Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. Aristocratic Century
  • Cited by 66
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
January 2010
Print publication year:
1984
Online ISBN:
9780511607998
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511607998
Series:
The Wiles Lectures
Subjects:
Social and Population History, History of Ideas, British History after 1450, History
Information

Book description

Since the work of Butterfield and Namier in the 1930s, it has commonly been said that eighteenth-century England appears atomised, left with no overall interpretation. Subsequent work on religious differences and on party strife served to reinforce the image of a divided society, and in the last ten years historians of the poor and unprivileged have suggested that beneath the surface lurked substantial popular discontent. Professor Cannon uses his 1982 Wiles Lecture to offer a different interpretation - that the widespread acceptance of aristocratic values and aristocratic leadership gave a remarkable intellectual, political and social coherence to the century. He traces the recovery made by the aristocracy from its decade in 1649 when the House of Lords was abolished as useless and dangerous. After the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the peerage re-established its hold on government and society. Professor Cannon is forced to challenge some of the most cherished beliefs of English historiography - that Hanoverian society, at its top level, was an open elite, continually replenished by vigorous recruits from other groups and classes. He suggests that, on the contrary, in some respects the English peerage was more exclusive than many of its continental counterparts and that the openness was a myth which itself served a potent political purpose. Of the prospering burgeoisie, he argues that the remarkable thing was not their assertiveness but their long acquiescence in patrician rule, and he poses the paradox of a country increasingly dominated by a landed aristocracy giving birth to the first industrial revolution. His final chapter discusses the ideological under-pinning which made aristocratic supremacy acceptable for so long, and the emergence of those forces and ideals which were ultimately to replace it.

Reviews

‘ … contains much new material and an abundance of really illuminating statistics, and it retains the pace and vigour … which must have made his Wiles Lectures a pleasure to hear and which make the book based on them very stimulating to read.’

John Habakkuk Source: The Times Literary Supplement

‘To some the scope of these revised Wiles Lectures may appear narrow, but the gusto and wit with which they are carried along bring a coherence to the eighteenth century that it has not known since Lewis Namier’s day, and import a lightness of touch that carries a heavy load of facts and figures without strain.’

F. M. L. Thompson Source: The Times Higher Education Supplement

‘ … distinguished by the lucidity, urbanity and gentle wit which have made the author one of the most civilised of English istorians writing today.’

John Kenyon Source: The Observer

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

Contents

Contents

Metrics

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Book summary page views

Total views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.