The New Oxford History of England: 1689 - 1918

The New Oxford History of England: 1689 - 1918

The Glorious Revolution to the Great War: 1689 to 1918

Enjoy this comprehensive, chronological account of one of the most important periods in England’s long, eventful history. This superb chronicle is designed as much for the general reader as the keen student of history. From the court of George III to life in the furthest reaches of the Empire, from respectable Victorian domesticity to 18th–century gin alleys, the drama and vibrancy of England’s past comes alive in every page. These five volumes together create an invaluable source of information as well as a compelling historical review to read in depth or dip into again and again.

A Land of Liberty?

In 1689, an invading Dutch army removed James II, England’s last Catholic monarch, from the throne and installed his daughter and son–in–law as joint rulers. The wider consequences of this act could not have been foreseen at the time: conflict in Ireland, union with Scotland and two European wars. At the same time, England’s horizons were expanding across the Atlantic, while closer to home, increased anxieties over social ills brought new restrictions upon the poor and those deemed ‘disorderly’.

A Polite and Commercial People

Here was a period of startling change. As religious zealots competed for attention, the Age of Enlightenment arrived in England. The opulence of successful merchants was in stark contrast to the widespread poverty of the masses. Leading political figures such as Pitt, Fox and Walpole rubbed shoulders with great poets, writers and thinkers – among them Dr Johnson, Fielding and Pope – in a riotous world of bawdy behaviour and Hogarthian vulgarity that also came to define the England of the mid–18th century.

A Mad, Bad and Dangerous People?

In 1783, following the catastrophic loss of most of the American colonies, English prosperity and self–confidence were at a low ebb. Yet only 60 years later, Britain was once more a great imperial nation and the world’s most dominant economy, emerging victorious from war with Napoleonic France. Victory, however, had come against a background of social unrest: a toxic combination of circumstances that gave rise to the prevailing image abroad of the English as a mad, bad and dangerous people.

The Mid–Victorian Generation

By the middle of the 19th century, the balance of employment had shifted irrevocably from the land to towns and cities and there was a growing acceptance that manufacturing and factory life were here to stay. With this came an increasingly prosperous middle class at home, and an empire of unprecedented strength abroad. Against a background of changing political fortunes, from the repeal of the Corn Laws to the failure of Gladstone’s first Home Rule Bill, England was at the height of her power.

A New England?

In the years that followed Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1886, the world was irrevocably changed. The prosperity and supreme self–confidence that defined the twilight years of Victoria’s reign were soon replaced by the carnage and horrors of war. The nightmare of the trenches and the misguided disasters of Passchendaele and the Somme ensured that the old social certainties would soon be swept away – with the English people suddenly coming face to face with the modern world.