State and Market in Victorian Britain: War, Welfare and Capitalism
Author(s): Martin Daunton (Author)
Publisher: Boydell Press
Publication Date: 19 Jun. 2008
Language: English
Print length: 352 pages
ISBN-10: 1843833832
ISBN-13: 9781843833833
Book Description
Traces the effects and consequences of radical economic change, moral, social, and fiscal, in the Victorian period. In the course of the nineteenth century, the economic structure and policies of Britain were remade, as the costs of the “fiscal-military” state which fought successful wars against France were cut, and monopolies gave way to freetrade, while monetary policy was determined by the automatic operation of the gold standard. However, the result was not, as might be expected, the triumph of laissez faire; there was continued concern about the moral andsocial consequences of economic change. In this magisterial collection, Professor MARTIN DAUNTON looks at the connections between state and market in this period, and the ways in which all society was affected. He argues that central to the politics of Victorian Britain was determining where the line should be drawn between private profit and social costs – a task that implicated the courts and politicians in defining the nature of capitalist society. Theoutcome was not determined by “gentlemanly capitalists” comprising landowners and financiers who dominated the state and denied a voice to industrialists and their workers. Rather, the choices reflected the interplay between all interests, including those of the state itself. MARTIN DAUNTON is Master of Trinity Hall and Professor of Economic History at the University of Cambridge.
Editorial Reviews
Review
Will be of interest to all kinds of professional historians, many of whom will find it useful to have Daunton’s thoughts collected here. –JOURNAL OF BRITISH STUDIES, vol. 48, no. 3
This book, then, should be read both for its powerful analysis of the dynamics of the Victorian state […], but also as a major contribution to undermining the narrative of decline which still encumbers so much of the historiography of modern Britain. –REVIEWS IN HISTORY, November 2009
This book gives us an extraordinary example of the best ways to write and think about the economy – its history, complexity, institutions, values, and ideas – at both the micro and macro levels. — VICTORIAN STUDIES
This is a very cheering book. It is based on detailed studies using detailed evidence and, as its critical apparatus shows, a wide reading of the detailed scholarship on all of the questions with which it is concerned. It is the sort of book that enlightens as it stimulates and causes us to raise further questions that Daunton and others can turn to with keen eagerness. –JOURNAL OF MODERN HISTORY, September 2010
For anyone interested in the flow of state power between different levels and domains, there are few better places from which to set out than this rich, stimulating book. –ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW, vol. CXXV, no. 517, December 2010
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