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The Church of England and Victorian Oxford: The History of the Oxford Churchmen's Union, 1860–1890 explores key questions about the Victorian Church. How did it respond to challenges, what was the role of Tractarian clergy and laity, and to what extent did the Church's effort to prove its continuing relevance and usefulness involve compromise? The author uses the Oxford Churchmen's Union to investigate these matters in a new and integrated way. The OCU participated in Church defense and developed outreach programs. Men were to be brought into the Church through lectures and classes, concerts, sporting events, Christmas parties, and summer excursions, but for many OCU members, the social and recreational became more important than the religious side of the enterprise. Moreover, the Union was born in controversy, because its founders included Tractarians and others looked upon it with suspicion. Controversy also surrounded the OCU's non-religious activities. There was a sense that leisure and amusement, if they prompted a departure from a strict focus on self-improvement, ought to be shunned, yet this was an age in which pleasure was to some degree divested of its traditional association with sin. This academic study in Church history uses the Union to elucidate the religious, social, and political conditions within which the Church and its supporters had to operate.

A thematic analysis of the career of Bronterre O'Brien, one of the most influential leaders of Chartism, this book relates his activities—and the Chartist movement—to broader themes in the history of Britain, Europe, and America during the nineteenth century. O'Brien (1804–64) came to be known as the “schoolmaster” of Chartism because of his efforts to describe and explain its intellectual foundations. The campaign for the People's Charter (with its promise of political democratization) was a highpoint in O'Brien's career as writer and orator, but he was already well known before the campaign began, and during the 1840s he distanced himself from other Chartist leaders and from several important Chartist initiatives. This book examines the personal, tactical, and ideological reasons for O'Brien's departure, as well as his development of a social and economic agenda to accompany “constitutional” Chartism, in line with the evolution of radical thought after the Great Reform Act of 1832. It also evaluates O'Brien's reputation, among his contemporaries and among modern historians, in order better to understand his contribution to radicalism in Britain and beyond.

America was important to many British radicals. It was a model, an exemplar, a source of inspiration, and American events were believed to have a bearing on reform debates in Britain. Many scholars focus on the positive impressions of the United States that prominent British radicals entertained, developed, and propagated, but it is necessary also to explore the reasons why some radicals condemned rather than praised America, and to explain how America was conceptualized and used by them, and to what purpose. Liberty and Liberticide focuses on the influence America exerted over the ideas and activities of nineteenth-century British radicals. While some looked on America as the model of liberty, others associated it with the destruction of liberty. Turner shows how radicals'views about the United States and the course of Anglo-American relations shaped their domestic reform agenda and their assumptions about British political values and Britain's place in the world.

This book examines BritainOs role and influence in a pivotal decade. The postwar international order was still taking shape in the 1950s. Much was unsettled, and in these circumstances Britain could realistically expect to remain, and be treated as, one of the'Big Three'world powers along with the United States and Soviet Union. Some adjustments were required in British priorities and methods, in view of changing pressures and needs at home and abroad, but the continuing desire was to make BritainOs position'tenable'in those parts of the world that were of special importance to British prestige, power, strategy, prosperity, and security. This book elucidates the motives behind key decisions, discusses their far-reaching consequences, explains why some options were taken and others rejected, and places British policy-making in the appropriate international context. Designed primarily for undergraduate and beginning postgraduate students, the book offers an up-to-date, single volume treatment of major themes in British and international history; historiographical synthesis and comment; detailed narrative; accessible, easy-to-follow analysis; and a clear, evidence-based point of view concerning the survival of British power in challenging times.

The reasons why people arise to express dissatisfaction with their present situation, and how they imagine and work towards an alternative, have enduring relevance. The reform campaigns of 19th-century Britain are of interest not only in their own right, but also because of what they reveal about processes of political and social change. This book examines the personal, social, political, ideological, and tactical components of radicalism in Britain between the 1820s and 1860s, and casts new light on the meaning, nature, and reception of reform during this period. The main avenues of inquiry are provided by the career of Thomas Perronet Thompson, a prominent MP, political economist, and writer who helped to shape and articulate an independent radicalism, which, with its distinctive commitments, outlook, and identity, has not previously been defined or explained.By relating Thompson's career to wider developments, and investigating the generation and impact of independent radicalism, this book deepens our understanding of 19th-century British reformers and clarifies the relationship between parliament and people and the extent to which decisions taken at the top were made in response to—or in spite of—pressure from below. Turner's findings will be of interest not only to students of the past, but also to observers of current and ongoing struggles between forces of conservatism and reform.