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Policing Politics

John Merriman

in Police Stories: Building the French State, 1815-1851

This chapter considers aspects of the policing of politics in the widest sense during the period. Municipal policemen took care to make sure that crowds were not transformed into “tumults” or even, ... More

This chapter considers aspects of the policing of politics in the widest sense during the period. Municipal policemen took care to make sure that crowds were not transformed into “tumults” or even, in the case of the silkworkers of Lyon, into insurrections. Markets and customs barriers (octrois) — where those bringing goods into town were assessed taxes — were particular points of police surveillance, particularly during times of grain riots in France, popular protest against the high price of grain. Commissaires de police routinely watched cafés, cabarets, and other public spaces, as well as occasions, in addition to grain riots, when ordinary people manifested support for what they considered popular justice.Less

The Haunting of American Literature

Randall Fuller

in Emerson's Ghosts: Literature, Politics, and the Making of Americanists

This chapter examines the way in which Emerson has exerted tremendous imaginative influence over 20th-century literary critics, causing them to place his “American Scholar” at the center of their ... More

This chapter examines the way in which Emerson has exerted tremendous imaginative influence over 20th-century literary critics, causing them to place his “American Scholar” at the center of their intellectual and cultural projects to remake America by redirecting the way it considered its past. Emerson's little-known involvement with the 1834 New York elections reveals how he assimilates political language so as to trope it. This innovative troping resists coercive and conventional modes of thought and discourse, but has also led to critical misreadings as to the social efficacy of Emerson's writing.Less

Reforming the Feminine: Early Feminist Journals

Siobhán McIlvanney

in Figurations of the Feminine in the Early French Women's Press, 1758-1848

This final chapter analyses the most politically radical figurations of womanhood in the early French women’s press that explicitly advocate women’s active participation in the public domain as a ... More

This final chapter analyses the most politically radical figurations of womanhood in the early French women’s press that explicitly advocate women’s active participation in the public domain as a means of achieving both personal fulfilment and social equity. The chapter provides a discussion of employment opportunites for French women during the period in question, and the four journals examined promote the importance of women developing independence - intellectual, emotional and professional – and of their participation in the public realm of work and politics if they want to decide their own future. The final two journals to be examined, the Saint-Simonian La Femme libre and La Voix des femmes, are the most ‘pragmatically’ feminist of all journals considered in this study in their perception of women’s economic independence as prerequisite to feminism’s success, and also point to the broadening social class of the readership of French women’s journals, in that both target working-class readers. The journals seek to promote a cross-class sense of sorority to improve French women’s working conditions but both also signal their inherent pacifism. There is also an articulated awareness of a judgemental social morality in relation to female sexuality, whether prostitution, unmarried mothers or sexually independent women.Less

“Supreme Nation”: Shifei lüelun Dayingguo tongzhi

John T. P. Lai

in Reshaping the Boundaries: The Christian Intersection of China and the West in the Modern Era

This chapter explores how Karl F. A. Gützlaff, a leading Protestant missionary to China in the early nineteenth century, consciously created an idealistic image of Great Britain in his novels Shifei ... More

This chapter explores how Karl F. A. Gützlaff, a leading Protestant missionary to China in the early nineteenth century, consciously created an idealistic image of Great Britain in his novels Shifei lüelun (1835) and Dayingguo tongzhi (1834). Through intentional reinterpretations of two sharply different cultures, Gützlaff challenged the Sinocentric world order on the one hand and presented Britain as the “Supreme Nation” on the other. Moreover, the author reveals that Gützlaff’s narrative of the model image of Britain involved conscious appropriation of certain popular Chinese terms and thinking. The Anglo-Chinese intercourse therefore exhibited a complex destruction–reconstruction process, in which the two-way flow of words and ideas gave shape to one imagined in-between reality.Less

Mozart in Two Worlds: The writings on music of blaze de bury

Mark Everist

in Mozart's Ghosts: Haunting the Halls of Musical Culture

Modern views of French nineteenth-century understandings of Mozart have been colored by access only to the writings of Berlioz which, however imaginative from a literary viewpoint, represent a highly ... More

Modern views of French nineteenth-century understandings of Mozart have been colored by access only to the writings of Berlioz which, however imaginative from a literary viewpoint, represent a highly idiosyncratic and pointed view. An alternative, and more typical, perspective may be obtained by examining the changing views on Mozart during the half century that Ange-Henri Blaze (dit Blaze de Bury; 1813-1888) wrote music criticism for the Revue des deux mondes (1834-1882). Beginning with his work on the 1834 production of Don Giovanni at the Paris Opéra and his play Le souper chez le commandeur, the chapter gives an account of not only Blaze de Bury's views on Mozart's music but the ways in which they changed from the period after the death of Beethoven to the zenith of Wagnérisme.Less

The origins of health promotion

Colin Palfrey

in The Future for Health Promotion

This chapter examines the origins of health promotion in the UK. It begins with a discussion of diseases in Britain before and during the nineteenth century that made public health a major concern of ... More

This chapter examines the origins of health promotion in the UK. It begins with a discussion of diseases in Britain before and during the nineteenth century that made public health a major concern of governments, followed by an analysis of the role of William Farr in establishing a system that recorded the cause of death, along with three important pieces of legislation: Poor Law Amendment Act 1834, Public Health Act 1848, and Public Health Act 1875. The chapter then considers disease monitoring and surveillance before describing Charles Booth's work on poverty in the late nineteenth century, Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree's poverty surveys, and the consequences of the Boer Wars for public health. Finally, it explores key legislation in the twentieth century prior to the establishment of the NHS, the emergence of a new public health, and the impact of health promotion on the social determinants of health.Less

Nineteenth-Century Background

in Offshore Island Politics: The Constitutional and Political Development of the Isle of Man in the Twentieth Century

This chapter explores the Island's position during the latter part of the nineteenth century. It shows that the efforts by the House of Keys and Sir Henry Loch who had been appointed ... More

This chapter explores the Island's position during the latter part of the nineteenth century. It shows that the efforts by the House of Keys and Sir Henry Loch who had been appointed Lieutenant-Governor resulted in the changes in 1866. One of these changes was the improved role for Tynwald. This chapter also discusses the 1897 general election, which leads to the recruitment of members to serve in the House into the new century. It reviews social interventions of the state. Some of these include Poor Relief Act of 1888, Elementary Education Act of 1872, Douglas Waterworks Act 1834, Bread, Flour and Corn Act 1880, and Castletown Town Act 1883. A rough approximation of the levels of revenue and expenditure on the Isle of Man is also addressed.Less

The old regime: provision for disabled people before the welfare state

Jameel Hampton

in Disability and the Welfare State in Britain: Changes in Perception and Policy 1948-79

This chapter introduces the traditional difficulties with the welfare of disabled people through an investigation of three distinct periods in the development of statutory welfare: from the Poor Law ... More

This chapter introduces the traditional difficulties with the welfare of disabled people through an investigation of three distinct periods in the development of statutory welfare: from the Poor Law Act 1601 to the early nineteenth century; welfare under the Poor Law Act 1834; and the specialisation of welfare for disabled people from the latter nineteenth century through the 1930s. It analyses changes and continuities in issues historically central to the welfare of disabled people: economic rationality via employment and productivity; moral judgments and the constant evaluation of deserving need; means testing; the mixed economy of welfare; territorial variance; little distinction between the cause or type of physical disablement for services; humane standard of care for those deemed deserving; sliding scale and often-parsimonious evaluation of levels of need for dispensing cash benefits. Workhouses, charitable and mutual aid societies, and asylums and hospitals are examined as sites of welfare for disabled people.Less

Tod’s Romantic approach as opposed to James Mill’s Utilitarian approach to British government in India

Florence D’Souza

in Knowledge, mediation and empire: James Tod's journeys among the Rajputs

James Mill (1773-1836) never visited India, adhered to Jeremy Bentham’s rational, utilitarian philosophy and in his History of British India (1817), attributed India’s “low” and “rude” state of ... More

James Mill (1773-1836) never visited India, adhered to Jeremy Bentham’s rational, utilitarian philosophy and in his History of British India (1817), attributed India’s “low” and “rude” state of civilisation in the 1800s to an absence of reliable, historical records and to a too great submission to superstition and despotism. James Tod, on the other hand, spent 22 years in India, respected the non-European uniqueness of Rajput historical chronicles, and spent much energy in establishing a coherent narrative of the past exploits of the various Rajput clans, in order to secure policies that would ensure Rajput support for the British Government in India. In 1831-32, in their recommendations to the British Parliament in the context of the renewal of the East India Company’s Charter, the respective views of Mill and Tod, while seeming to be poles apart at first, reveal, in fact, similar high ideals for a British Government in India beneficial to all concerned, while undergoing similar bureaucratic pressures. In reality, James Mill actually supported innovative reforms and liberating change for India, while Tod combined an ethos of Romanticism with an agenda of down-to-earth improvements.Less