Miles Taylor – författare

This wide-ranging book - one of the first major studies of British radicalism in the years between the collapse of Chartism in 1848 and the advent of Gladstonian liberalism in the 1860s - explains how and why radicalism lost its hold over British politics.The book begins by re-examining the rise of radicalism in the 1830s and 1840s, arguing that it was the 1832 Reform Act which invigorated radicalism, by enlarging the powers of parliament and increasing the need for independent MPs. As independents, between the mid-1830s and the mid-1850s, radicals, alongside other liberals and reformers, were invested with unprecedented influence in parliament, in the constituencies, and in the media. During the 1850s events at home and in Europe undermined the radical ascendancy, and paved the way for the moderate liberalism of the Gladstone years.This is an original and comprehensive revision of mid-nineteenth century radicalism and its influence on the origins of Gladstonian liberalism, filling an important gap in our knowledge of Victorian political history.

Ernest Jones (1819-69) was the last of the Chartist leaders, and in many ways the last in the long line of gentlemanly radicals who graced popular politics in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain. His life was an extraordinarily colourful affair. Born into the fringes of the late Hanoverian court, and an habitué of the fashionable literary salons of London society, Jones renounced respectability and joined the Chartists, suffering imprisonment for his radical beliefs. He re-emerged as a popular leader at the height of the agitation for the second reform bill in the mid-1860s, becoming, alongside John Bright, the most popular orator of his generation. Jones was also a poet, dramatist and novelist, and this study - the first full biography in over a century - interweaves an account of his literary achievement with his political career, revealing Jones as the mid-Victorian incarnation of Shelley's romantic vision of the poet as patriot. A major contribution to Chartist historiography, this book also reveals the materials out of which political personality was fashioned in the mid-Victorian age.

'An ancient and ever-altering constitution is like an old man who still wears with attached fondness clothes in the fashion of his youth: what you see of him is the same; what you do not see is wholly altered.'Walter Bagehot's The English Constitution (1867) is the best account of the history and working of the British political system ever written. As arguments raged in mid-Victorian Britain about giving the working man the vote, and democracies overseas were pitched into despotism and civil war, Bagehot took a long, cool look at the 'dignified' and 'efficient' elements which made the English system the envy of the world. His analysis of the monarchy, the role of the prime minister and cabinet, and comparisons with the American presidential system are astute and timeless, and pertinent to current discussions surrounding devolution and electoral reform.Combining the wit and panache of a journalist with the wisdom of a man of letters steeped in evolutionary ideas and historical knowledge, Bagehot produced a book which is always thoughtful, often funny, and seldom dull.This edition reproduces Bagehot's original 1867 work in full, and introduces the reader to the dramatic political events that surrounded its publication. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

An entirely original account of Victoria’s relationship with the Raj, which shows how India was central to the Victorian monarchy from as early as 1837"A widely and deeply researched, elegantly written, and vital portrayal of [Queen Victoria’s] place in colonial Indian affairs.”—Journal of Modern HistoryIn this engaging and controversial book, Miles Taylor shows how both Victoria and Albert were spellbound by India, and argues that the Queen was humanely, intelligently, and passionately involved with the country throughout her reign and not just in the last decades. Taylor also reveals the way in which Victoria’s influence as empress contributed significantly to India’s modernization, both political and economic. This is, in a number of respects, a fresh account of imperial rule in India, suggesting that it was one of Victoria’s successes.

Over a century after the death of Queen Victoria, historians are busy re-appraising her age and achievements. However, our understanding of the Victorian era is itself a part of history, shaped by changing political, cultural and intellectual fashions. From widespread reaction against Victorian values led by the Bloomsbury set, through to the rehabilitation of Victorian literature and architecture in the 1950s and 1960s, down to the present enthusiasm for film and television adaptations of Charles Dickens and George Eliot, our image of the Victorians has changed a great deal. The Victorians since 1901 provides a much-needed survey of these trends in modern historiography. Bringing together a group of international scholars from the disciplines of history, English literature, art history and cultural studies, it identifies and assesses the principal influences on twentieth-century attitudes towards the Victorians. Developments in academia, popular culture, public history and the internet are covered in this important and stimulating collection, and the final chapters anticipate future global trends in interpretations of the Victorian era, making an essential volume for students of Victorian Studies.

This book explores the central role of salt in modern Indian history through eleven specially commissioned essays from an international range of scholars. Down to 1947, the British controlled the production, distribution and sale of salt in India. Salt was taxed, with the burden falling disproportionately on the poor. By the early 20th century, salt yielded the largest revenue of all commodities taxed by the Government of India. When Mohandas Gandhi sought to mobilize the Indian poor against colonial rule in 1930, he chose a march from Ahmedabad to the sea-salt producing coastline of Gujarat as an act of civil disobedience, projecting the Indian struggle for independence to an unprecedented global audience. Using salt as a lens, these essays reconstruct how one of life's necessities remained a central issue of public policy in both colonial and independent India, exploring the entangled histories of colonial state making, economic policies, individual ambitions, legal entanglements, protest and public health.This volume will be invaluable for students, researchers and scholars interested in South Asian studies, Economic History and Public Policy. The book covers broad subject areas including colonial administration, taxation and revenue systems, civil disobedience movements, economic nationalism, public health policy, and the social and cultural significance of essential commodities in shaping state-society relations in modern India.The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of South Asian Studies.

In a remarkable decade of public investment in higher education, some 200 new university campuses were established worldwide between 1961 and 1970. This volume offers a comparative and connective global history of these institutions, illustrating how their establishment, intellectual output and pedagogical experimentation sheds light on the social and cultural topography of the long 1960s. With an impressive geographic coverage - using case studies from Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia - the book explores how these universities have influenced academic disciplines and pioneered new types of teaching, architectural design and student experience. From educational reform in West Germany to the establishment of new institutions with progressive, interdisciplinary curricula in the Commonwealth, the illuminating case studies of this volume demonstrate how these universities shared in a common cause: the embodiment of 'utopian' ideals of living, learning and governance. At a time when the role of higher education is fiercely debated, Utopian Universities is a timely and considered intervention that offers a wide-ranging, historical dimension to contemporary predicaments.

In a remarkable decade of public investment in higher education, some 200 new university campuses were established worldwide between 1961 and 1970. This volume offers a comparative and connective global history of these institutions, illustrating how their establishment, intellectual output and pedagogical experimentation sheds light on the social and cultural topography of the long 1960s. With an impressive geographic coverage - using case studies from Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia - the book explores how these universities have influenced academic disciplines and pioneered new types of teaching, architectural design and student experience. From educational reform in West Germany to the establishment of new institutions with progressive, interdisciplinary curricula in the Commonwealth, the illuminating case studies of this volume demonstrate how these universities shared in a common cause: the embodiment of 'utopian' ideals of living, learning and governance. At a time when the role of higher education is fiercely debated, Utopian Universities is a timely and considered intervention that offers a wide-ranging, historical dimension to contemporary predicaments.

In the thirty-five years since the publication of David Cannadine’s Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (1990) the power of Britain’s landed elite declined, but they remain far from extinct. One-third of Britain’s land still belongs to the aristocracy. Moreover, partly inspired by Cannadine’s book, we now know much more about the ways in which the aristocracy established their hold on modernity, and how they have lasted so long. Many key questions remain. How much was this a distinctively British story, to what extent were things different in Scotland, Wales and Ireland? Does ‘decline and fall’ accurately describe what happened to landed elites in other countries, particularly in western Europe, or amongst assimilated elites such as Jews? Was the ‘soft’ power of the aristocracy – their role in the arts, philanthropy and higher education – as significant as their political and economic sway? How dependent on the colonies, and also the USA, were the British aristocracy for their wealth in the first place, and how did their role overseas change their profile at home? This volume brings together a wide-ranging group of scholars to explore The Decline and Fall, developing its themes in new ways, and investigating other aspects for the first time.

An account of the European vision of one of the most influential statesmen and thinkers of the nineteenth-century. This edition of the previously unpublished travel diaries of the M.P. and economic writer Richard Cobden (1804-1865) is not only a revealing account of Anglo-European politics before, during and after the year of revolutions, but is also a travel guide to Europe in the pre-railway age and a contribution to the intellectual biography of an English provincial radical who became a major European celebrity, one of the founders of Free Trade. During his extensive continental travels Cobden met most of the monarchs and leading statesmen of Europe, as well as artists, writers, churchmen and fellow-travellers. His tour through France, Spain, the Italian states, Austria, Prussia, Russia and the Hanseatic ports let him witness the struggles between order and progress which led to and succeeded the great upheavals of 1848. The diaries reveal Cobden in a new light - a determined European, convinced that economic cooperation and not protectionism and militarism was the only way to preserve international stability.