Hannah J. Oberlander

1

Oberlander

Hannah J. Oberlander

March 8, 2014

HIST-635 Copelman

Midterm

Eighteenth and nineteenth century Britain witnessed several changing elementsthat transformed it as a nation and a state. Britain’s “peculiar ways” of organic evolution over time suggest “new and modern conditions occurred at different historical periods, unfolded at various rhythms, and were often compelled to combine with the very customary forms and practices they were assumed to displace.”[1] Changes both from the ground up and from within reinterpreted what government meant for the transcending state and what citizenship meant for the average citizen. National identity and patriotism evoked a unifying theme in the formative years of these changes brought on by the monarchy and the threat of invasion. British citizens recognized their power in inducing change in their state’s society, living out the words of Smiles’ Self-Help when he predicts, “the collective character of a nation will as surely find its befitting results in its law and government, as water finds its own level.”[2] Finally, government itself in Britain found new strength and purpose through adopting methods that reached out to the common good of its British subjects.

The first measurable changing element during this period in Britainwas a developed sense of national identity and patriotism that brewed within the majority of the British population. Both a reconstructed appearance of the monarchy and the fear of French invasionwere responsible for a more “genuinely and assertively British”[3] uniqueness that changed the face of Britain as a nation and a state through its effect on the masses.

Colley remarks that after losing the American Revolution, “the British monarchy succeeded in becoming more celebrated, more broadly popular and more unalloyed patriotic than it had been for a century at least.”[4] King George III’s public approval ratings soared among the British populous as compared to his predecessors,which fostered a national unity.[5] Ironically, George III had dodged the blame for the loss of the American colonies, eluding the people to view him less associated with a side of politics. Colley points out that:

The former Prime Minister, Lord North, was made the scapegoat for national humiliation; while the king himself, because of his undoubted domestic probity, his obstinate patriotism and his adroit alliance with the boy wonder, William Pitt the Younger, came to represent for many Britons reassuring stability and honest, uncomplicated worth in the midst of disaster and disillusionment.[6]

Also, George III oversaw splendid building projects of fashionable décor attracting public interest and evoking a deepened sense of national pride. Additionally, the introduction of the royal jubilee and festivals celebrating the monarch “rall[ied] public opinion in the wake of defeat in America and in the face of the French Revolution and the threat of Napoleon and his armies.”[7]The middle class, the British press, amateur soldiers, and even children were prompted to engage in these celebrations, which were quickly becoming a celebrated national tradition. This new form of active patriotism took root at the ground levels of British society[8] and enabled the monarch to meet and greet his subjects by riding through the streets in a grand fashion, transforming the royal mystique into a celebrity-like strength. Colley concludes, “the centre [sic] of this web of royal celebration was far more splendid and far more stable than it had been when George III succeeded to the throne.”[9] Likely, this jubilee nationalism and unifying devotion to the monarch in these grassroots efforts averted souring against an out-of-touch monarch and prevented a French Revolution like overthrow from reaching the shores of Great Britain.

Patriotism also grew out of Britain’s long struggle with Franceduring the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries asthe British people defined themselves collectively against a common enemy.[10] Both urbanized and rural Britons feared a French invasion, and “the sheer extent of the civil-defence [sic] effort, together with the weight of propaganda, and the knowledge of what had happened in other parts of Europe made anxiety or feverish anticipation almost inescapable”[11] for the people of Britain. Men volunteered for the British military in large droves, especially along the English Channel coastline,[12] as they valued their enlistment as a chance to defend their homes from the French pillaging their towns during a possible invasion. Fear united the British people regardless of their background, religion, economic status, or even support of the British government. By calling on all Britons from different parts of the same country to band together in the military ranks, the British government facilitated for the first timeinteraction with British subjects with whom they had never worked with before as a whole for a common British cause.[13] Colley observes, “patriotic rhetoric redescribed the war as a crusade for freedom against the forces of military tyranny.”[14]The war effort deterred British men and women from rallying together around property, against the monarchy, or in favor of national independence as other masses had done. Thus their fight for “freedom” was a unifying cry of British uniqueness that represented a significant change in national identity during the Napoleonic era from merely general anti-French views to a more modern identity as a British people.

The second changing element in eighteenth and nineteenth century Britain was that citizens from all levels of society began to move away from organic local common law governance in favor of more developed administrative governance in state affairs. Samuel Smiles duly observed, “the Government of a nation itself is usually found to be but the reflex of the individuals composing it.”[15] Government no longer could stay the way that it had been, because as John Stuart Mills puts it plainly, “all questions of political institutions are relative, not absolute, and…different stages of human progress not only will have, but ought to have, different institutions [depending on]…whatever is the strongest power in society.”[16] The political issues of suffrage and the abolition of slavery invigorated a response from the average citizen to engage in for both genders.

The political movement that united men from all over the country was universal male suffrage. Further, the result of uniting British men from all over the country together to resist the French militarily had significant consequences:

By summoning men from all classes, all political opinions, all parts of Great Britain, and all religious denominations to its defence [sic] in this way, by treating them indiscriminately as patriots, the authorities ran an obvious risk of encouraging demands for political change in the future.[17]

Recognizing how indebted it was to the masses of volunteers who had banded together to defeat France, the British government felt immense responsibility and pressure to revise the political system to grant both men of property and workingmen the right to vote.[18] Thus Parliamentary reform grew to become a national issue rather than regional as it had always been in the past. Protesters pointed out that those who opposed universal male suffrage were the “ultra-privileged few”[19] compared with the millions of Britons who had risen to defend their nation’s honor in her great time of need. Drawing on the traditions constructed before including patriotic music—including tunes like “God Save the King,” banners with patriotic British symbols, and marches that reflected the royal jubilees implemented by George III––the British commoners projected their voices as one. Moderate success was achieved with the passing of the Reform Act in 1832, which granted men with property access to participate in the electoral process.

Gender distinctions did not dissuade women from participating in the political process either during this time since there were many policies women felt were their moral duty to voice support for. A woman’s proper place in British society demanded that they be “stripped… of all political rights [and] could not by definition be a citizen.”[20] Though women continued to be brainwashed with the ideals of “stay at home” propriety, middle class women found their freedom through philanthropic efforts beginning with the war effort, which lent themselves to future political reforms such as the abolition of slavery and eventually women’s suffrage as well. Colley identifies:

The half-century after the American war would witness a marked expansion in the range of British women’s public and patriotic activities, as well as changes in how those activities were viewed and legitimised [sic].[21]

The power of woman in Britain advanced its relevance through the pro-war efforts ofknitting socks for soldiers, making banners for pro-war marches, and organizing committees that collected donations to support the military. Colley evokes, “consciously or not, these female patriots were staking out a civic role for themselves.”[22] Lobbying, running committees, and organizing for the war effort were acceptable for women to participate in outside of the home as these activities promoted the separate sphere as a way to “defend their right to security within [their homes].”[23] Stressing female helplessness had an advantage for women, because slowly they became more politically active under the guise of their “sacred right to safety and security of all British women.”[24] British culture on the whole gave credence to the idea that women were the moral backbone of the empire, and through women, the values of the state would be passed down to future patriots.[25] Colley purports that “the assurance that [women] were Great Britain’s moral arbiters gave women . . . authority and legitimation for initiatives outside the home.”[26]

One of the strongest moral arguments of the day was the campaign against the slave trade, and women championed this political cause with all the moral fervor they could muster in the name of “virtue.” From efforts within the home to refuse serving slave-made sugar at their dinner tables to collecting signatures petitioning for the abolition of slavery, “women throughout Great Britain had integrated themselves into the anti-slavery movement, managing to convince others as well as themselves that their particular skills and contacts could be put to wider use.”[27] The idea that women were a relevant force that led the crusade against this moral corruption was a substantial development in societies understanding of influencing factors affecting the practices of the British state during the 1800s.

Finally, power was morphing away from the feudalmentality of maintaining absolute sovereignty through brute force and began shifting towards a focus on governing for the economic good of the whole people. Foucault in Governmentality writes:

The art of government, as becomes apparent in this literature, is essentially concerned with answering the question of how to introduce economy—that is to say, the correct manner of managing individuals, goods and wealth within the family…and of making the family fortunes prosper—how to introduce this meticulous attention of the father towards his family into the management of the state.[28]

George III began to embody some of these ideas in his desire for the people to know him not only as their sovereign but also to know him as more of an individual through bringing the monarchy down to their level with the jubilees and royal processionals. Instead of killing all protestors who marched through the streets demanding equal voting privileges, the British government began to develop a listening ear to the cries of the masses. This development exemplified the “wisdom and diligence…not of imposing law on men, but of disposing things: that is to say, of employing tactics rather than laws, and even of using laws themselves as tactics—to arrange things in such a way that, through a certain number of means, such and such ends may be achieved.”[29] The British government used the tactic of modified justice by granting voting rights to the male propertied class as a means of acknowledging their service in the defense of the state against France. A rational move that maintained a balance of old tradition with new progress for a time before further change was required.

Rationality became the battle cry of the British government as it sought out stable methods to reinforce the reason of the state, achieving the art of government assertedby Foucault’s analysis on good government:

In a full and positive sense: the state is governed according to rational principles which are intrinsic to it and which cannot be derived solely from natural or divine laws or the principles of wisdom and prudence; the state, like nature, has its own proper form of rationality, albeit of a different sort…the art of government, instead of seeking to find itself in transcendental rules, a cosmological model or a philosophico-moral idea, must find the principles of its rationality in that which constitutes the specific reality of the state.[30]

The emphasis on rationality purported itself in the “learning with Nelly” methods of educating the bureaucrat of the state, a pinnacle gentlemen whose duty was to become an expert in the field for which he managed for the good of the state.[31]Driven by the ever-increasing science and technology of the age, these high professionals viewed their positions as ethically neutral civil servants who carried out the state policies in the best interest for Britain as a whole.[32]

This change was carried out through the development of a highly uniform structure of bureaucratic systems.[33] These changing systems pushed past the old methods of government as a power you are born into, and embraced the notion that governing happens and functions well because of its embedded practices of structure organic to the populous. Mills speaks to this significant change when challenging the old system:

I thought the predominance of the aristocratic classes, the noble and the rich, in the English Constitution, an evil worth any struggle to get rid of; not on account of taxes…but as the great demoralizing agency in the country. Demoralizing, …because it made the conduct of government an example of gross public immorality…and in still greater degree, because the respect of the multitude always attaching itself principally to that which, in the existing state of society, is the chief passport to power.[34]

Joyce emphasizes that “centralised [sic], regular bureaucracy in a modern form”[35] boasted that thiscollective machine of government managedsuccessfully for the common good of the nation’s populous. Written forms of administrative government became a uniform practice among the bureaucratic world in Britain, reinforcing routine structure, efficiency, accountability, and organization.[36] As this changing government or bureaucracy grew, offices evolved into highly specialized departments that were capable of “perform[ing] particular functions.”[37]

One area of more toned “expertise” was that of the Foreign Office that issued passports to British travelers. Through a series of reforms prompted by complaints of British citizens to revise the passport process, the British Foreign Office in 1858 “published regulations regarding all the changes to passport procedures in The Times” for the public to read for themselves.[38] Anderson notes that the government of Britain was indeed transcending in terms of changing for the benefit of its citizens, noting:

British tourists compelled the British government to take up their demand for unhindered movement. The passport from this view took on a different meaning, not as a means of control, but as a personal document that identified the individual bearer as entitled to the privilege of free movement…and as having rights to protection by reason of their national identity.[39]

The change in government that appointed sectionalized power to bureaucratic offices began a powerful shift to reach out to the needs of the British people themselves through a more expert and functional administrative state.

British society during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries elevates the changing concepts and practices of the state itself. Sparked by the unifying influence of patriotism,[40]emerging political agency among British citizens, and embracing alterations in the government’s goal to care more for the common good of the populous rather than the maintenance of its own power, the British world transcended its old identity and embraced a new uniqueness that other countries would look to and model[41] in the centuries to come.

[1]Gunn, S., & Vernon, J. (2011). The Peculiarities of Liberal Modernity in Imperial Britain. Berkeley: Global, Area, and International Archive/University of California Press, p. 1.

[2]Smiles, S. (1958). Self-Help: With Illustrations of Conduct & Perseverance. London: J. Murray, p. 2.