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1
Searles, Patrick James. "The measurement of economic and labour market conditions in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods and the use of data from the co-operative movement of Great Britain." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2004. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/2896/.
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The overall aim of the thesis is to extract from a hitherto under-used data set a wide range of statistics that enable the calculation of annual average earnings for a geographically and occupationally diverse group of workers. The period covered is 1896 to 1913 and essentially attempts to draw economic and welfare inferences from spatial and time series analysis by occupational sector and between geographical location. The extent of the data may be exemplified by noting that the number of workers represented is 52,977 in 1896 and 178,674 in 1913. The thesis is divided into three sections as follows: 1. The introductory part discusses in general terms the measurement of economic and labour market conditions in the period, the relative importance of this issue, and difficulties that exist due to lack of representative data. The second part attempts to justify the use of data for annual average earnings of co-operative society workers as giving some representation of market wages. This is covered by two chapters, one qualitative and one quantative 2. The first part of this section draws upon statistics from productive societies in the Movement. The data is arranged by sector and comparisons are made with existing work by Bowley, Wood and Feinstein. Additional data is drawn from the Labour Gazette in the period and the results seem to suggest that, when actual earnings rather than wage rates are used, annual and periodic levels of income show greater variance. The possibility that these variances may be an indication of underlying economic and labour market conditions is discussed in detail. The second part of this section uses data from the largest section of the Movement, the distributive side. A database (Access) has been created and statistics on annual average earnings entered for all 1,167 distributive societies in 1906 (62,465 workers). A total of 890 have been mapped onto an outline of Great Britain. This data is also presented at metropolitan and regional levels of analysis for comparative purposes. 3. The final part of the thesis attempts to draw upon the preceding chapters to suggest that variance in annual average earnings may contribute to the debate concerning conditions within Britain for the period. Relative distress within the diverse economy that existed in the period has been an area of quite considerable discussion and authors have used a number of proxy measures - for example poor law returns, data for the recovery of small debts, marriage rates and trade union unemployment returns - to measure these variations. This section will investigate the possibility that one or more of these proxies may be indicative of relative conditions (by comparison with annual average wages) when tested at local levels.
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Childs, Michael James 1956. "Working class youth in late Victorian and Edwardian England." Thesis, McGill University, 1986. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=74015.
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Riedi, Elizabeth L. "Imperialist women in Edwardian Britain : the Victoria League, 1899-1914." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/2820.
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This thesis, based on private papers, society records, autobiographies and memoirs, newspapers and periodicals, examines one mainly female imperialist organisation - the Victoria League - and the women who ran it. It considers two related questions - what made Edwardian women imperialist, and how, within the limits of Edwardian society, could they express their imperialism? The thesis shows that several of the League's founders and executive had visited South Africa during or shortly before the Boer War, and that this experience, particularly for those who came into close contact with Milner, was pivotal in stimulating them to active imperialism. The Victoria League, founded April 1901, aimed to promote imperial unity and a British South Africa in a variety of suitably 'womanly' ways: Boer War charities, imperial education, exporting literature and art to the white dominions (particularly the Transvaal), welcoming colonial visitors to Britain, arranging for the welcome of British settlers in the colonies, and promoting social reform as an imperial issue. It worked overseas through a number of independent Victoria Leagues in Australasia, the Imperial Order, Daughters of the Empire in Canada, and the Guild of Loyal Women in South Africa; and at home with a number of similar (though largely male) imperial propaganda societies. The thesis also considers the Victoria League's attitude to race, particularly through its debate over entertaining Indian students. It ends with a discussion of the options available to imperialist women; and of the obstacles they faced in questions of authority (how far and in what ways a woman could pronounce on imperial subjects) and of ideology (as expressed through the anti-suffrage campaign). It concludes that the Victoria League, by transferring areas of activity long acknowledged as 'feminine' to the imperial stage, redefined areas of female competence and enlarged woman's 'separate sphere' to include the active propagation of imperialism.
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Gray, David W. "Entry to the metropolitan labour market in Victorian and Edwardian Britain." Thesis, Queen Mary, University of London, 1991. http://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/1507.
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In studying the Victorian city, historical geographers have concentrated on defining patterns, structures and form at the expense of processes. It is suggested that it is only via the study of processes and structures within the urban economy that such spatial patterns and developments can be fully understood. It is further advanced that amongst economic structures, the labour market is an area of fundamental importance in reaching any understanding of the Victorian and Edwardian city, and in particular London. The subject of the late Victorian labour market is approached via a review of modern labour market theory and subsequently of the ideas advanced by the classical economists. This review reveals both the importance of empirical observation in informing contemporary economists' theoretical models of the Victorian labour market and the significant degree to which the debate within the modern theoretical literature derives directly, although largely anonymously, from parallel arguments in the earlier literature. An attempt is made to establish how far the casual labour problem in late Victorian London, the subject of considerable concern and debate amongst the contemporary commentators, fits into the Dual or Segmented Labour Market paradigms advanced principally by American economists since the 1960s. The emphasis given by contemporary commentators to boy labour as a source of the casual labour problem is seen to reflect a similar emphasis on the importance of the point of entry to the labour market in the theoretical literature. The social and economic importance of the boy labour problem in Victorian and Edwardian London is explored and explained as in part a consequence of the demographic and economic conditions prevailing in the capital at the close of the century, but also as reflecting a continuing economic imperative and culture of child labour and the impact of legislative intervention in the labour market.
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Larson, Alison. "The Last Laugh: Selected Edwardian Punch Cartoons of Edward Linley Sambourne." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2001. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc2793/.
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The illustrative work of Edward Linley Sambourne for Punch magazine during the period 1901-1910 addresses a myriad of political topics prevalent during the Edwardian period in British history. This thesis examines two of those topics - Women's Suffrage and Socialism - through their artistic treatment by one of Britain's most influential periodicals. Through a study of the historical context and iconography of selected cartoons-of-the-week, one is better equipped to understand and appreciate the meaning, message, and humor in the cartoons. Chapter 1 introduces the Sambourne, Punch magazine, and the Edwardian period in general. Chapters 2 and 3 discuss four Women's Suffrage cartoons and four Socialism cartoons respectively. Chapter 4 draws conclusions regarding Sambourne's techniques as a cartoonist as well as the relationship between the text and image in his illustrations.
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Ottewill, Roger Martin. "Faith and good works : Congregationalism in Edwardian Hampshire 1901-1914." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2015. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/6232/.
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Congregationalists were a major presence in the ecclesiastical landscape of Edwardian Hampshire. With a number of churches in the major urban centres of Southampton, Portsmouth and Bournemouth, and places of worship in most market towns and many villages they were much in evidence and their activities received extensive coverage in the local press. Their leaders, both clerical and lay, were often prominent figures in the local community as they sought to give expression to their Evangelical convictions tempered with a strong social conscience. From what they had to say about Congregational leadership, identity, doctrine and relations with the wider world and indeed their relative silence on the issue of gender relations, something of the essence of Edwardian Congregationalism emerges. In their discourses various tensions were to the fore, including those between faith and good works; the spiritual and secular impulses at the heart of the institutional principle; and the conflicting priorities of churches and society at large. These reflect the restlessness of the period and point to a possible 'turning of the tide'. They also call into question the suitability of constructs such as 'faith in crisis' or 'faith society' to characterise the church history of the Edwardian era.
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Duncan, Andrew George. "The military education of junior officers in the Edwardian army." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2017. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/7634/.
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This thesis charts the military education of junior Edwardian army officers, moving chronologically through key aspects of the process. It examines the detail of curricula at Sandhurst and Woolwich, the prevalence of entry via auxiliary forces and the military knowledge of men who gained commissions by that route, the training and study officers undertook after commissioning, and the education available at Camberley and Quetta. It thus offers a holistic examination of officer education. It concludes that there was a strong and growing professionalism among the junior commissioned officers, founded on their acquisition of skilled expertise and their expectations of advancing in their careers on the basis of professional merit. This thesis contributes to broader debates in three ways. Firstly, by going beyond existing studies which focus heavily on the upper echelons of the officer corps, it allows a more complete examination of the competence and military capacity of the Edwardian army. Secondly, it contributes to discussions on professionalism and processes of professionalization at the beginning of the twentieth century. Thirdly, it considers the nature of the training and education that the Edwardian Army undertook and seeks to locate this within discussions on the proper form and objectives of officer education.
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Den, Otter Sandra. "The search for 'social philosophy' : the idealists of late Victorian and Edwardian Britain." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1990. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.306690.
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Thomas, Matthew. "Paths to utopia : anarchist counter-cultures in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain 1880-1914." Thesis, University of Warwick, 1998. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/4237/.
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Most historiography on British Anarchism has concluded that the Anarchists contributed very little to the political, social and cultural life of Britain. This thesis aims to provide an alternative view. The failure of Anarchism as a coherent political movement has been adequately charted by others. The purpose of the present work is to investigate the impact of Anarchist ideas and practices within the wider political culture. It will demonstrate that Anarchism had significant things to say about many of the issues troubling British society at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. The Anarchist contribution often demonstrated a high degree of originality and coherence and therefore deserves to be taken seriously. The first chapter outlines the evolution of British Anarchism from the 1880's onwards in order to construct a chronological and organisational context for the thematic debates that follow. It provides an historical account of the various Anarchist groups in Britain and their relations with the rest of the Socialist movement. Chapter Two builds on this by discussing the various social and cultural mileux characteristic of British Anarchism. The following chapters present evidence of the Anarchist contribution to a variety of diverse developments in British society between the 1880's and 1914. In order, these are educational practices, communal ways of living, trade unionism, Syndicalism and finally the status of women in society. The conclusion maintains that, although Anarchist influence was weakened by sectarianism and organisational failures, the Anarchists nevertheless made an original contribution to the political culture, both as theorists and practical activists.
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Tanis, Bethany. "The “Great Church Crisis,” Public Life, and National Identity in late-Victorian and Edwardian Britain." Thesis, Boston College, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/2345/1969.
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Thesis advisor: Peter WeilerThis dissertation explores the social, cultural, and political effects of the “Great Church Crisis,” a conflict between the Protestant and Anglo-Catholic (or Ritualist) parties within the Church of England occurring between 1898 and 1906. Through a series of case studies, including an examination of the role of religious controversy in fin-de-siècle Parliamentary politics, it shows that religious belief and practice were more important in turn-of-the-century Britain than has been appreciated. The argument that the onset of secularization in Britain as defined by both a decline in religious attendance and personal belief can be pushed back until at least the 1920s or 1930s is not new. Yet, the insight that religious belief and practice remained a constituent part of late-Victorian and Edwardian national identity and public life has thus far failed to penetrate political, social, and cultural histories of the period. This dissertation uses the Great Church Crisis to explore the interaction between religious belief and political and social behavior, not with the intent of reducing religion to an expression of political and social stimuli, but with the goal of illuminating the ways politics, culture, and social thought functioned as bearers of religious concerns. The intense anti-Catholicism unleashed by the Church Crisis triggered debate about British national identity, Erastianism, and the nature of the church-state relationship. Since the Reformation, Erastians – supporters of full state control of the church – and proponents of a more independent church had argued over how to define the proper relationship between the national church and state. This dissertation demonstrates that the Church Crisis represents a crucial period in the history of church-state relations because the eventual Anglo-Catholic victory ended Parliamentary attempts to control the church’s theology and practice and, therefore, sounded the death knell of political Erastianism. In short, tensions between Protestant and Catholics reached a high water mark during the years of the Great Church Crisis. These tensions catalyzed both a temporary revival of Erastianism and its ultimate descent into irrelevance
Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009
Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Discipline: History
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Woods, Hannah Rose. "Anxiety and urban life in late Victorian and Edwardian culture, 1880-1914." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2018. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/274934.
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The thesis investigates anxieties about urban life in late Victorian and Edwardian culture, and examines emotional responses to urbanisation, industrialisation and modernity at this high point of urban growth and rural-urban migration: one that marked Britain’s decisive breakthrough to a largely and permanently urbanised society. During the period, earlier nineteenth-century tropes of the ‘shock’ of the city, and anxieties surrounding rapid early urbanisation and industrialisation, began to recede. But from the 1880s onwards, as life in industrial cities came to be regarded as the norm, new anxieties came to the fore: concerns that related to the very pervasiveness and inescapability of urban life. I argue that the historically unprecedented growth in the size of cities placed enormous strain upon conceptions of the individual in modern society: the impulse to conceive of mass urban society in the abstract was in constant tension with a new, modernistic awareness of the essential humanity of each individual. The research utilises insights from the recent ‘emotional turn’ within the humanities, which is more sensitive to psychological factors in cultural practices and social processes; and brings this historiographical turn to bear on attitudes towards the city. An emotional approach enables both a deeper and subtler exploration of high cultural responses, and the extension of the range of sources and actors beyond ‘ideas’ and ‘intellectuals’. The thesis integrates a wide range of sources: literature, art, the writings of urban planners and social commentators, medical writings, working-class autobiographical writing, and oral history transcripts. Such an approach reveals the common emotional impulses and shared structures of feeling behind a diverse range of responses to the urban environment, and provides a deeper understanding of contemporary emotional life. It thus illuminates the ways in which individuals, societies and culture react to the complexities of modernity, and provides insights into the relationship between social transformation and emotional experience.
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Thompson, Andrew Stuart. "Thinking imperially? : Imperial presssure groups and the idea of Empire in late-Victorian and Edwardian Britain." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1994. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.260092.
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Bryson, Alan. ""The speciall men in every sphere": the Edwardian regime, 1547-1553." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/2645.
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This thesis examines clienteles during the reign of Edward VI, particularly those of the dukes of Somerset and Northumberland, and the role of the county elite in political society in order to reassess politics from the perspective of clientage. Edward's reign has not been extensively studied from this perspective but work by Dr Adams, Professor Guy and others on other periods provided the necessary context to reassess Edwardian politics. The aim was to investigate whether the regime continued to rely on the same core within the county elite employed in the 1520s and 1530s and again in Elizabeth's reign. This has involved extensive archival research since 1996 (in St Andrews, London and the Midlands). I have found that the privy council tried to foster a closer working relationship with the county elite in order to maintain stability and prevent faction during this period of minority government. The regime depended on the same core of gentlemen in the shires to act as commissioners of the peace and to fill the other vital local offices. Even within this group there was an inner-ring. This relationship was a two-way process and the clientage that underpinned early modem society was central to it. This study has also explored the extent to which Somerset's and Northumberland's clienteles were involved in central and local government to reassess how much the dukes operated as courtcentred or county-centred politicians. Both men dominated government in turn and their clienteles were vitally important. These were made up of their servants, family, friends and clients and were mutual self-support groups that reinforced their political and social status. Although principally intended as a political study, this research has come to incorporate military and local history. It has looked at how clienteles operated during periods of stability and crisis (the activities of Lord Seymour of Sudeley, the 1549 rebellions, the October coup, the second fall of Somerset and the succession crisis in 1553) in order to demonstrate how they really functioned.
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Ashmore, Sonia. "Liberty's Orient : taste and trade in the decorative arts in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain 1875-1914." Thesis, Open University, 2001. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.394784.
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Linehan, Denis John. "Commercial geographies : industrialisation, landscape and economy in inter-war Britain." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 1997. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.339640.
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Gooberman, Leon. "Government intervention in the Welsh economy, 1974 to 1997." Thesis, Cardiff University, 2013. http://orca.cf.ac.uk/52841/.
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This thesis provides a description and analysis of government intervention in the Welsh economy between 1974 and 1997. During this period, Wales underwent rapid and far-reaching economic upheaval on such a massive scale that few avoided its impact. The scale of these changes was dramatic, as was the intensity of attempts to deal with their consequences. Wales acted as a laboratory for the development of approaches to government intervention in the economy. This thesis defines government intervention in the Welsh economy, before identifying activity, expenditure and (where possible) outputs across categories including land reclamation, factory construction, attraction of foreign direct investment, urban renewal, business support and the provision of grants and subsidies. It also places such interventions in their political and economic contexts, highlighting the dynamics that evolved between policies developed in Cardiff and London. By doing this, it asks and answers three questions relating to the changing dynamics of government intervention; namely, what was done, why was it done and was it effective? The thesis draws on primary sources including interviews with politicians and those formerly holding senior positions within governmental organisations, records held by the National Archives, personal and organisational archives held by the National Library of Wales, records held by other archives, newspapers and government publications. Secondary texts are discussed and drawn upon, with this study adding a history of government intervention in the Welsh economy to the literature for the first time.
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Fleet, Peter F. "The Isle of Axholme, 1540-1640 : economy and society." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2002. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/13621/.
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In the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the rapid growth of population produced both pressure on land and an increase in the demand for com, the supply of which was inelastic, resulting in inflation of food prices compared with manufactured commodities. The consensus of many writers is that the rich grew richer while the poor grew poorer because the larger farmers who could market surpluses of food, and also increase their landholding, benefited at the expense of the smaller farmer, who produced only sufficient for subsistence. Economic change produced social change. Almost fifty years ago, Thirsk maintained that drainage schemes in the 1620s in the Isle of Axholme changed its agricultural economy from pastoral to arable. This thesis will add to her work by demonstrating that economic and social structures were the result of interactions between a number of elements within the Isle's communities of which inheritance practices were a major factor. Partible inheritance, by which landholdings could be divided successively to the point of being no longer able to support a family, had a number of effects: the availability of small plots of land, creating an active land-market, especially for the entrepreneurial farmer; emigration by those unable to make a living from any land they had held, which became available for others; immigration for the purpose of renting or buying these small parcels of land; the growth of debt (credit); and the development of secondary occupations. The economic and social structures of a community were consequently altered, particularly in favour of those who could offer security for their borrowings, and there was a widening divide between the richest and poorest members of society.
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Rollings, Neil. "The control of inflation in the managed economy : Britain 1945-1953." Thesis, University of Bristol, 1990. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.277607.
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Thompson, Stephen John. "Census-taking, political economy and state formation in Britain, c. 1790-1840." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2010. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/265510.
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Since 1801 the British government has counted the population once every ten years. Only the Second World War has interrupted this practice, making the census one of the most enduring administrative institutions of the modern British state. This dissertation is about why legislators and political economists first sought to quantify demographic change in the early nineteenth century. The first chapter explains the administrative organisation of census-taking under John Rickman, who directed the first four censuses. The second chapter examines the legislative origins of census-taking in eighteenth-century Britain. It compares the efforts of two backbenchers, Thomas Potter and Charles Abbot, to establish a national census in 1753 and 1800. The third chapter analyses the pre-census empirical basis of fiscal policy during the 1790s, paying patticular attention to William Pitt the Younger's use of political arithmetic to estimate the yield of Britain's first income tax. The fou1th chapter examines the function and limitations of the population data used by four national accountants - Benjamin Bell, Henry Beeke, J. J. Grellier and Patrick Colquhoun - in their responses to Pitt's new tax. The fifth chapter re-assesses the economic and social thought of Robet1 Southey, whose opposition to T. R. Malthus's Essay on the pr;ndple of populahon, and especially its commitment to poor law abolition, arose from a fundamental disagreement about the state's role in welfare provision. The sixth and seventh chapters consider the relationship between information gathering and state formation. Chapter six quantifies the number and range of printed accounts and papers produced by the House of Commons in the early nineteenth century. It challenges previous analyses which have used public expenditure and statute-making as measures of state formation. The final chapter explores how census data was used to determine the redistribution of parliamentary representation that took place as a result of the 1832 Reform Act. Employing a diverse range of methodologies and sources, this study contributes to histories of economic thought and state formation by revealing the extent to which political arithmetic converged with Smithian political economy during the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. This convergence proved sho1t-lived, however, and early nineteenthcentury political arithmetic was consigned to historical oblivion by the world 's first professional economist, John Ramsay McCulloch. Nonetheless, reasoning by 'number, weight, or measure', paiticularly in respect of population, challenged and transformed the conduct of parliamentary business in this period, leading to the legislative dissolution of the existing electoral system in 1832.
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Murdoch, Gains. "Scottish imperial scepticism and the prioritisation of the domestic economy, 1695-1815." Thesis, University of Aberdeen, 2016. http://digitool.abdn.ac.uk:80/webclient/DeliveryManager?pid=230702.
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One of the most recent developments within imperial historiography has been the consideration of specifically Scottish attitudes to the expansion of the British Empire and how it impacted upon Scotland from a social-economic, political and also cultural perspective. However an unproven consensus has taken root that Scots were generally enthusiastic about this process, demonstrated by increasing participation in Britain's imperial military and commercial institutions, mass emigration to North America and the emergence of new economic sectors which depended on Atlantic trade. This dissertation argues for the existence of scepticism within eighteenth-century Scottish society towards numerous aspects of the British Empire. Crucially these attitudes were present across multiple sections of society, expressed within the records of influential institutions such as the major burgh councils or the Church of Scotland, widely perused pamphlets and periodicals, the private correspondence of prominent aristocrats and even amongst the signature works of the Edinburgh literati. This scepticism, or ambivalence, will not be presented as simply expressions of direct hostility to empire itself. Much of it related to the British Empire becoming a very different type of entity than many Scots had hoped it would be. The most common expression of this anxiety revolved around the preferred benefits of a commercial empire, based on overseas trade and often through joint stock companies and fears over the ever greater influence of settler colonies in North America. Criticism of Britain's imperial trading companies was though still very much present, especially amongst the landed gentry towards returning “nabobs.” Chronologically, and structurally, this thesis will start by considering the impact of the Darien Scheme's failure on Scotland. This disaster forced Scottish society to largely focus on domestic improvement, particularly during the first half of the eighteenth century. The first half of this thesis will demonstrate the extent to which the country's economy was not centred on imperial commerce by examining the development of the Scottish banking and agricultural sectors. Banking will feature very prominently within this thesis, partly because of what Scotland's eighteenth-century financial crises say about the true influence of empire on the economy. Also the minutes of the chartered banks demonstrate that the chartered banking system did not offer significant levels of support to colonial trading links. The second part will show how scepticism existed as a consequence of the great, and often resented, human costs of imperial expansion; whether through emigration to Britain's North American colonies or military service overseas. In contrast to these sacrifices, the presumed benefits of empire, including the wider presence of colonial products, were frequently derided as being not only harmful for parts of Scotland's domestic economy but also a source of moral and social corruption.
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Nicholls, Angela. "Early modern English almshouses in the mixed economy of welfare c. 1550-1725." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2014. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/62710/.
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Almshouses providing accommodation for poor people are a common feature of the towns and villages of England, but in the historical literature are rarely considered to have made a genuine contribution to the poor and needy. This study examines the extent and nature of almshouse provision in early modern England, and places this within the context of overall approaches to the poor in the period. The archival research focuses on the contrasting counties of Durham, Warwickshire and Kent between about 1550 and 1725. Information on all the almshouse foundations in those areas is collated and summarised in an appendix, enabling both quantitative and qualitative evaluations to be made. A detailed analysis of the policy background to housing the poor provides the context for the study, and reveals that almshouses were initially seen as part of a national as well as local solution to the problem of poverty. Many of the diverse people involved in founding and running almshouses responded to this agenda, motivated by political responsibility and particular group identities, rather than just the desire for personal memorialisation. A case study of a single almshouse exemplifies the way this parish used the almshouse alongside other resources to meet the needs of the poor. Overall, there was a surprising variation in the socio-economic status of almshouse occupants and their experience of almshouse life. In many almshouses, occupants’ standard of living was similar to that of other poor people, including parish paupers. The guaranteed nature of the benefits and security of the accommodation were, however, distinct advantages, and most almspeople were able to enjoy considerable independence and autonomy, with women possibly benefiting most. Over the period, however, statutory poor relief and the introduction of workhouses enabled almshouses to develop as more exclusive institutions, which were less embedded in local welfare systems.
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Szpakowicz, Błażej Sebastian. "British trade, political economy and commercial policy towards the United States, 1783-1815." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2012. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.610189.
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McDonough, Francis Xavier. "The Conservative Party and Anglo-German relations 1905-1914." Thesis, Lancaster University, 2000. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.369550.
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Barbagallo, Camille. "The political economy of reproduction : motherhood, work and the home in neoliberal Britain." Thesis, University of East London, 2016. http://roar.uel.ac.uk/5177/.
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This thesis investigates how the processes and practices of reproduction have been transformed not only by the ascendant political rationality of neoliberalism but also by women’s struggles that have reconfigured motherhood, the domestic home and the gendered organisation of employment. Through exploring both the 1970s feminist demand for “free 24- hour nurseries” and the contemporary provision of extended, overnight and flexible childcare, care that is often referred to as “24-hour childcare”, the research contributes to feminist understandings of the gendered and racialised class dynamics inside and outside the home and the wage. The research repositions the ‘Woman Question’ as, yet again unavoidable and necessary for comprehending and intervening in the brutalising consequences of capitalist accumulation. Situated within the Marxist feminist tradition, the work of reproduction is understood as a cluster of tasks, affective relations and employment that have historically been constructed and experienced as ‘women’s work’. The interrelation between the subjectivity of motherhood and the political economy of reproduction is analysed through a feminist genealogy of 24-hour childcare in Britain. Using ethnographic encounters, archival research and interview data with mothers and childcare workers, the research tells a story about the women who have worked both inside and outside the home, raised children, cooked and cleaned, and who, both historically and in the present, continue to create an immense amount of wealth and value. As women's labour market participation has steadily increased over the last 40 years, the discourse of reproduction has shifted to one in which motherhood is increasingly constructed as a choice. Within neoliberal discourse the decision to have a child is constructed as a private matter for which individuals bear the costs and responsibility. The thesis argues that, as a result of motherhood being constructed more and more as something that is chosen, the spaces of resistance and opposition towards motherhood have been limited and resistance has been individuated and privatised.
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Holgate, R. D. C. "Settlement and economy of the Thames basin in the 5th - 3rd millennia b.c." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1987. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.384662.
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Shaw, Kate Alexander. "Narrating boom and bust : the life-cycle of ideas and narrative in New Labour's political economy, 1997-2010." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2018. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3813/.
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This research contributes to the growing subfield of ideational political economy, by developing a theory of narrative in economic policymaking. Economic policymakers operate under conditions of perpetual uncertainty, but must achieve and project certitude in order to support confidence, and as a basis for policy. This dilemma is principally resolved through the construction of economic narratives: causal stories that mobilise a set of economic ideas in order to define the economy, its relationship to policy, and its expected future trajectory. Such narratives should be understood as social constructions, not as projections of, or diversions from, the material facts. However they are vulnerable to events that fall outside their account of the economy, a vulnerability which tends to increase with time. Constructivist political economy has historically been oriented more to the explanation of change than continuity. The resilience of neoliberal policy frameworks through the crisis of 2008 has therefore posed challenges for a subfield that has tended to treat ideas and discourse as a source of creative political agency, and a counterweight to the conservatism of interests and institutions. The thesis presents a case study of the New Labour government of the UK (1997-2010) in which ideas and narrative are shown to be largely changeresistant, generating political, and to some extent policy, continuity through crisis. The case study disaggregates two properties of economic policy narratives: internal validity, which is concerned with consistency and coherence, and external validity, which relates to the perceived external conditions. By tracing the evolution of the two validities across the lifetime of an economic narrative, we see that rhetorics which begin as the expression of political agency evolve, over time, into structural conditions that impose powerful cognitive and ideological constraints on their narrators. A theory of the life-cycle of economic policy narratives is proposed, comprised of four evolutionary phases: construction, reinforcement, crisis and fragmentation.
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Ho, Karl Ka-yiu. "The Subjective Economy and Political Support: The Case of the British Labour Party." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1992. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc500261/.
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During the past two decades, extensive research efforts have focused on the conventional wisdom that the economy has a direct influence on a party's destiny. This hypothesis rests on the implicit assumption that the linkages between macroeconomic variables such as inflation and unemployment and party support are direct and unmediated. As the present study indicates, however, objective economic measures only serve as a proxy for the invisible force that drives voters' party support. Once the relevant variables, namely, the perceptual factors of the electorate, are controlled for, variables that describe the state of the objective economy fail to exert their "magic" on political behavior.
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Vernier, Richard. "Political economy and political ideology : the public debt in eighteenth-century Britain and America." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1993. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.358691.
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Ritschel, Daniel. "A non-socialist movement for a planned economy in Britain in the 1930's." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1987. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.328010.
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Sjöblom, Gustav Stig Bertel. "The political economy of railway and road transport in Britain and Germany, 1918-1933." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2010. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.608631.
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Shilcof, Daniel. "Entrepreneurship in the knowledge based economy : a spatial analysis of Great Britain 2008-2010." Thesis, University of Plymouth, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10026.1/3768.
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Entrepreneurship is increasingly recognised as an important component of the contemporary knowledge based economy and crucial to the attainment of economic growth and development. However, entrepreneurial activity varies significantly across space within countries. This thesis makes an original contribution by examining the determinants of spatial variations in entrepreneurship across sub-regions of Great Britain from 2008-2010. Through utilising newly available data on firm births and applying exploratory spatial data analysis and spatial econometric techniques, two prominent theories of entrepreneurship are examined. First, the Knowledge Spillover Theory of Entrepreneurship posits that underutilised knowledge by incumbent firms creates entrepreneurial opportunities. The appropriation of these opportunities through entrepreneurial activity, in the form of a new firm, leads to dynamic knowledge spillovers, which generate economic growth. The empirical analysis presented in this thesis concludes that more knowledge intensive regions exhibit significantly higher firm birth rates; however the composition of the regional knowledge stock is critical, as a diverse knowledge stock generates more entrepreneurial opportunities. Second, several theories emphasise the importance of idiosyncratic knowledge and human capital, in the form of entrepreneurial ability, on the discovery and exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities. The results of this thesis suggest that human capital is vital to the entrepreneurial process, and that university education is a greater source of entrepreneurial ability than labour market experience. Furthermore, the results also suggest that the regulatory burden of the public sector, financial constraints, regional unemployment, and the absence of a local entrepreneurial culture can significantly detract from regional entrepreneurial activity. In light of these results, there are several implications for policy which include: emphasising the importance of effective policy towards intellectual property rights, targeting entrepreneurial education initiatives towards university students and graduates, and reducing unnecessary public sector regulation that can act as a ‘barrier’ to entrepreneurship.
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Gallwey, April. "Lone motherhood in England, 1945–1990 : economy, agency and identity." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2011. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/49986/.
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This thesis examines the history of lone motherhood in England between 1945 and 1990. Most studies of lone motherhood after 1945 have focused on unmarried women, but this study looks at all routes into lone motherhood: pre-marital pregnancy, separation, divorce and widowhood. Existing research on post-1945 history has tended to prioritise the role of the state in determining demographic trends in family life and behaviour. This thesis uses oral history evidence to demonstrate how women’s agency shaped routes into lone motherhood as well as their management of female-headed household economies and their sense of identity within the post-war welfare state. A sample of fifty oral history interviews, primarily selected from the Millennium Memory Bank at the National Sound Archive forms the basis of the thesis. Interviewees are predominantly working-class and from urban locations across all regions of England. The sample is divided into five generational cohorts, which span the immediate post-war period, 1950s, 1960s 1970s and 1980s. Childhood, adolescent and marital experiences are analysed within each cohort in order to understand changes and continuities in women’s entrance into lone motherhood. In addition, contemporary sociological sources are discussed alongside the oral histories in order to understand the relationship between the sociological construction of lone motherhood and lone mothers’ developing social identities in the post-war period. Three categories of analysis in relation to the experience of lone motherhood feature: ‘Accommodation and Housing,’ ‘Maternal Economy’ and ‘Social Membership and Identity.’ The study concludes that women’s greater entrance into lone motherhood after 1970 was driven by their rejection of an untenable social and economic division of labour in marriage, which remained consistent across our period. The development of sociological classification in relation to one parent families in the 1960s is demonstrated to have been taken-up by women from the 1970s onwards to legitimize their entitlement to state assistance and housing. This entitlement is also argued to have rested on an inter-generational maternal identity that understood the importance of maternity and the false demarcation between waged and domestic labour, which working-class women, inside and outside of marriage, confronted across the twentieth-century.
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Davies, G. J. "Settlement, economy and lifestyle : the changing social identities of the coastal settlements of West Norfolk, 450-1100 AD." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2011. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/12002/.
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The thesis explores social transformations in the settlement and economy of Anglo-Saxon England, between c.450 and 1100 AD, by using detailed case studies of rural settlement remains within a sub-region, coastal West Norfolk, to construct a systematic narrative of their development. The archaeological evidence for analysis is mainly composed of portable cultural material from rural settlements, combined with surveyed and excavated evidence of their morphology. Multiple and superimposed forms of evidence such as geophysical survey and fieldwalking survey are employed to analyse the diversity of rural settlements and the material expressions of social and economic change in this period and to challenge existing models. The key findings of this thesis are that surface-find sites discovered by metal detectorists, upon detailed investigation, show themselves to be complex rural settlements engaged in trade and exchange. Importantly, these sites also have the capacity to change over time. The findings of this thesis enables a re-characterisation of early medieval rural social identities as complex, dynamic and ever changing. It is argued that the employment of integrated survey methodologies in other sub-regions of Europe might achieve similar results.
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Rush, Joseph Ian. "Commerce and labor in medieval England : the impact of the market economy on workers' diet and wages, 1275-1315 /." view abstract or download file of text, 2001. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/uoregon/fullcit?p3018391.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2001.Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 213-221). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users. Address: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/uoregon/fullcit?p3018391.
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Tholen, Gerbrand. "Graduate employability in the knowledge-based economy : a comparison between Great Britain and the Netherlands." Thesis, Cardiff University, 2010. http://orca.cf.ac.uk/55471/.
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This thesis presents a sociological inquiry into the social construction of graduate employability in the Netherlands and Great Britain. The study cross-nationally compares how final-year students approach the graduate labour market within their national institutional context influences their understanding. In this, it aims to close the dichotomy between structure and agency, which has often remained intact in previous investigations into graduate employment and employability. By adopting a dual methodology, consisting of a micro analysis and a context analysis, the study aims to investigate subjective accounts as well as the macro structural circumstances of the students. The micro analysis consists of analysis of sixty semi-structured interviews with students from both countries. The context analysis examines the organisation of higher education and the labour market through reviewing relevant documents and statistics. The study reveals that graduate employability is differently constructed by students in each country. We can therefore not assume homogeneity in the way students construct employability. In different contexts students create distinct ways of making sense of the competition for graduate jobs. The study also reveals that graduate employability is mediated through institutional national differences in labour market and higher education. The views of the students are inherently intertwined with how labour market and higher education are organised. Structural conditions inform an intersubjective framework that students use to make sense of the competition for jobs. It is argued that macro-national contexts shape the way students collectively mediate and co-create a shared framework in which their views become meaningful.
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Cohen, Martin. "The eclipse of 'elegant economy' : post-war changes in attitudes to personal finance in Britain." Thesis, Queen Mary, University of London, 2007. http://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/1891.
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In Britain, almost all survivors of the Second Word War found themselves in a stronger and more secure financial position than at its outbreak. Simultaneously they were confronted by a host of intrusive controls, rationing, shortages and ubiquitous reminders of conflict. Pride in victory was immense, yet there were few perceivable signs of reward for sacrifice. The resultant widespread disorientation belied pecuniary fortune and gave rise to many formidable dilemmas demanding financial decisions. The solution of a majority was thrift and avoidance of money spending, which cleared the conscience and provided peace of mind. A substantial minority, often equally disorientated, followed their natural inclinations to spend freely and benefit from or enjoy their new-found resources. The latter discovered themselves not only severely restricted by bare-shelved shops and emergency legislation but by social censure of conspicuous consumption. The remaining options open to them most commonly involved expenditure on the intangible and the inconspicuous. Between 1945 and 1957, as austerity waned and greater opportunities returned for beneficial employment of private funds, attitudes appeared to evolve from despair into confidence. But austerity culture, embedded in the national mindset,took much longer to dispel than is popularly supposed and arguably has never been fully eradicated. The impact on British life of this gradual change is here highlighted by comparing and contrasting the relevant history of prior and subsequent periods. This thesis focuses on theoretical, political and practical influences on all forms of employment of private means without differentiating between the material and ethereal, including saving and investment as forms of consumption. Reinterpreting Britain's transformation from austerity to affluence from the perspective of personal finance demonstratest hat it is an essential but hitherto ignored factor which adds significantly to the understanding of social history.
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Shilling, Chris. "The vocationalisation of the school curriculum : society, state and economy." Thesis, n.p, 1988. http://ethos.bl.uk/.
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Lockett, Anthony E. "An analysis of the role of state, economy and civil society in the development, management and reform of the NHS, 1948-1997." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 1999. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/13343.
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The NHS is the centrepiece of the UK welfare state. For fifty years it has provided the majority of health-care in the UK. However the running of the service has not been marked by a smooth operation. Repeated reforms have occurred since 1948 in attempts to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the service. These reforms have been credited with varying degrees of success. Even the most radical reforms, initiated in 1990, have been marked by some failures - particularly in respect to the provision of services to 'at risk' groups such as the elderly, leading to criticisms of a lack of coherent policy making. The reasons that underlie the success of the NHS in the midst of failure are complicated, but one hypothesis is that the structure of the NHS does not reflect its basic functions. Those functions can be broken down into 2. First is the relief of suffering from illness; second is the support of the industrial and economic base of the UK. The existence of this pluralistic purpose implies that the management of the service requires balancing the forces of economic, state and civil society requirements for the NHS. This management is embodied in a complicated institutionalisation of care, covered in chapter 1. The empirical evidence gathered in the thesis, in chapters 2 and 3 both from literature and case studies, would indicate that at least part of the problems seen in the NHS result from a failure to balance this institutionalisation. However, the situation is made more complex as the result of this imbalance creates further increased demands from some of the elements in the management of the service. Therefore the failure to balance the interactions that surround the NHS increases the pressures on it which in turn increases the imbalance leading to a feedback loop magnifying the problem. The source and problems of this feedback are best exemplified by a case study of the most recent reforms -covered in chapters 4-11 of this thesis. This case study demonstrates that the way in which the 1990 reforms were formulated and implemented took little notice of the impact of the changes on the street level NHS managers - with the results that the reforms did not represent a coherent policy. The result of the lack of coherence is that the changes have not generated efficiency gains, and in some cases have diverted resources away from those most in need. The underlying cause of this is the predominance of non- market forces in the decision making process - i.e. the values of the purchasers and the power of the providers to influence decision making. The linkages between these features of the post reform NHS are described in chapter 12. It is likely that the only way in which the circle of problems in the NHS can be addressed is re-establishing the corporate relationship that surrounds health care. However unlike previous relationships the evidence suggests that the relationship should be established at a policy level, rather than the current trends for a local level relationship. The NHS is not unique in this aspect, as this is the pattern of change seen in many European Countries.
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Velkar, Aashish. "Markets, standards and transactions : measurements in nineteenth-century British economy." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2008. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/109/.
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This thesis is concerned with measurements used in economic activity and investigates how historical markets managed transactional problems due to unreliable measurements. Existing literature has generally associated the problems of measurements in historical markets with the lack of uniformity in weights and measures. This thesis shows that metrological standardization was not sufficient to ensure reliability of measurements. Markets developed mensuration practices that enabled markets to address specific transactional issues in micro-contexts. This involved, in addition to the use of standardized metrology, improved governance of transactions, third party monitoring and guaranteeing, and other institutional solutions. Historical institutional arrangements were altered or replaced as a result of changing or standardizing mensuration practices. The thesis also makes a conceptual contribution in terms of understanding the process of standardization. It shows how, while standards can be inflexible and rationalized (i.e. limited in number), standardized practices can incorporate a number of such standards and be flexible in terms which standard to be used in a given context. Analytically, standardized practices are institutional objects that are determined endogenously and are formed in 'packages' that create interlinks between standards, other artefacts, rules and people. These arguments are developed by studying three detailed cases of mensuration practices in the British economy during the nineteenth-century. The case of the London Coal Trade examines how altered mensuration practices gave buyers greater assurance that the amount of coal they received was actually the amount they purchased. The case of the wire industry illustrates the struggles to define a uniform set of wire sizes that could overcome the disputes arising from incompatible and multiple ways of measuring wire sizes. The case of the wheat markets illustrates the complexity involved in developing standards of measurements such that quality could be reliably measured ex-ante. Through these case studies, the thesis shows how markets developed different mensuration practices to manage measurements in a given context.
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Jefferis, Keith. "The performance of worker co-operatives in a capitalist economy : British co-operatives in printing, clothing and wholefoods, 1975-1985." Thesis, Open University, 1989. http://oro.open.ac.uk/57047/.
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This thesis aims to contribute to the debate on the role and potential of worker co-operatives in a capitalist economy, and analyses the development of the co-operative sector in Britain since the mid-1970s in the context of an economy undergoing a major crisis and restructuring. Part One examines competing theoretical perspectives in economics towards co-operatives. This reviews and criticises the orthodox neoclassical and behavioural approaches, before turning to a marxist analysis and developing it in the context of co-operatives' role as small enterprises in an economy dominated by large firms. The analysis concentrates upon co-operatives' market relationships and competitive position as the mechanism through which they interact with the rest of the economy. Part Two moves from theory to the concrete, and examines the performance of workers co-operatives as commercial enterprises, in three industries (printing, clothing manufacture, and wholefood distribution) which demonstrate contrasting relationships between large and small firms. It includes an overview of the development and characteristics of the co-operative sector, before investigating the financing of co-operative and their commercial performance. This is then explained in the context of the political and economic development of the co-operative sector, of the British economy, and developments in the industries in question. It finds that whilst the performance of co-operative has improved over time, it remains worse than that of competing capitalist firms in terms of wage levels and capacity to generate a reinvestible surplus. Part Three builds upon this work to identify the important conditions and processes which have contributed to the rapid growth and development of the co-operative sector in Britain, and seeks to develop a broad understanding of the means by which the degeneration of co-operative can be avoided. It concludes that the resurgence and growth of co-operative must be located in the particular form of economic restructuring taking place in the early 1980s. The establishment and survival of co-operatives has been dependent upon support for workers' initiatives by the state, and on the nature of market processes in particular areas of the economy. However, these conditions are transient and the future development of the co-operative sector is crucially dependent upon the long term support of the state and the labour movement.
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Adams, Jane M. "The mixed economy for medical services in Herefordshire c. 1770 - c. 1850." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2003. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/2640/.
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This study considers the mixed economy for medical services in Herefordshire between 1770 and 1850. Medical services were an integral part of wider systems of welfare and were provided within a mixed economy that included private practice, state provision, philanthropic activities and mutual societies. Significant resources were spent within the sector and influence over their deployment was of direct interest to parishes, the municipal council, magistrates, philanthropists and individual members of the elite. Four types of medical services are reviewed. These are the provision of personal care by medical practitioners in the private, public and charitable sectors, the establishment of Hereford General Infirmary, changes in institutional services for the insane and developments in public health. Two underlying themes are discussed throughout the thesis. The first of these is the complexity of the mixed economy for medical services. Important changes over the period are identified and the interrelationships between the various sectors investigated. The dominance of public, private or charitable provision shifted in the period as a result of both national and local factors. The second theme explored is the interplay between politics and the systems and institutions providing medical services. The importance of political considerations in shaping local policy towards medical services is demonstrated through detailed case studies. These include examining the link between the launch of the subscription appeal for Hereford Infirmary and the parliamentary election campaign in 1774, approaches taken towards the management of the cholera epidemic of 1832 and the campaign to establish a public lunatic asylum in the late 1830s.
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Weghmann, Vera. "Employability and the rise of the no-wage economy : resistance to unpaid work in the United Kingdom." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2018. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/50869/.
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Employability has become a new buzzword of the 21st century. It advocates that to keep oneself attractive - through lifelong learning and the continuous acquisition of skills - protects oneself from the vulnerabilities of the labour market. The purpose of this PhD project is twofold: First, I investigate in what ways the employability agenda recreates neoliberal hegemony. Second, I analyse through what type of collective agency people contest the concept of employability. It is a comparative project of two main employability sectors, namely welfare to work programmes and higher education. In particular, I elaborate on the link between employability and the rise of unpaid labour in form of work-experiences. In line with neo-Gramscian theory and my critique of it this PhD research looks at the material structures, institutions and ideology which have shaped the political economy of employability through processes of class contestation. Participatory Action Research methodology is used to provide insights into the formations, dynamics, and outcomes of the main social forces resisting employability outside of established trade unions. This PhD, thereby, feeds into broader discussions on the decline and future of trade unionism and new ways of organising around work, which go beyond the workplace and might demand new workers institutions as well as a greater engagement with other actors in the community.
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Agné, Hans. "Democracy Reconsidered : Britain, France, Sweden, and the EU." Doctoral thesis, Stockholm University, Department of Political Science, 2004. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-264.
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The purpose of this thesis is to investigate whether some positions in democratic theory should be adjusted or abandoned in view of internationalisation; and if adjusted, how. More specifically it pursues three different aims: to evaluate various attempts to explain levels of democracy as consequences of internationalisation; to investigate whether the taking into account of internationalisation reveals any reason to reconsider what democracy is or means; and to suggest normative interpretations that cohere with the adjustments of conceptual and explanatory democratic theory made in the course of meeting the other two aims.
When empirical methods are used, the scope of the study is restricted to West European parliamentary democracies and their international affairs. More particularly, the focus is on the making of budget policy in Britain, France, and Sweden after the Second World War, and recent budget policy in the European Union. The aspects of democracy empirically analysed are political autonomy, participation, and deliberation. The material considered includes parliamentary debates, official statistics, economic forecasts, elections manifestos, shadow budgets, general election turnouts, regulations of budget decision-making, and staff numbers in government and parliament budgetary divisions.
The study reaches the following conclusions among others. (i) The fact that internationalisation increases the divergence between those who make and those who are affected by decisions is not by itself a democratic problem that calls for political reform. (ii) That international organisations may have authorities delegated to them from democratic states is not sufficient to justify them democratically. Democratisation still needs to be undertaken. (iii) The fear that internationalisation dissolves a social trust necessary for political deliberation within nations seems to be unwarranted. If anything, views argued by others in domestic budgetary debate are taken increasingly serious during internationalisation. (iv) The major difficulty with deliberation seems to be its inability to transcend national boundaries. International deliberation at state level has not evolved in response to internationalisation and it is undeveloped in international institutions. (v) Democratic political autonomy diminishes during internationalisation with regard to income redistribution and policy areas taken over by international organisations, but it seems to increase in public spending. (vi) In the area of budget policy-making there are no signs that governments gain power at the expense of parliaments during internationalisation. (vii) To identify crucial democratic issues in a time of internationalisation and to make room for theoretical virtues like general applicability and normative fruitfulness, democracy may be defined as a kind of politics where as many as possible decide as much as possible.
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Tate, Jonathan Graham. "Industry, technology and the political economy of empire : Lancashire industrialists and the cotton supply question, c.1850-1910." Thesis, University of Aberdeen, 2015. http://digitool.abdn.ac.uk:80/webclient/DeliveryManager?pid=228009.
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The role of nineteenth-century industrialists in British imperial expansion and governance has been debated for many years. Major recent interpretations, such as Peter Cain and Tony Hopkins's 'gentlemanly capitalism' and Gary Magee and Andrew Thompson's 'cultural economy', have conceived industrialists' involvement mostly in terms of promoting manufactured exports. Industrialists' reliance on imported raw materials has however been comparatively neglected. Using the case of study of raw cotton, nineteenth-century Britain's most valuable industrial commodity import, this thesis revises how we understand the contribution Lancashire industrialists made to the formation of imperial policy. Analysing examples from the formal and informal empire in India, Egypt, and sub-Saharan Africa, it shows that interactions between technology, business lobbying, and ideas of political economy fostered cotton-growing schemes. Fluctuations in the quantity and, significantly, the quality of cotton supplies fostered interest in reforming or creating new supply chains, promoting the formation of business associations, pre-eminently the Cotton Supply Association and the British Cotton Growing Association. These associations lobbied governments to make supply chains more suited to Lancashire technological systems, and led to the promotion of standardised cotton types through the export of European knowledge and skills, the erection of processing machinery and transportation systems, and the regulation of colonial labour. The main argument is that if the focus is shifted to supplies rather than markets, industrialists, directly and indirectly, were often important influences on imperial governance and overseas economic change. While fiscal and financial considerations often provided the framework for government-backed cotton-growing schemes, because cotton was a complex commodity officials had to implement industrialists' advice to create supply chains that would serve these ends. By providing fresh insights for understanding the relationship between supply chains, business mobilisation, and European imperialism, this thesis lays the foundations for further much-needed work on the 'supply-side' economics of global empires.
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Miller, Christopher William. "Planning and profits : the political economy of private naval armaments manufacture and supply organisation in Britain, 1918-41." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2015. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/6976/.
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This thesis examines the relationship between the private naval armaments industry, businessmen and the British Government’s supply planning framework between 1918 and 1941. More specifically, it reassesses the concept of the Military-Industrial Complex by examining the impact of disarmament upon private industry, the role of leading industrialists within supply and procurement policy, and the successes and failings of the Government’s supply organisation. This work blends together political, naval and business history in new ways, and, by situating the business activities of industrialists alongside their work as government advisors, it sheds new light on the operation of the British state. This thesis argues that there was a small coterie of influential businessmen, led by Lord Weir, who, in a time of great need for Britain, first gained access to secret information on industrial mobilisation as advisers to the Supply Board and Principal Supply Officers Committee (PSOC), and later were able to directly influence policy. This made Lord Weir and Sir James Lithgow among the most influential industrial figures in Britain. This was a relationship which cut both ways: Weir and others provided the state with honest, thoughtful advice and policies, but, as ‘insiders’ utilised their access to information to build a business empire at a fraction of the normal costs. Outsiders, by way of contrast, lacked influence and were forced together into a defensive ‘ring’ – or cartel – and effectively fixed prices for British warships in the lean 1920s. However, by the 1930s, the cartel grew into one of the most sophisticated profiteering groups of its day, before being shut down by the Admiralty in 1941. More generally, this work argues that the Japanese invasion of Manchuria was a turning point for supply organisation, and that between 1931 and 1935, the PSOC and its component bodies were governed by necessity. Powerful constraints on finance and political manoeuvre explain the nature of industrial involvement. Thus, it is argued that the PSOC did a broadly effective job at organising industry with the tools it was given, and the failings were down to the top levels of policymaking – the Cabinet – not acting upon advice to ease procurement bottlenecks early enough, to the extent that British warship construction was more expensive and slower than it could have been. In sum, this group of industrialists, the Admiralty and a few key figures in the PSOC such as Sir Harold Brown, effectively saved MacDonald, Baldwin and Chamberlain’s National Government from itself.
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Dynes, Jacqueline. "14-19 education reform under New Labour : an exploration of how politics and the economy combine with educational goals to affect policy." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2012. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/51394/.
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The area of 14-19 education and training was a significant priority for the Labour Government of Tony Blair and New Labour. Reforms such as the 14-19 White Paper (Feb 2005) were seen as key to this government’s ‘third term’ agenda. This research has at its heart the desire to identify the true drivers for 14-19 education and training reform, and critically analyse the results against alternative ‘aims’ of education. Much of current policy for this phase of education mentions the economic imperative of providing young people with the skills which both they and businesses need to compete in the global economy. This research intends to question the fact that economic goals appear to be inexorably entwined with this area of education, and analyse if this is an appropriate philosophy on which to base reform of the 14-19 phase. To achieve this, document analysis was used to identify the drivers for education reform contained within five policy documents in an attempt to understand the goals of New Labour’s 14- 19 education and training reform policy between May 1997 and February 2005. The conclusions which came from this analysis point to a consistency in the 14-19 reform programme of New Labour around the theme of the economy, with much of the content of the reforms focusing on adapting the phase in order to promote economic objectives. It is argued that by accepting economic objectives as a basis for educational reform, New Labour confused the influence of the economy for an educational aim.
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Pinkava, Petr. "Velká hospodářská krize ve Velké Británii - průběh a příčiny." Master's thesis, Vysoká škola ekonomická v Praze, 2007. http://www.nusl.cz/ntk/nusl-1465.
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Tato diplomová práce analyzuje vývoj meziválečné ekonomiky Velké Británie s důrazem na Velkou hospodářskou krizi a zároveň hledá příčiny této krize. Mezi hlavní průvodní jevy této krize patří vysoká míra nezaměstnanosti a kolaps mezinárodního obchodu, na kterém byla Velká Británie životně závislá.
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Loftus, Donna. "Social economy : cultures of work and community in mid-Victorian England." Thesis, University of Chichester, 1998. http://eprints.chi.ac.uk/804/.
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The Victorians were obsessed with work. In the numerous mid-century inquiries into the workplace labour emerged as a moral, social, political, as well as an economic category. These issues were part of a broader strategy of understanding the meanings and motivations of markets and production in an industrial age. On to the processes of production, gendered and racially specific categories could be mapped and relations and duties could be ordered. This thesis attempts to examine work as a cultural category which was mobilised in the mid-century to negotiate the roles and responsibilities of various actors. The period between the factory acts of the 1840s and those of the 1870s is the focus of this enquiry. Despite its perception as an age of stability, cushioned between two periods of relative unrest, the mid-century is seen here to bear witness to a wide ranging debate on the respective duties of state, employer and worker. Drawing on competing notions of markets and communities the subsequent discourses are considered as expressions of claims to middle-class authority, marking struggles between employers and other professionals to represent industrial England. Within these identified debates, the cultural significance and location of work appears to shift. Where the debates of the late forties might refer to local and paternalist forms of production, by the 1870s a greater emphasis was placed on the contribution and impact of work on the national community. In a bid to chart some of these shifts this thesis explores the centrality of work to emerging definitions of society. It is argued that the workplace and the market were considered as important sites, negotiating the inclusion of a respectable working class into public life and helping to define a democratic political community. This thesis emphasises the limits of these discourses by considering how the mid-century experience of industrial democracy exposed the tensions in political economy and liberal consensus.
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Napier, Steven. "Political Development of Subaltern Education in Great Britain, the United States, and India." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1337718264.
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MacKenzie, Niall Gordon. "Chucking buns across the fence? governmental planning and regeneration projects in the Scottish Highland economy, 1945-82 /." Connect to e-thesis record to view abstract. Move to record for print version, 2007. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/125/.
Full textAbstract:
Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Glasgow, 2007.Ph.D. thesis submitted to the Department of Economic and Social History, Faculty of Law, Business and Social Sciences, University of Glasgow, 2007. Includes bibliographical references. Print copy also available.