Victorious century The United Kingdom, 1800-1906

Review by New York Times Review

THE HOUSE OF BROKEN ANGELS, by Luis Alberto Urrea. ??? (Little, Brown, $27.) In Urrea's sprawling, tender, funny , BKOKÉIT anc· bighearted family saga - a Mexican-American A N CE LS nove' t'lat's a'so an American novel - the de La Cruz ,„„G7?;?„?? clan gathers in San Diego to celebrate the 70th birth- day of its patriarch, who is dying of cancer. THE CADAVER KING AND THE COUNTRY DENTIST: A True Story of Injustice in the American South, by Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington. (PublicAffairs, $28.) Tracing the wrongful convictions of two men in Mississippi in the early 1990s, the authors ask whether problems in our justice system stem from basic incompetence or bald racism. FAREWELL TO THE HORSE: A Cultural History, by Ulrich Raulff. (Liveright, $35.) Raulff ranges far and wide to tell the story of the complicated relationship between humans and horses - an elegy that is labyrinthine in the varied places it goes, but never frustrating. VICTORIOUS CENTURY: The United Kingdom, 1800-1906, by David Cannadine. (Viking, $40.) Any serious scholar of the Victorian Age faces a tricky balance sheet of profit and loss. Cannadine's admirable history lucidly records Britain's many triumphs at home and abroad, and its many failures as well. SONG OF A CAPTIVE BIRD, by Jasmin Darznik. (Ballantine, $27.) Darznik's novel, inspired by the turbulent life of the Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad, who defied her country's conservative mores by daring to write verse about female pleasure, is superbly dramatized, each scene designed to stir up fury and longing. FATAL DISCORD: Erasmus, Luther and the Fight for the Western Mind, by Michael Massing. (Harper, $45.) Last year saw a profusion of books about Martin Luther to mark the 500 th anniversary of his posting the 95 Theses. Massing widens the lens wondrously, bringing in Erasmus, the great humanist foe of Luther. Their rivalry set the course for much of Western civilization. THE LAND BETWEEN TWO RIVERS: Writing in an Age of Refugees, by Tom Sleigh. (Graywolf, paper, $16.) Sleigh visits some of the world's hot zones - Kurdistan, Mogadishu, rural Lebanon - to bear witness. "Even people threatened by drought and starvation," he writes, "have to get on with their lives." JOURNEY INTO EUROPE: Islam, Immigration, and Identity, by Akbar Ahmed. (Brookings, $34.99.) Ahmed, a Pakistani scholar and diplomat, interviewed Muslims across Europe about their situation. "This, I felt, was Europe's ticking time bomb," he says. THE MAD WOLF'S DAUGHTER, by Diane Magras. (Kathy Dawson/ Penguin, $16.99; ages 8 to 12.) This fast-paced novel follows a 12-year-old girl in medieval Scotland who must find the truth about her family's past to save her father and brothers. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [April 8, 2018]

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Cannadine (The Undivided Past), professor of history at Princeton, focuses on high politics, with a fondness for historical irony and an eye for patterns, in this steady history of 19th-century Britain. He book-ends his study with two telling events: the 1800 Act of Union, which united Ireland with Great Britain, and the 1906 general election, which brought into power the same Liberal Party that had split over the issue of Irish home rule in the 1880s. As Cannadine notes, 19th-century Britain bequeathed to the world many of the institutions of modern life: stamps, photographs, bicycles, football, telephones, sewers, detective novels, and even bacon and eggs. It was also deeply religious, imperial-minded, and governed by an entrenched aristocracy-a place where winter living conditions for the working classes were "almost unendurable." Determined to reconcile these two images of 19th-century Britain as both the birthplace of modernity and a gloomy Victorian twilight, Cannadine writes fluently about Britain's rise to industrial preeminence and subsequent world-leading status, providing a detailed examination of political machinations and imperial excursions. Cannadine's account is solid and informative, but it lacks anything remotely bold or provocative, or anything that complicates the book's central thesis of the remarkable stability of British political institutions compared to their continental counterparts. Maps & illus. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

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Review by Library Journal Review

Nearly a century after England, Wales, and Scotland had formed a British nation, Ireland joined them to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The Act of Union, passed in 1800, marked the beginning of what Cannadine (history, Princeton Univ.; Margaret Thatcher) describes as a long century in which Great Britain would be victorious to form the largest, most dispersed empire in history, enabling it to dominate the new global economy. The 19th century did not begin well for Britain. After the disintegration of its first empire in 1783, the UK was nearly bankrupt after it had heavily financed several European coalitions to fight Napoleon between 1803 and 1815. Even in the midst of great political, social, and economic challenges, Britain maintained a stable polity at home and added exponentially to its imperial holdings, in contrast to its European neighbors. It was the era of great politicians: Benjamin Disreali, William Ewart Gladstone, Queen Victoria. It was also a golden age of culture, including novelist Charles Dickens and composer Edward Elgar. In the middle of Edward VII's reign, Britain's century of world hegemony started its decline. VERDICT Cannadine has written a quick-paced, comprehensive account of 19th-century Britain, with recommendations for further reading. For fans of the period and most history collections.- Glen Edward Taul, formerly with Campbellsville Univ., KY © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

The acclaimed British historian meticulously traces every aspect of Britain from the Act of Union (with Ireland) in 1800 until the 1906 landslide by the Liberal Party.There is a danger of getting bogged down in the details, but diligent readers will find plenty of enlightenment here. British Academy president Cannadine (History/Princeton Univ.; Margaret Thatcher: A Life and Legacy, 2017, etc.) follows the period called the Pax Britannica, when Britain avoided military entanglements with European powers between the Napoleonic Wars and World War I. England's unique unwritten constitution provided the nation with an adaptable continuity while other nations were caught in the turmoil of revolution. In this period of tremendous upheaval in all the great European powers, Britain maintained government stability while engaging in unprecedented expansion. The Industrial Revolution and the Reform Act(s) enabled the country to wield a disproportionate influence over the affairs of the world. Revolutionary developments in industry and infrastructure encouraged population and agricultural booms as well as growth in the arts, writing in particular. However, at the same time, food prices rose, and exports were unreliable; there were bank panics and strikes by Luddites who feared the new mechanized looms. Of course, before all that could happen, England and other nations had to deal with Napoleon. By 1815, it had taken multiple coalitions of Dutch, German, Prussian, and Russian forces to defeat him. In the end, it was the Russian manpower and British economic advantage and naval supremacy that won the day. At that point, England had to pay the costs incurred in both the Napoleonic Wars and the American Revolution. Peace, new markets, income, property taxes, and customs and excise taxes helped tremendously. Territorial expansion was worldwide, with local governors deciding which areas to annex. Inevitably, the empire's pre-eminence would buckle under its own far-flung reach. Ever adept, Cannadine shows us why and how it happened.Dense but satisfying history of a time when "Britons were prodigiously energetic, industrious and creative, even as they were also in many ways a flawed and fallible people." Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Prologue History is not just about dates and events, which are often arbitrary and accidental: it is at least as much about processes, which do not begin and end with any such tidy temporality or calendrical precision. But dates do matter, because important events happen at particular times, and this explains why many histories of nineteenth-century Britain begin with the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 and end with the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. Such were the defining dates of Elie Halévy's pioneering but incomplete History of the English People in the Nineteenth Century , of David Thomson's brief and bracing volume in the post-war Pelican History of England , of the two volumes contributed by Sir Llewellyn Woodward and Sir Robert Ensor to the Oxford History of England , and of the works by Norman Gash and E. J. Feuchtwanger for the later series published by Edward Arnold. Even today, in light of the recently observed bicentennial of the Battle of Waterloo, and of the hundredth anniversary of the Battle of the Somme, the idea that the British nineteenth century was defined by the triumphant conclusion of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (which ushered in the century of Britain's global greatness), and the lesssure-footed beginning of what was originally known as The Great War (after which Britain ceased, according to Sellar and Yeatman in 1066 and All That , to be 'top nation'), has much to recommend it. In between these two massive continental conflicts, so this argument runs, the United Kingdom largely (but not entirely) avoided European military entanglements, and as a result enjoyed a remarkable period of peaceand prosperity at home, and of engagement and hegemony elsewhere in the world. Hence the establishment of the so‑called 'Pax Britannica', the widespread contemporary belief that God conversed in English, and the undeniable reality that more people were speaking that Victorious Century language, and doing so in more parts of the world, than had ever been true before. But the very fact that so many distinguished historians have already opted for these beginning and end dates is itself one very good reason for trying to define and delineate the British nineteenth century differently. Other scholars have begun their histories in 1783, with the rise ofthe Younger Pitt to power, or continued on until 1918, with the close ofthe First World War, and these more spread-outdates certainly allow for a fuller treatment of Britain's 'long' nineteenth century. But in addition, and as Jürgen Osterhammel has recently pointed out, there aremany other ways of dating and defining that period, depending on the topics selected, the themes chosen, the subjects to be treated, and the part of the world to be concentrated on, while the deeper processes of change defy and deny any such precise temporal pinpoints. This bookseeks to break new ground, and to offer new perspectives, by beginning the British nineteenth century with the passing of the Act of Union in 1800, which brought into being the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and by ending it with the general election of 1906, which witnessed a landslide Liberal victory that was the last great triumph of nineteenth-century progressive politics, but also brought to power the first great reforming government of the twentieth century. In 1800, and again in 1906, some contemporaries hoped, and others feared, they were living through revolutionary days and witnessing revolutionary events. But they might all have agreed that those two dates and thosetwo events had been and were of the first importance. Yet so far as I know, no one has attempted a history of nineteenth-century Britain bracketed and bounded in this way, which is as good a reason as anyfor trying to do so. Whether this enterprise has been worthwhile, 'these pages must show' (as Dickens wrote at the opening of David Copperfield ), or hope to show. These two dates also serve to remind us of the extraordinary dominance and unique continuity of parliament in the political culture and public life of the United Kingdom and the British Empire. Across those years, the Westminster legislature was, with all its faults, drawbacks and limitations, to which reformers and radicals often drew attention, auniquely enduring institution of political authority, government legitimacy, popular sovereignty and national identity - in ways unmatched in Spain or France (where there were absolute monarchs, revolutions and republics), the United States (its democracy ruptured by civil war and the attempted Southern secession), Austria-Hungary (both nations' parliamentsonly established in 1868), Italy or Germany (neither countrycompletely unified until 1871), Japan (without a constitution before 1889), Russia (without a Duma until 1905) and China (without a constitution before 1913). Small wonder, then, that both the permanence andthe adaptability of the British constitution and the British parliament were acclaimed and envied by many commentators from overseas. They were also lauded and celebrated in Britain itself, as the franchise was peacefully and progressively extended in 1832, 1867 and 1884-85, thereby successfully fending off any potential revolutionary threat. The constitution of the United Kingdom may have been unwritten, but as Edmund Burke had earlier appreciated, that had turned out to be a huge advantage: for it could be constantly adapted and adjusted, to take account of the extraordinary and transformative changes of the nineteenth century, whereas nations with rigid and inflexible written constitutions all too often had to embrace revolution, tearing everything up and starting again, while nations with no constitution at all also had to resort to similar violent means and desperate measures to obtain one. In terms of its institutions of government and authority, then, nineteenth-century Britain was uniquely stable among the nations ofthe world. To be sure, there was nothing preordained or inevitableabout that stability, and fears of revolution would not be confined tothe years 1800 and 1906. But the undeniable continuity of its governingstructures is a very good reason for approaching the history of theUnited Kingdom via its parliament and its politics, which became the embodiment and expression of that stability, and for beginning andending that history with events that were, appropriately, both parliamentary and political. Moreover, the United Kingdom was not only remarkably stable in terms of its unwritten constitution and its institutions of government, but also in geographical terms, avoiding armed invasion, enemy occupation and the forced loss of lands, which were often the fates of continental countries. In 1906 Great Britain and Ireland encompassed precisely the same political boundaries and national borders that had been established in 1800. This was not true of Germany or Italy (which were nineteenth-century creations), Austria-Hungary (which had forfeited its Italian provinces), France (which had ceded Alsace-Lorraineto Germany), or Russia (which gave up Port Arthur to Victorious Century Japan), or of the United States (which was not so much losing territoryas spreading across an entire continent). To be sure, there were 'invasion scares' in the United Kingdom in the 1790s and 1800s, at mid-century, and again during the 1900s; but uniquely among the great nations of the world, its boundaries remained unchanged and unchanging throughout the nineteenth century. This combination of continued and unchallenged parliamentary supremacy, and successfully preserved territorial integrity, was remarkable and important, and lent some credence to the contemporary view that Britain was unique, exceptional and providentially blessed. Yet for all its constitutional continuity and geographical cohesiveness, the nation over which parliament and the politicians, rather than the monarch, exercised sovereign power (though George III, George IV, William IV and Queen Victoria and Prince Albert would all have contested this assertion) was a complex, contested and composite place. England and Wales had been unified since Tudor times; England and Wales, together with Scotland, had been united as crowns in 1603, and as legislatures in 1707; and the union between Great Britain and Ireland followed just short of a century later, which meant, incidentally, that in its final and fullest form, the United Kingdom was a more recently created nation than the United States of America. When the mid-Victorians described their legislature as the 'imperial parliament', they meant that it passed laws for all the four kingdoms, whichwere appropriately represented in the central lobby of the recently constructed Palace of Westminster, where mosaics depicted their respective patron saints: St George, St David, St Andrew and St Patrick. Moreover, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland would turn outto be in many ways an unsatisfactory and unstable creation, as England was overwhelmingly dominant in terms of population, wealth and resources, and as the three nations of what was disparagingly regarded as 'the Celtic fringe' came on occasions to resent or repudiate such an unequal and asymmetrical Union. This was especially so in the case of Ireland, which was not only the last to be assimilated but also the least successfully, and (with the exception of the six Ulster counties) for the shortest span of time. This, in turn, had major implications for the politics of the nineteenth century, as the Tories and Conservativeswould use their customary electoral dominance in England to try to impose their will on the rest of the Union, whereas the Whigs and Liberals would need the votes of Ireland, Scotland and Wales to enable them to dominate England. Excerpted from Victorious Century: The United Kingdom, 1800-1906 by David Cannadine All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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