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New examination of how land politics were closely entwined with the idea of Englishness.
The land question loomed large in late Victorian and Edwardian politics, playing a major part in Conservative, Liberal and Labour policymaking: in the context of concern about the faltering agricultural economy and the effects oflarge-scale rural-urban migration, land reforms were hotly debated in and out of parliament as never before. This book offers the first full-length study of the relationship between Englishness and the politics of land. It explores the ideas and cultural attitudes that informed political positions on the land question, from paternalist "pure squire Conservatism" to patriotic radical visions of pre-enclosure England: the author underlines how the land question excited political passion and controversy because it involved contested issues of national identity, national character and race.
By examining how land politics functioned as a site for patriotic debate, the book offers fresh insights into the ideological significance of contemporary nationalistic discourse, which in the British context has more usually been associated with war and empire than apparently "domestic" issues. In doing so, it argues for the importance of rural - but not necessarily reactionary - constructions of Englishness in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century England.
Dr PAUL READMAN is Lecturer in Modern History at King's College London.
The land question loomed large in late Victorian and Edwardian politics, playing a major part in Conservative, Liberal and Labour policymaking: in the context of concern about the faltering agricultural economy and the effects oflarge-scale rural-urban migration, land reforms were hotly debated in and out of parliament as never before. This book offers the first full-length study of the relationship between Englishness and the politics of land. It explores the ideas and cultural attitudes that informed political positions on the land question, from paternalist "pure squire Conservatism" to patriotic radical visions of pre-enclosure England: the author underlines how the land question excited political passion and controversy because it involved contested issues of national identity, national character and race.
By examining how land politics functioned as a site for patriotic debate, the book offers fresh insights into the ideological significance of contemporary nationalistic discourse, which in the British context has more usually been associated with war and empire than apparently "domestic" issues. In doing so, it argues for the importance of rural - but not necessarily reactionary - constructions of Englishness in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century England.
Dr PAUL READMAN is Lecturer in Modern History at King's College London.
Price: $29.99
Pages: 256
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Inc.
Imprint: Boydell Press
Series: Royal Historical Society Studies in History New Series
Publication Date:
21 July 2011
Trim Size: 9.21 X 6.14 in
ISBN: 9781843836520
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
HISTORY / Modern / General, General and world history, HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain / General, European history
A concise and lucid account. [It] offers a compelling case for the importance of ideas about land to the history of modern English politics.
A thorough and illuminating study of the politics of the land during the transition to mass democracy.
[The author] tames a monumental archive in his work, amassing a body of speeches and writing surrounding the land reform debates that has been almost entirely ignored by those who examine rural visions of English identity in novels, poems or popular mass media.
[A] sophisticated, subtle and probing study [...].
[An] impressive volume [which] makes important contributions to a range of crucial debates in modern British history. It will interest a range of scholars and students of politics, rural society, agriculture, national identity and land reform and provide them with a thoroughly good read.
This book goes some considerable distance in filling [a] gap in the historiography. [...] Readman has written an important book that deserves to be widely read and debated by political and cultural historians, agricultural historians, imperial historians and historians of national identity. It is a gifted historian indeed who can weave together a narrative that has such wide historiographical resonance.
[An] excellent addition to the Royal History Society's Studies in History New Series. [...] An impressive addition to the output of a prolific historian, and makes a very important contribution to the historiography of land, and of English politics in this period.
An important and innovative contribution to the developing historiography on land reform. [...] This book [...] is an indispensable contribution to understanding land reform in the period 1880-1914 and has pushed the debate about these issues in new and exciting directions. It is also exceptionally well written.
A thorough and illuminating study of the politics of the land during the transition to mass democracy.
[The author] tames a monumental archive in his work, amassing a body of speeches and writing surrounding the land reform debates that has been almost entirely ignored by those who examine rural visions of English identity in novels, poems or popular mass media.
[A] sophisticated, subtle and probing study [...].
[An] impressive volume [which] makes important contributions to a range of crucial debates in modern British history. It will interest a range of scholars and students of politics, rural society, agriculture, national identity and land reform and provide them with a thoroughly good read.
This book goes some considerable distance in filling [a] gap in the historiography. [...] Readman has written an important book that deserves to be widely read and debated by political and cultural historians, agricultural historians, imperial historians and historians of national identity. It is a gifted historian indeed who can weave together a narrative that has such wide historiographical resonance.
[An] excellent addition to the Royal History Society's Studies in History New Series. [...] An impressive addition to the output of a prolific historian, and makes a very important contribution to the historiography of land, and of English politics in this period.
An important and innovative contribution to the developing historiography on land reform. [...] This book [...] is an indispensable contribution to understanding land reform in the period 1880-1914 and has pushed the debate about these issues in new and exciting directions. It is also exceptionally well written.