This text explores the pervasive influence of pacifism on Victorian feminism. Drawing on previously unused source material, it provides an account of Victorian women who campaigned for peace and the many feminists who incorporated pacifist ideas into their writing on women and women's work.

First published as part of the best-selling The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain, Christopher Harvie and Colin Matthew's Very Short Introduction to Nineteenth-Century Britain is a sharp but subtle account of remarkable economic and social change and an even more remarkable political stability. Britain in 1789 was overwhelmingly rural, agrarian, multilingual, and almost half Celtic. By 1914, when it faced its greatest test since the defeat of Napoleon, it was largely ...

In a provocative study that bristles with contemporary relevance, Himmelfarb demonstrates that the material and moral dimensions of poverty were inseparable in the minds of late Victorians, be they radical or conservative.

Janet Ajzenstat is one of Canada's most respected thinkers on the moral and philosophical foundations of responsible government and Confederation. Discovering Confederation is a study of political science over the last forty years through the intellectual lens of her career.Ajzenstat details her academic journey, from her early years as a hopeful, radical activist in the 1960s, through her graduate studies at McMaster University and the University of Toronto, her commitmen...

Written by a team of eminent historians, these essays explore how ten twentieth-century intellectuals and social reformers sought to adapt such familiar Victorian values as `civilisation', `domesticity', `conscience' and `improvement' to modern conditions of democracy, feminism and mass culture. Covering such figures as J.M. Keynes, E.M. Forster and Lord Reith of the BBC, these interdisciplinary studies scrutinize the children of the Victorians at a time when their private assumptions and ...

How did Britain cease to be global? In Untied Kingdom, Stuart Ward tells the panoramic history of the end of Britain, tracing the ways in which Britishness has been imagined, experienced, disputed and ultimately discarded across the globe since the end of the Second World War. From Indian independence, West Indian immigration and African decolonization to the Suez Crisis and the Falklands War, he uncovers the demise of Britishness as a global civic idea and its impact on communities across...

The sheer number of publications on Feminism make it difficult for students who approach the subject for the first time to gain a sense of what the main issues and interpretations are. This book addresses this by offering students an overview of feminism and its history across several countries and time periods, along with an annotated guide to direct them in their further reading.Feminism by June Hannam provides comprehensive coverage right from how feminists beg...

Black people in the British Empire have long challenged the notion that "there ain't no black in the Union Jack." For the post-World War II wave of Afro-Caribbean migrants, many of whom had long been subjects of the Empire, claims to a British identity and imperial citizenship were considered to be theirs by birthright. However, while Britain was internationally touted as a paragon of fair play and equal justice, they arrived in a nation that was frequently hostile and unwilling to incorpo...

This volume brings together distinguished historians of Ireland, each of whom tackles a key question, issue or event in Irish history since the eighteenth century and:* examines its historiography* assesses the context of new interpretations* considers the strengths and weaknesses of revisionist ideas* offers their own interpretation.Topics covered are not only of historical interest but, in the context of recent revisionist debates, of contemporary pol...

Interracial sex mattered to the British colonial state in West Africa. In Crossing the Color Line, Carina E. Ray goes beyond this fact to reveal how Ghanaians shaped and defined these powerfully charged relations. The interplay between African and European perspectives and practices, argues Ray, transformed these relationships into key sites for consolidating colonial rule and for contesting its hierarchies of power. With rigorous methodology and innovative analyses, Ray brings Gh...

This is a book about Irish nationalism and how Irish nationalists developed their own conception of the Irish race. Bruce Nelson begins with an exploration of the discourse of race--from the nineteenth--century belief that "race is everything" to the more recent argument that there are no races. He focuses on how English observers constructed the "native" and Catholic Irish as uncivilized and savage, and on the racialization of the Irish in the nineteenth century, especially in Britain and...

The Oxford History of the British Empire is a major new assessment of the Empire in the light of recent scholarship and the progressive opening of historical records. From the founding of colonies in North America and the West Indies in the seventeenth century to the reversion of Hong Kong to China at the end of the twentieth, British imperialism was a catalyst for far-reaching change. The Oxford History of the British Empire as a comprehensive study helps us to understan...