The Temperance Movement was one of the most important and influential of the great nineteenth century social and moral reforming campaigns, firmly integrated with the central Victorian values of self-help, hard work and sobriety. As the values of the Victorian period dissipated with the rapidly changing social and ethical mores during the twentieth century, most historians have seen a similar demise in the role of the Temperance Movement. The drink question, however, remained a significant issue with two Royal Commissions, unprecedented state intervention during the First World War and innumerable bills and legislative debate between 1895 and 1933. Equally, the Temperance Movement maintained its resolve, resolutely campaigning and lobbying, proving itself to still be a key factor in the drink debate. This thesis studies the role and activity of the Temperance Movement in the continuing natioal concern around drink between 1895 and the Peel Commission to the conclusion of the Amulree Commission in 1933. The thesis concentrates on the major temperance societies and examines their effect on English attitudes to the drink question. Despite its continued activity, the Temperance Movement failed to make a significant mark on policy toward drink during this period. The reasons for this are several - loss of political support, the changing nature of drink issues, and fragmentation in the Movement. The Temperance Movement was very heterogeneous, some organisations seeking moderate reform or moral suasion but the more radical campaigners demanded central or local prohibition. Such demands were the root cause of temperance division and a large factor in the loss of Liberal political support. With the Conservatives tied to the Trade, the Temperance Movement sought the assistance of the Labour Party but Labour's response during the period was vague and indecisive. Social and moral arguments used by the Temperance Movement in its attempt to secure the abolition of the drink trade were being steadily eroded as secularism, post war cynicism and a huge increase in leisure activities undermined older values. Demand for alcoholic beverages fell dramatically as did reported cases of drunkenness. Despite these changes drink remained on the political and social agenda, but with many temperance reformers disillusioned and dispirited the Movement failed to present a comprehensive and coherent abolition strategy.

Although entitled The Marketing of Agricultural Produce in Eighteenth Century Oxfordshire, because of problems with source material, this thesis is primarily an examination of the organization of the open market, the marketing of corn and the period 1750-1800. Chapters II and III concentrate on public marketing institutions in Oxfordshire; II being an account of where markets and fairs were held and the relative importance of the different market towns, and III an investigation of who owned public markets; the type of facilities provided and the charges for using them. Chapter IV is on the corn trade; each section covering a different aspect. Section I is a discussion of sources; II and III an investigation of the role of the open market in the sale of corn; II concentrating on the local trade and III the long distance; IV is a summary of the alternative ways corn might be dispersed; v an investigation of the use of barley as a bread-corn and VI an examination of the assize of bread. Chapter V is on the marketing of products other than corn and VI is on the regulation of marketing and internal trade. Both chapters are very largely surveys of problems connected with the survival and interpretation of evidence, which is then displayed in tabular form. Finally, Chapter VII is an account of Oxfordshire food rioting, included both because material on riots is used throughout to illustrate many points and because the enforcement of marketing laws was often a product of crowd action.

Matthew Boulton (1728-1809) is well known as an eighteenth-century industrialist, the founder of Soho Manufactory and the steam-engine business of Boulton and Watt. Less well known are his scientific and technical abilities in the field of metallurgy and coining, and his role in setting up the Soho Mint. The intention of this thesis is to focus on the coining activities of Matthew Boulton from 1787 until 1809, and to examine the key role he played in the modernisation of money. It is the result of an Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded collaboration with Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, where, after examination of their extensive collection of coins, medals, tokens and dies produced at the Soho Mint, .research was used to produce a catalogue. A close visual study of the artefacts has been combined with evidence from contemporary archival material, and information from secondary sources, to provide a synthesis of the processes involved in making coins, and Matthew Boulton’s working practices in the eighteenth century. The thesis describes processes involved in making the 600 million coins, medals and tokens made at Soho Mint during Boulton’s lifetime. Chapter one briefly discusses his eighteenth-century background and the reasons for setting up the Soho Mint. In chapter two Boulton’s involvement in the copper and iron industries are discussed, including the importance of his contributions to both industries. He needed large amounts of copper and specialized iron products such as steel to make his coins at Soho Mint. In chapter three the technical aspects of minting are discussed, including Boulton and his team’s contribution to developing new techniques. The final chapter details how materials and products were transported, commissioned, and designed. The second half of the thesis is a sample catalogue of items produced at the Soho Mint prior to Boulton’s death in 1809. Fuller catalogues of Soho Mint products have been produced for several institutions as a result of this research, for use by museum curators, historians and professional and amateur numismatists. Only a selection of this aspect of the research is included, because of the word limitations for PhD theses.

This study addresses the roles women played in Glasgow during a period of economic, demographic and cultural change. Glasgow in the eighteenth century was rapidly expanding and fast establishing itself as an international trading centre and an important industrial region. Despite the considerable interest that these developments have received, the gendering of Glasgow’s economy remains relatively unexplored. This research adds to the work of redressing that imbalance, by exploring the economic activities of women of middling social status in the urban economy, focusing on women’s enterprise and also financial management as a form of work.

The main purpose of this research is to re-examine Chartism by analysing how the Home Office’s suppression of the movement affected the development of the British State and the machinery of public order during the 1830s and 1840s. In recent years, the study of Chartism has become a domain for historians engaged in cultural history. As a result, studies of both a political and localised nature have been neglected. The poverty of recent research in these areas has occurred since the major dispute between Dorothy Thompson and Gareth Stedman Jones, over the ‘linguistic’ turn and the meaning of the language of Chartism took place during the 1980s. Since the early-1990s, the debate has now moved on towards what Patrick Joyce and James Vernon have identified as ‘the language of politics’. The aim of this research is to move the debate away from a cultural perspective and, instead, to examine how government policy changed to deal with Chartism. The purpose of this study is, therefore, not to examine the legislative effects of social, political and economic reforms as suggested by Gareth Stedman Jones, but to offer a more thorough investigation of the lines of argument pursued by Dorothy Thompson and James Vernon. Thompson argued that state suppression played a huge role in the demise of Chartism, whilst Vernon has asserted that during the first half of the nineteenth century the political system gradually became closed and disciplined. Mass movements such as Chartism, it is argued, failed in their quest to bring about major changes to the political system in the early nineteenth century, largely because they succumbed to huge pressure from the state and its institutions. In order to establish the influence of the Home Office, this study has analysed how its policy impacted upon the Chartists in the West Riding. This involved a struggle for hegemony between central government and local agencies which ultimately brought about significant changes to the way in which the state functioned, along with many improvements to its machinery of control. These reforms included the advent of better policing and a gradual redefining of the roles of traditional forms of control such as the magistracy, army, militia and yeomanry. From a thorough investigation of both primary and secondary source materials, the evidence suggests that Dorothy Thompson was generally correct in her observation that the Home Office suppression of Chartism allowed the state to learn from its mistakes and become more effective in managing public order. However, this study will argue that the process was not as clear cut as Thompson implied. The implementation of reforms was a gradual process in which the Home Office played a significant role in the management of tensions that existed amongst various central and local government agencies. In doing so, the state became more efficient in controlling disorder. It remains for others to investigate the view of Gareth Stedman Jones that Chartism was by-passed by a reforming state.

William Fairbairn was a major engineer, active in many branches of mid-nineteenth-century engineering. From an apprenticeship as a colliery millwright, he went on to establish a world-class engineering business in Manchester, playing a major role in mill-building, experimental engineering, bridge construction and iron shipbuilding. Despite his importance there is no modern study which brings together the many diverse areas of his work, and the company he founded, nor does any study give adequate emphasis to the discrete and different chronological phases of Fairbairn’s career. The thesis aims to provide a composite study of Fairbairn’s life and work, answering three main questions. First, how is the rise of Fairbairn and his Company to positions of leadership and influence within the engineering industry accounted for? Secondly, in what respects were both Fairbairn and the Company he founded important and influential, and how was that influence spread? Thirdly what caused one of the most successful engineering companies, with a global reputation, to cease to trade within a year of its founder’s death? The opportunity is taken to re-assess the range and significance of Fairbairn’s contributions to nineteenth-century engineering. This thesis argues that Fairbairn was more an ‘innovator’ and optimiser than an inventor. Five areas stand out as particularly influential amongst the multiplicity of his achievements, as a builder of mills with their prime-movers, as the foremost experimental engineer of his time outside the universities, as a leading iron shipbuilder during iron shipbuilding’s most critical decade - 1835-1844, as a builder of tubular structures – bridges and cranes - during a two-decade window, and in connection with steam boilers. The thesis shows education to have been a lifelong commitment of Fairbairn, with his Ancoats works the successor to Maudslay’s ‘nursery’. It also poins to him as a transitional figure in a time of rapid change. However his career was unpredictable. No one model of technological innovation fits all Fairbairn’s work, and his investigations and experiments challenge the imposition of any uniform theory of technological change. Set-backs are identified, as well as Fairbairn’s successes. Reasons are argued for the dissolution of his partnership with Lillie, the closure of his shipyard, and his failure to obtain various bridge commissions. The ultimate demise of a great engineering firm, within a year of its founder’s death, is traced primarily to the matter of succession following Fairbairn’s retirement from a managerial role, and the contrasting approach of his successors.

This thesis takes as its starting in point an examination of the complex and contested construction of English national identity and its deeply problematized intertwining with ideas of Britishness. By examining three case studies of failed English national museum projects, this dissertation has demonstrated that these proposals have not coalesced around a consistent interpretation of Englishness, but upon specific, threatened forms of culture such as the preservation of rural, agricultural and folk heritage; or have been motivated by a particular desire to inculcate a sense of citizenship through the improvement of history education. Each of these projects failed because of practical and financial shortcomings, but their failure also reveals much about contemporary debates upon the nature of English national culture, as well as several consistent issues which have impeded the creation of an English national museum. Firstly, that the absence of cohesive definitions of Englishness and Britishness means that the notion of a national museum has become intensely politicised, and therefore, public funding has not been forthcoming. Secondly, those definitions of Englishness that have arisen have formed around localised, often rural cultures, and thusly the idea of a single, London based national institution has met resistance from regional museums. Finally, the thesis demonstrates that museological paradigms have shifted significantly over the course of the twentieth century. Changing attitudes to interpretive practices, the role of curatorial authority, proscriptive ideas of culture, and museum-visitor relationships, have effectively made the very concept of a centralised national museum antithetical to the museum community. The original contribution of this thesis then, is in demonstrating how the inability and reticence to define a homogenous English national identity has impacted upon the creation of an English national museum.

This thesis demonstrates the existence and significance of Jacobitism in the British Atlantic World, c. 1688-1727. Throughout the period under investigation, colonists were increasingly integrated into Britain’s partisan politics, religious controversies, and vibrant public sphere. This integrative process encouraged colonists to actively participate in British controversies. Moreover, this integration was complex and multi-faceted and included elements of a Tory political culture in addition to their Whig counterparts. During this period, colonists increasingly identified themselves and others according to British political and religious terminology. This was both caused and encouraged by imperial appointments, clerical appointments/SPG activity, and an increased consumption of British political news and commentary. All three informed and shaped colonists’ views regarding Jacobitism. In light of these developments, this thesis examines in three case studies colonial manifestations of Jacobitism within a larger British Atlantic context. Taking into account the voluminous recent research on Jacobitism, this examination reveals that there was an identifiable transatlantic Jacobite subculture. This subculture is recognizable by its associations with elements of British culture inextricably linked to Jacobitism: nonjuring, Scottish Episcopalianism, high church Anglicanism, and – increasingly after 1710 – Toryism. These associations were demonstrated by overt expressions of Jacobitism, such as seditious words and celebrations of Jacobite holidays. They are also illustrated by accusations of Jacobitism. This thesis seeks to incorporate Jacobitism into the burgeoning field of Atlantic History and demonstrate the significance of Jacobitism as an important element of a process of colonial Anglicization. This contribution to historical understandings of the Anglicization of the British Atlantic World seeks to encourage discussions between the disparate fields of British and colonial history.

While relatively neglected in the historiography, the 4th Earl of Minto, who achieved the distinction of serving consecutively as Governor-General of Canada and Viceroy of India from 1898-1910, is more truly representative of the methods Britain adopted to govern its Empire than his more illustrious contemporaries. He was one of the many aristocrats who, while increasingly marginalised in other aspects of British political life, were believed to possess important qualities that made them ideally suited to the highest levels of imperial service. As part of the governing elite, Britain’s aristocrats shared many of the assumptions held by politicians, civil servants and military officers, about imperial governance. Vague notions circulated about Britain’s duty to civilize its possessions, but most policy-makers eschewed ‘ideological’ visions in favour of a more pragmatic approach based on recognition that protecting the empire from both internal and external threats was vital to maintaining Britain’s leading position amongst its rival Great Powers. The pragmatism of its governors provided an element of continuity in the diverse territories of Britain’s empire. This thesis examines the role of Lord Minto in the formation of defence and foreign policy to illustrate the centrality of the pragmatic approach to British imperialism. He held his posts at a time of transition for the Empire. Ideas about the duties of imperial governors were changing, as power shifted either to local governments in the self-governing colonies or back to the metropole from the periphery. Yet as Britain faced an increasing range of challenges, governors remained able to influence many of the decisions made in response. Like most governors Minto worked under a series of constraints. He was forced to repair the damage caused by his predecessors and contain the unrealistic aspirations of his superiors, although, a soldier himself, he found his military colleagues a valuable source of support throughout his career. In Canada Minto worked hard to ensure that Laurier’s government accepted its imperial responsibilities, most notably during the South African war, but also that his British superiors understood Canadian attitudes towards the Empire and rapprochement with America. As Viceroy, Minto’s priority remained protecting the security of the Raj, particularly the strategically vital North West Frontier, often against the insistence of a Liberal government focused on economic retrenchment. That he was able to achieve these aims and restore stability to previously troubled territories is a tribute to the effectiveness of pragmatism.

Brass Bands have become a clichéd representation of northern working-class culture. Hence, in 1974, Peter Hennessy described a band contest at the Albert Hall: A roll call of the bands is like an evocation of industrial history. From Wingates Temperance and Black Dyke Mills to more modern conglomerates [...]. Grown men, old bandsmen say, have been known to cry at the beauty of it all […]. Of all the manifestations of working-class culture, nothing is more certain than a brass band to bring on an attack of the George Orwells. Even the most hardened bourgeois cannot resist romanticizing the proletariat a little when faced with one. This stereotype, which emerged in the nineteenth century, generated the following research questions: What musical and social elements in the performance of brass band music strengthened working-class cultural identity in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? How did bands, which thrived in large numbers in the Southern Pennines, emerge as a musical and cultural metonym of the industrial landscape? This thesis therefore examines internal and external reporting of elements of brass musicianship in brass bands that constructed working class and northern identities. An outline of music-making in the north shows how the region supported bands’ development when they began to emerge from the 1830s. Brass musicianship and musical performance strengthened working-class cultural identity. Explorations of musical performances, leisure, rational recreation, social networks, gender and region, all combine to produce a fuller understanding of the northern working class between c.1840 and 1914. Such influences – of class, gender and region – contributed to brass bands producing primary examples of working-class identity. Not only have brass bands been under-explored in the history of leisure, but they also add to the understanding of the origins of stereotypes about working-class culture and northern identity that emerged, and came under scrutiny, in this period.