Nineteenth-century Britain
A Very Short Introduction

A introduction to nineteenth-century Britain, this is an account of a remarkable economic and social change and an even more remarkable political stability.

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 urban and English. Christopher Harvie and Colin Matthew show the forces behind Britain's rise to its imperial zenith, and the continuing tensions within the nations and classes of the 'union state'.

1. Reflections on the revolutions
2. Industrial development
3. Reform and religion
4. The wars abroad
5. Roads to freedom
6. Coping with reform
7. Unless the Lord build the city
8. The ringing grooves of change
9. Politics and diplomacy: Palmerstons years
10. Incorporation
11. Free trade: an industrial economy rampant
12. A shifting population: town and country
13. The masses and the classes: the urban worker
14. Clerks and commerce: the lower middle class
15. The propertied classes
16. Pomp and circumstance
17. A great change in manners
18. Villa Tories: the Conservative resurgence
19. Ireland, Scotland, Wales: Home Rule frustrated
20. Reluctant imperialists?
21. The fin-de-siecle reaction: new views of the State
22. Old Liberalism, New Liberalism, Labourism, and tariff reform
23. Edwardian years: a crisis of the State contained
24. Your English summers done
Further reading
Chronology
Prime ministers 1789-1914
Index