Power
Key Texts
- Chris Williams (ed.), A Companion to Nineteeth-Century Britain, Part II: Politics and Government
- Martin Daunton (ed.), The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, Part II: Governance
- D Fraser, ‘Politics and the Victorian city’, Urban History Yearbook (1979)
- John Garrard, 'Urban Elites, 1850-1914: The rule and decline of a new squirearchy?', Albion, 1995
- E Hennock, ‘Central/local government relationships in England: an outline 1800-1950’, Urban History Yearbook (1982)
- Philip Salmon, '"Reform Should Begin at Home" : English Municipal and Parliamentary Reform, 1818-32'. Parliamentary History (2005)
Seminar Questions
- How democratic were the institutions of government in Victorian cities? eg vestries, municipal government, highway surveyors, overseers of poor etc
- What roles were there for the landed elite? the nonconformist middle classes? women? the poor?
- Examine central/local government relations in this period.
- Is the history of local government a history of inaction and apathy?
- Examine the structures of power (and resistance to power) in one city using the sources below.
Sources
- Local History sources from British History Online
- The Times Digital Archive
- Nineteenth-Century British Library Newspapers
- Political Revolt and Reform (Modern Records Centre Online resource)
Further Reading
C Bellamy, Administering Central-Local Relations
A Briggs, ‘The background to the English parliamentary reform movement in three English cities’, Cambridge Historical Journal, 10 (1952).
D Cannadine, (ed.), Patricians, Power and Politics in Nineteenth Century Towns
J J Clarke, A History of Local Government in the United Kingdom
Alan Di Gaetano, 'The Birth of Modern Urban Governance : A Comparison of Political Modernization in Boston, Massachusetts, and Bristol, England, 1800-1870'. Journal of Urban History (2009)
M Falkus, ‘The development of municipal trading in the nineteenth century’, Business History, 19 (1977)
D Fraser, Urban Politics in Victorian England: the Structure of Politics in Victorian Cities
D Fraser, Power and Authority in the Victorian City
D Fraser, (ed.), Municipal Reform and the Industrial City
H Fraser, ‘Municipal Socialism and Social Policy’ in Morris and Rodger, The Victorian City
J Garrard, Leadership and Power in Victorian Industrial Towns 1830-80
S Gaskell, Building Control: National Legislation and the Introduction of Local Bye-Laws in Victorian England
E Hennock, Fit and Proper Persons: Ideal and Reality its Nineteenth-Century Urban Government
P Hollis, Ladies Elect: Women in English Local Government 1865-1914
Tristram Hunt, Building Jerusalem
B Keith-Lucas, English Local Government
B Keith-Lucas, English local government in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
J Kellett, ‘Municipal socialism, enterprise and trading in the Victorian city’, Urban History Yearbook (1978)
V Lipman, Local Government Areas
R Lambert, ‘Central-Local relations in mid Victorian England’, Victorian Studies, 1962-3
D Owen, The Government of Victorian London
R Rhodes, Control and power in central-local government relations
G Sutherland, Studies in the Growth of nineteenth century government
D Thompson, in J Rendall, Equal or Different?
J Vernon, Politics and People
J Vincent, Poll books: How Victorians Voted
P Waller, Democracy and Sectarianism: a Political and Social History of Liverpool 1868-1939
K Young and P Garside Metropolitan London: Politics and Urban Change 1837-1981
A satire on a vestry meeting at St Paul's Covent Garden in 1828