William Robertson Nicoll (1851-1923) founded the British Weekly in 1886 to exploit the need for a Liberal Nonconformist newspaper. Nicoll became the most important editor of a Free Church journal in the Edwardian period. The British Weekly provided a regular focus for political Nonconformity and Nicoll was a primary raiser of the Nonconformist consciousness and shaper of the collective conscience. This thesis considers the role of newspapers as conduits of political thought. As distributors of information, newspapers had a definite role in setting the political agenda and this work considers the programme which Nicoll pressed at the British Weekly. The newspaper is also considered as a nexus of religious and financial considerations. The analysis provides an examination of the British Weekly from its foundation in 1885, placing it in political context and setting down the editorial agenda. Nonconformist concerns were threatened both by the political preponderance of Irish interests and by the extension of the franchise to working class voters more concerned with social than religious equality. This thesis therefore looks at Nicoll's alignment with the Liberal Imperialists because they would rid the party of its commitment to Home Rule and (less importantly) because they appeared to respond to the needs of the working class. In 1902 the British Weekly misplaced its national efficiency agenda and became prominent in the Passive Resistance campaign against the Education Act. The thesis examines the way in which the protest was used to energise political Nonconformity. The campaign brought Nicoll into contact with Lloyd George and this work explores the mutual benefits of this relationship and also the way in which Nicoll was compromised as a lobbyist by the association. This is the first comprehensive examination of the political nature of the British Weekly. It highlights the increasing complexity of reconciling religion and politics in the twentieth century as pressing social issues could not be repaired by Victorian moral crusades.

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The problem which confronts us at the outset, is the problem which has been facing historians for the past three hundred years: What were the causes of the English Civil War? What matters were responsible for the decisive split between Crown & Parliament into two distinct parties, and which ultimately led to civil war? Many theories and interpretations have been given. In this chapter, we will find that there are three major interpretations. The first is that it was a religious struggle - and so the Civil War became known as the 'Puritan Revolution'. The second is that it was a purely political conflict between the Crown and its Ministers, on the one hand, and the House of Commons, which had by then become the 'mirror' of the Puritan element in the country, on the other. And the third is that it was a class, or economic, war. Contemporary historians tended to regard it as a twofold struggle - a conflict over religion on the one hand, and the constitution on the other. It was they who coined the phrase 'Puritan Revolution'. This interpretation, however, has subsequently been challenged, in the light of the detailed research which has been conducted - especially in the field of economic history. And so the Civil War has been interpreted in terms of a social and economic conflict - it is said to be a class war. The social and economic factors have tended to become emphasized while the religious have been pushed into the background - often excluded altogether. It is my intention in this thesis, therefore, to assert once again the very real part played by religious matters in the origins of the English Civil War. Intro., p. 1.

My dissertation argues that national tropes are continually in a state of flux as they are employed to respond to historical, socio-political and cultural events and trends, and demonstrates that their state at a specific moment encapsulates struggles between various concepts of national identity. I trace shifts in the configuration of Anglo-Scottish relations by undertaking a microanalysis of two specific recurring tropological categories - familial and homosocial tropes — in a number of key moments in cross-border relations between 1707 and 1830. The first chapter, directed at the years surrounding the Union of Parliaments, traces the suppression of cross-border dissonance in homosocial egalitarian tropes which define Anglo-Scottish relations in the work of pro-union pamphleteers, and contrasts this strategy of containment with the disruptive presence of familial tropes in the pamphlets of anti-union writers. The second chapter traces the reappearance of this conflict in the decade following Culloden. Roderick Random, written from the margins by Tobias Smollett, reveals a discomfort with unifying tropes, although it ends with a cursory gesture towards a national marital union. James Ramble, in contrast, written by the English Edward Kimber, deflects dissonance onto Jacobitism, suggesting through tropes of friendship that all aspects of Anglo-Scottish relations are seamlessly integrated into British unity. Chapters three and four foreground the 1760s, a decade in which Scottish agency, in the person of Lord Bute, the Lord Treasurer, seems to reach new heights. Yet it is also a decade of rampant Scotophobia, incited by the Wilkites to undermine Bute's authority. Tropological warfare is an important element of this rhetorical conflict. In chapters five and six, I uncover two competing concepts of Britishness, primarily created by English and Irish writers, which emerge in the 1790s. The first engages with homosocial tropes to foreground Scottish agency in nation-building and empire-building projects, but does so at the expense of a distinct Scottish culture. The second, also produced by English and Irish writers, reifies and celebrates Scottish culture through tropes of cross-border courtship, but tends to represent the emergent concept as endangered, lacking national agency. Chapter six analyzes the Scottish response to this tropological binary. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

My thesis revives the term raciology to describe collectively the literature which emanated out of philological ethnology, that is, out of the studies of man inspired by the rapid advances in linguistic science in the early nineteeenth century. Raciological Thought in Victorian Culture is divided into two parts: it examines the development and dissemination of nineteenth-century raciological knowledge in the works of celebrated philologists and anthropologists; and then investigates typical features of raciological discourse in Victorian and Victorian Canadian culture. It views this regional British literature as a field for the political and educational deployment of British raciological conceptions, and comments on some of the implications of the circulation of raciological doctrine. My argument begins with discussion of the often overlooked celebrity and authority of philologists in Victorian culture, tracing the derivation from philology of raciological typologies which established the raciological associations of terms like "Britons," "Anglo-Saxons," and "Teutons" during the early and middle-Victorian periods. An important aspect of the thesis is a re-evaluation of the influence of Friedrich Max Muller, the most influential comparative philologist and mythologist in the Victorian world. I argue that his use of etymological study for archaeological data greatly contributed to the rapid dissemination of raciological thought among the educated and educating classes. The first part of the thesis concludes with discussion of issues which animated raciological discourse. The second part follows the dissemination of Victorian raciological thought to Canada, and illustrates its effects in an imperial context. It demonstrates the use of raciology in establishing Canada's legitimacy as a British nation, and documents the place of raciology in establishing the authenticity of Canadian continuity with a British culture running into deep antiquity. After discussing neglected raciological aspects of several important Victorian Canadian source works, it goes on to outline the importance of raciological mythology to the preservation of the Dominion from American annexation and Fenian incursion. My epilogue briefly documents the decline of raciological thought in Britain after the 1890s. By investigating numerous neglected Victorian sources, Raciological Thought in Victorian Culture establishes raciology as an important element in Victorian political-and, in particular, nationalist-thinking. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

This thesis examines the origins of athleticism in England and its transfer to Canada. During the course of the nineteenth century, the focus of the English public schools changed dramatically. At the start of the century an English upper-class student's leisure time was largely employed in roaming the country-side, trespassing on neighboring estates and poaching. Teachers' responsibilities ended at the classroom door. Seventy-five years later an English public school student's life was focussed on games and team sports including cricket and the various types of football. Teachers now ran all aspects of school life which was designed to instill the manly, Christian, virtues which would enable graduates to take their proper place as leaders in the British Empire. And team sports were a vehicle to achieve that end. Team sports such as cricket and rugby, and the various institutions that promoted them, occupied a central place in upper-class English life and became infused with what Professor Mangan refers to as the 'games ethic': the ideology of athleticism. When the British administrators, soldiers, and immigrants came to Canada they brought with them their love of games and this 'games ethic' that was modified by Canadian experience. In England the 'ethic' was firmly entrenched and supported by a unique class and social structure. Because that structure did not exist in Canada, the attempts of early British Canadians to instill the 'ethic' in the new country were problematic and played out in the conflict between amateurs and professionals. Although an emerging working-class culture and an increasingly commercialized society challenged and eventually made the distinction between amateur and professional athletes irrelevant, belief in the 'games ethic' and in the instrumental value of team sports survived and continues to influence Canadian sport policy today. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

This study examined public perception of the social relevance of Christian churches in the year the New Poor Law was passed. The first two chapters presented historiography concerning the Voluntary crisis which threatened the Anglican establishment, and the relationship of Christian churches to the New Poor Law. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 revealed the recurring image of "true" Christianity in its relation to the church crisis and the New Poor Law in the working men's, political, and religious periodical press. The study demonstrated a particular working class interest in Christianity and the effect of evangelicalism on religious renewal and social concerns. Orthodox Christians, embroiled in religious and political controversy, articulated practical concern for the poor less effectively than secularists.

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