Miles Taylor

"In its heyday, the British Empire started and ended with the port of Southampton, yet the history of this most imperial of cities has been curiously neglected. In this authoritative account, Miles Taylor looks at the modern history of the city and port of Southampton through the lens of empire. He examines some of the major international celebrities associated with the region such as David Livingstone, Lord Carnarvon and General Gordon, as well as the city itself during the conflicts, from the Napoleonic to the world wars, that defined Britain's imperial period. "Southampton: Gateway to the British Empire" looks at the popular culture of imperialism in the port and the city, the experience of migrants and the artistic community and the thwarted attempt to bring civil aviation to the area. It will be essential reading for anyone with an interest in Southampton and its maritime past or who enjoys urban history and wants to know more about the connections between Britain's global dominion and its domestic history."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

This wide-ranging book - one of the first major studies of British radicalism in the years between the collapse of Chartism in 1848 and the advent of Gladstonian liberalism in the 1860sexplains how and why radicalism lost its hold over British politics. The book begins by re-examining the rise of radicalism in the 1830s and 1840s, arguing that it was the 1832 Reform Act which invigorated radicalism, by enlarging the powers of parliament and increasing the need for independent MPs. As independents, between the mid-1830s and the mid-1850s, radicals, alongside other liberals and reformers, were invested with unprecedented influence in parliament, in the constituencies, and in the media. During the 1850s, events at home and in Europe undermined the radical ascendancy, and paved the way for the moderate liberalism of the Gladstone years. This is an original and comprehensive revision of mid-nineteenth-century radicalism and its influence on the origins of Gladstonian liberalism, which fills an important gap in our knowledge of Victorian political history.

This collection of essays by a group of young political historians presents a fresh approach to the study of electoral behaviour and political parties in nineteenth and twentieth-century Britain. The volume challenges the common view that political parties have been the passive beneficiaries of social and constitutional change and examines the contested ways in which parties and voters have interacted since 1820. Each chapter is an important contribution in its own right, but taken together they offer an original survey of the workings of the electorate and the party system in Britain since the 1820s. This book will be of interest to undergraduates and specialists, historians and political scientists alike.