James I and his son illustrate the strengths and limitations of revisionist perspectives. McCabe develops at length the deep anxieties felt on both sides of the border at the prospect of the regnal union. The extravagant claims of poets and prose writers on behalf of a [End Page 484] primordial Britain, drawing on Galfridian mythology and tales about the eponymous Brutus of Troy, served to face down “visceral fear in manufactured euphoria” (22). Their task proved formidable: deep unease at a foreign king, the nightmare of a Scottish conquest, and an abiding dislike of Scotsmen rendered the moment fraught and dangerous. Now all...

Reconstruction in a Globalizing World ed. by David Prior

Reviewed by: Reconstruction in a Globalizing World ed. by David Prior A. James Fuller Reconstruction in a Globalizing World Reconstructing America. Edited by David Prior. Reconstructing America. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2018. Pp. xiv, 224. Paper, $30.00, ISBN 978-0-8232-7831-2; cloth, $105.00, ISBN 978-0-8232-7830-5.) History must be rewritten for every generation in order to make the past relevant to the present. It is therefore fitting that, in this age of globalization, scholars are interested in looking at American events in the context of world history. For some topics, this approach seems obvious, but Reconstruction has been a subject almost always analyzed with a domestic lens. After all, the settlement of the Civil War seemed to be an internal matter that offered enough complexity for scholarly interpretation within the parameters of the nation itself—until now. Reconstruction in a Globalizing World, edited by David Prior, is the latest installment in the Reconstructing America series from Fordham University Press. This slim volume of essays is one of the first attempts to place Reconstruction in a broader, global context, inviting scholars to see the postwar period in a new light and challenging them to look beyond the borders of the United States. [End Page 190] Prior's introduction places the essays at the nexus of Reconstruction scholarship and transnational history. While recognizing the difficulties of combining such disparate fields, Prior insists that doing so affords an opportunity to better explain and understand such matters as international markets, foreign affairs, and nationalism. Seeing Reconstruction through this lens reveals that the "postbellum United States was so struck through with transnational connections that it seems impossible that they were not relevant to Reconstruction" (p. 6). Thus, subjects such as "education, racial ideologies, grassroots political culture, [and] intellectual currents" were not simply important to Reconstruction, but also "had fascinating but neglected transnational dimensions" (p. 6). Yet, in the long run, this collection does more to highlight the values of setting nineteenth-century U.S. history in the context of a transatlantic culture than it does to show the influence of broader world history. Chapters by Evan C. Rothera and Matthew J. Hetrick examine the issues of race and education by looking at Argentina and Liberia, respectively. These two essays help place the efforts of northern reformers who went south to educate freedpeople during Reconstruction within a transatlantic context. Rothera shows how Argentina's president Domingo F. Sarmiento drew on his time in the United States to develop plans for education reform in his own country and to raise questions about the role of race in such reform work. Meanwhile, as Hetrick explains, educators started a college in Monrovia, Liberia, only to find that divisions of race and class, combined with waning interest from African Americans and white reformers in the United States, hampered their efforts. Transatlantic connections also inform two of the best essays in the book, as Mitchell Snay explores the ways Radical Republicans and the northern press saw the British Reform Act of 1867 and related it to the Reconstruction Acts in the United States. The complexities of their thinking underscored both the possibilities and the limitations of transatlantic liberalism, as U.S. reformers sought both to make British allies and to extol the superior virtues of American democracy when looking at the legal expansion of the franchise in Great Britain. The excellent essay by Alison Clark Efford examines the French arms scandal. Set in the context of the Franco-Prussian War, the scandal centered on whether the United States selling guns to France through a third party that was under contract with the French government violated American neutrality. The accusations briefly rocked the Washington, D.C., political scene but were soon eclipsed by other official misdeeds in the more famous scandals of the Ulysses S. Grant administration. Efford argues that the arms scandal had a longer legacy by marking a shift in the American political culture. Before it, Americans constantly crowed about the superiority of their political system in comparison with Europe. After it, they pointed to Britain and Prussia as examples of how the United States might do better when it came to...

Policing young minds: Education and security policy in British Southeast Asia

What factors contributed to the centralization of colonial rule over time? I argue that internal and external threats to the control of territories and populations can lead to the adoption of centralized state institutions, but where institutions already exist centralization may take the form of incremental institutional adaptation rather than wholesale shifts to direct rule. British perceptions of the threat posed by China-driven mobilization amongst overseas Chinese (华侨, huaqiao) evolved over the course of five decades from an external one based on developments in mainland China to an internal threat to British colonial holdings. In response, British colonial education policy shifted from indirect administration of Chinese Schools to more direct methods of control as a way of mitigating this threat. Evidence from the colonies of Malaya, Sarawak, and Singapore demonstrates that the timing and success of changes in British colonial education policy were influenced by local conditions, including the relative size of local Chinese populations and the strength of organized opposition to British reforms. Both international and domestic security conditions interacted to shape British efforts to control Chinese minorities in colonial Southeast Asia.

Reforming Expectations: Parliamentary Pressure and Moral Reform

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.

Fact, fiction and method in the early history of social research: Clementina Black and Margaret Harkness as case-studies

ABSTRACTThe development of social science research methods by women reformers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is a largely buried history. This article examines the work of Clementina Black and Margaret Harkness, two British reformers who conducted many social investigations using a wide range of research methods. They also crossed genres in writing fiction, which was an accepted method at the time for putting forward new ideas about social conditions. Black and Harness were part of a vibrant network of women activists, thinkers and writers in late nineteenth century London, who together contributed much to the growing discipline of social science and to imaginative forms of writing about social issues.

Protecting Slaves and Aborigines

The historiography on protection in the nineteenth-century British Empire often assumes that British humanitarians were the progenitors of protection schemes. In contrast, this article argues that the position of Protector or Guardian for slaves and Indigenous peoples in the British Empire drew on Spanish, Dutch, and French legal precedents. The legal protections and slave codes operative in these European colonies are compared to British colonial territories, where there was no imperial slave code and no clear status of slaves at common law. Drawing on debates in the House of Commons, Parliamentary Commissions of Inquiry, and the published work of abolitionists and anti-slavery societies, the article examines how the pressure for amelioration in the British Empire coincided with the acquisition of new colonies that offered ready-made models for slave protection. British reformers combined their calls for greater protection for slaves with their extant knowledge of European protective regimes.