New Sources and Methods In the Study of the Nineteenth Century Parliament

1972 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 67-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas William Heyck
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Political Structure ◽  
Structural Investigations ◽  
Electoral Reforms ◽  
History Of ◽  
Parliamentary History ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Analytical Approaches

The study of the nineteenth century British Parliament cannot be limited to the institution itself, nor to the constitutional relations of its par ts. The great electoral reforms of the century increased the importance of the electorate in political decision-making. Coupled with these changes, the vast transformations of economy and society altered the very functions of Parliament. Thus nineteenth century parliamentary history requires an understanding of the whole political system, as well as the events within the House. Many of the recent works bearing on the history of Parliament reflect these facts. While good narrative history of parliamentary events continues to be needed and produced, the most innovative recent work raises different kinds of problems entirely and is not limited to affairs at Westminster. The newer types of work can be viewed as coming in two waves: first, a detailed analysis of political structure, utilizing traditional kinds of sources; and second, a proliferation of analytical approaches, using new sources and methods. Both waves are basically analytical, but they differ in questions asked and in routes to the answers.The analysis of political structure has been inspired by the questions, if not the methods and interpretations, of Sir Lewis Namier. The best of many examples are still Norman Gash's Politics in the Age of Peel and H. J. Hanham's Elections and Party Management. The main questions asked in such works are: What was the real, as opposed to the theoretical, framework of politics? How were politics actually conducted outside the House of Commons? How did the various reform acts affect the functioning of the electoral system? These works stress, in Gash' terminology, the “medium” in which the ordinary politician operated. In each case, they seem to emphasize continuity rather than change, and the enduring power of bribery, corruption, and influence. They have added a great deal to what the narratives tell us about Victorian politics, especially in regard to the realities of constituency operations, the origins and workings of party machinery, the problems of party finance, and the cost of elections. Structural investigations of parties, like Conor Cruise O'Brien's Parnell and His Party and E. J. Feuchtwanger's Disraeli, Democracy and the Tory Party have given a new dimension to party history. Perhaps most important, the structural studies have established the crucial significance of local factors and the comparative inconsequence of national issues in most elections.

History of Marriage Contracts in Egypt

Hawwa ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amira El-Azhary Sonbol
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Women's Agency ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Marriage Contracts ◽  
Personal Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
Women’S Agency ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Husband And Wife ◽  
History Of Marriage

AbstractWhile religious guidance may be central in choosing a spouse or expectations from marriage, until the nineteenth century, it was the contractual nature of marriage that defined the actual union entered into by husband and wife and according to which they lived together. Most importantly, marriage contracts could and often did include specific conditions agreed upon by the parties to the contract. The modern period will witness a shift toward privileging the religious side of marriage at the cost of the contractual and women's agency would experience a serious shift due to modern personal status laws.

scholarly journals The Maps That Killed Alexander Posey

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-94
Author(s):  
Matt Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Survival ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Data Visualizations

Nineteenth-century struggles over mapping concepts and techniques yielded the forebears of digital humanistic data visualizations today, staging the political tensions of the deep map’s entry into the humanities. The careers of educational reformer Emma Hart Willard and Creek poet and critic Alexander Posey, who were both map-makers in their ways, exemplify the entanglements of the history of deep mapping. Willard was a feminist innovator in her work with historical visualization, but at the cost of solidifying a regime of indigenous vanishment. Posey fought for his people’s cultural survival, but he did so from within a bureaucratic engine made possible in part by Willard’s widespread pedagogy linking the American map with a vision of settler dominance. These two figures left us provocative maps, but also offer a way to reflect on the justness of map-making — on the difficulty of deepening the map wisely, or even ethically.   

Parties and Issues in Early Victorian England

1966 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
William O. Aydelotte
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political History ◽  
The Other ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Victorian England ◽  
Parliamentary Reform ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
Political Oratory

It has never been established how far, in the early Victorian House of Commons, voting on issues followed party lines. It might in general seem plausible to assume — what political oratory generally contrives to suggest — that there are ideological disagreements between parties and that it makes a difference which of two major opposing parties is in control of the Government. This is, indeed, the line taken by some students of politics. A number of historians and political observers have, however, inclined to the contrary opinion and have, for various reasons, tended to play down the role of issues in party disputes. Much of what has been written on political history and, in particular, on the history of Parliament has had a distinct anti-ideological flavor.One line of argument is that issues on which disagreement exists are not always party questions. Robert Trelford McKenzie begins his study of British parties by pointing out that Parliament just before 1830 was “divided on a great issue of principle, namely Catholic emancipation,” and just after 1830, on another, parliamentary reform. He continues: “But on neither issue was there a clear division along strict party lines.” The distinguished administration of Sir Robert Peel in the 1840s was based, according to Norman Gash, on a party “deeply divided both on policy and personalities.” The other side of the House at that time is usually thought to have been even more disunited. It has even been suggested that, in the confused politics of the mid-nineteenth century, the wordsconservativeandradicaleach meant so many different things that they cannot be defined in terms of programs and objectives and that these polarities may more usefully be considered in terms of tempers and approaches.

Bishops and Scottish Representative Peers in the House of Lords, 1760-1775

1978 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
William C. Lowe
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
National Level ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Great Weight ◽  
Political Structure ◽  
The Past ◽  
House Of Lords ◽  
Lower Chamber

Despite all the attention lavished on the mid-eighteenth-century parliament, the House of Lords has been largely ignored by historians. The Whig historians of the nineteenth century were concerned with tracing the development of the House of Commons as the principal vehicle of constitutional progress, and in this century Namierites and neo-Whigs have alternately challenged and defended the Whig position, basing their arguments almost entirely on their views of proceedings in the lower chamber. The House of Lords was easy to neglect, one suspects, because most historians assumed that the upper House could be conveniently explained away as an appendage of the crown where an institutionalized majority of bishops, Scottish representative peers, placeholders, and newly-created peers could easily maintain a ministry. This, in turn, has led to a tendency to explain events in the House of Lords at any point in the century in terms of a static political structure, largely without regard to current issues or changes in the “structure of politics” at the national level.The two most conspicuous segments of the “Party of the Crown” in the Lords (and the two most abused for their alleged political servility) were the bishops and representative Scottish peers. The second Earl of Effingham expressed the conventional political wisdom of the eighteenth century when he told the House in 1780 that “those two descriptions threw a great weight into the scale of the Crown,” and historians have generally echoed this view. In the past two decades scholarship has begun to modify this picture for both ends of the century, though the old clichés still hold sway for the decades from Walpole to North.

Electoral Systems in the Making

2019 ◽  
pp. 193-218
Author(s):  
Daniel Bochsler
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Cultural Heterogeneity ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Electoral Reforms ◽  
History Of ◽  
Structural Theories

Most research on electoral systems deals with the effects of institutions on political representation. However, political parties design the electoral systems, and thereby navigate between self-interest and multiple, often nonreconcilable normative ideals. This chapter reviews the growing literature on the choice of electoral systems from different perspectives. Structural theories explain that the choice of electoral systems is closely linked to the history of suffrage extensions, cultural heterogeneity and the organization of the economy. Agency-based theories highlight how parliamentary majorities strategically pass electoral reforms in order to consolidate their power in the long run—for instance, in order to avoid future losses in elections. However, often lawmakers fail to predict their electoral fortunes and therefore pass reforms that turn out not to be in their favor, or they even contribute to undermining their own reforms later with strategic maneuvers. Finally, the chapter analyzes the choice of electoral system in the context of transitions toward democracies and in former colonies.

Firearms in the Central Sudan: A Revaluation

1972 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 591-607 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph P. Smaldone
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Structure ◽  
Military Technology ◽  
Military Organization ◽  
Relative Ease ◽  
Central Sudan ◽  
History Of ◽  
Internal Change ◽  
Independent Existence

The recent thesis propounded by Fisher and Rowland regarding the role of firearms in the Central Sudan requires considerable modification. While one must concede that the observable effects of firearms in the nineteenth century were not profound, this statement must be qualified to account for the incipient revolution in military technology, army organization, and political structure that occurred in many of the Central Sudanese states in the last quarter of the century. The relative ease with which European imperial powers conquered these states has tended to obscure from historians the dynamics of internal change that became manifest during the last decades of their independent existence.It is clear from the evidence presented in this article that the increasing use of firearms intensified the tendencies toward bureaucratization and the centralization of power in the states of the Central Sudan. The creation of regular standing armies, the formation of slave musketeer units commanded by slave officers, and the progressive devaluation of feudal institutions in favour of bureaucratized political and military structures, were the distinguishing characteristics of this period. Although history is irreversible, it is interesting to ponder the possible alternative outcomes of this nascent revolution. Its directions were clear, its destination unknown. In this article we have argued that these developments in politico-military organization did in fact represent a new departure which, if permitted to run its course, would have radically affected the subsequent history of the Central Sudan. It is our contention that the Fisher-Rowland thesis underestimates and misinterprets the nature of these changes.

scholarly journals An italic obsession: electoral reforms

2020 ◽  
Vol 83 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-16
Author(s):  
Alessandro Chiaramonte
Keyword(s):  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Proportional Representation ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Political ◽  
Specific Time ◽  
Electoral Reforms ◽  
History Of ◽  
Time Periods ◽  
Mixed Systems

The history of Italy is plenty of reforms of the electoral system. Many are those implemented since the country’s unification: from the majority system to the limited vote, from proportional representation to the majority premium in the liberal era; and, again, in the Republican era, the return to proportional representation and then the use of mixed systems, combining PR with plurality or majority premium. And many other are the reforms which, discussed and sometimes even approved, as in the case of the italicum, have remained dead letter or never saw the light. What explains this Italic obsession with the electoral systems? Why have their reforms been on the parties’ and governments’ political agenda for so long? The goal of this article is to answer these questions. In the end, electoral reforms have played as instruments of coordination and adaptation in the political strategies pursued by the parties in specific time periods and also as substitute instruments of institutional engineering in the absence of broader agreements on major constitutional reforms.

A Note on Francesco Ferrara's Cost of Reproduction

2004 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Enrico Minelli ◽  
Marco E. L. Guidi ◽  
Antonio Guccione
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Classical System ◽  
Cost Of Reproduction ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Theory Of Value ◽  
Distinguished Scholar ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Analytical Tools

For those readers who are not familiar with the history of Italian economic thought, the Cost of Reproduction Doctrine (CRD) is an interpretation ofthe theory of value developed by the distinguished scholar Francesco Ferrara (1810–1900) around the middle of the nineteenth century. This was a time when many of the flaws of the classical system had been identified but the analytical tools needed for their elimination were not yet available.

Electoral Reform or Not: Party Interests Defeated Principled Arguments in the Late Nineteenth Century and Have Characterised the UK’s Electoral System Since

2020 ◽  
pp. 147892991989324
Author(s):  
Ron Johnston
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Electoral Reform ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Class A ◽  
Election Results

Conti’s Parliament the Mirror of the Nation is an excellent, thorough exploration and explication of nineteenth-century debates over electoral reform as members of Britain’s intellectual elite wrestled with the issue of how to create a system that would ensure that all opinions were advanced in the country’s Parliament without an expansion of the franchise, meaning that the House of Commons was overwhelmed by the working class. A superb contribution to intellectual history, however, it makes little contact with the ‘real world’ of politics, where the short-term interests of the dominant political parties led to pragmatic rather than idealistic resolution to that issue. That resolution, negotiated by leading politicians from the two main parties, led to an electoral reform in 1885 based on single-member, territorially based constituencies that, with modifications only, remains in place today, generating general election results that are both disproportional and biased as a consequence of the system’s geographical construction

scholarly journals De Bibliotheek van de Tweede Kamer

2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 259-299
Author(s):  
Alex Alsemgeest
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Constitutional Law ◽  
Dutch Politics ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Single Location ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Parliamentary History ◽  
First Time

Abstract The library of the Dutch House of Representatives is a collection of thirty thousand books in the fields of constitutional law and Dutch politics. The collection is rooted in the nineteenth century and has seen the various stages of expansion and decline typical to a library of use. In recent years, the historical book collection has been brought together in a single location for the first time in its history. The books are placed in a four-stories high nineteenth century library that is known as the ‘Handelingenkamer’. Bringing the collection together in one place has created a visual reflection of two centuries of Dutch parliamentary history. This article explores the history of the collection as a whole, not only as a library for the support of the work of parliamentarians in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but also as a collection and library space that has representative value which can be employed for temporary exhibitions and educational purposes.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document