Academic literature on the topic 'Henry Labouchere'

Abstract Over the past two decades, our understanding of the development of financial markets in the nineteenth century has been transformed by scholars working in two broad areas. Economic sociologists and literary scholars have explored the discursive underpinnings of the institutions of modern finance, deftly tracing the ways in which stock markets were legitimised through a growing association with science and statistics, and a simultaneous distancing from gambling and chance. From a very different perspective, quantitative analysis of shareholder registers and other archival records by economic historians and historical geographers has provided rich data giving a more precise picture of who invested and what they invested in. Valuable though this work has been, the gulf between the two approaches has resulted in a dearth of empirically grounded studies of the social and cultural dimensions of investment. An area particularly in need of greater exploration is the booming late Victorian print culture which purported to explain finance to new investors. This article offers a close reading of the financial journalism of Henry Labouchere, better known for his subsequent political career as a Liberal MP. Labouchere’s writings are deliberately riddled with contradictions, simultaneously legitimising and questioning the stock market, and switching between the roles of moral crusader and self-interested speculator. This carefully crafted performance encouraged an attitude of ‘knowingness’ towards finance among his readers which helps to explain why the stock market was able to grow in popularity even when it remained so closely associated with fraud.

AbstractThis article examines the Lady Kennaway assisted emigration scheme, designed to send women from Ireland's workhouses to the eastern frontier of the Cape Colony in Southern Africa. First proposed by Colonial Secretary Henry Labouchere in 1857, the scheme's purpose was to provide wives for the British German Legion, which had been resettled to British Kaffraria the previous year. Initially, the plan appeared to be of benefit for both Ireland and the Cape Colony. According to colonial officials and emigration commissioners, Ireland would be rid of a superfluous population, the Irish women would attain social and economic advancement, and the Eastern Cape would gain much-needed female settlers. Emigration authorities quickly found their optimism tempered by realities, however, as many Irish Poor Law guardians and workhouse women refused to participate. The Lady Kennaway scheme—so named after the ship that carried the emigrants—demonstrates the ways in which local interests could, and often did, shape imperial practices. Moreover, in tracking the decisions of emigration commissioners in London, colonial officials in Southern Africa, Poor Law guardians in Ireland, and potential female emigrants, this analysis reveals the multitude of individuals who molded Britain's mid-nineteenth-century imperial project.