His 3110, Spring 2010, Newton Key
TR 12:30–1:45 pm, EIU, Coleman 2761
Syllabus as pdf ( brief version)
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History of Britain and the British Empire, 1688-Present (enhanced syllabus)
18th-century Britain
from J. Black, An Illustrated History of Eighteenth-Century Britain, 1688-1793 (1996)

week 1. Restoration Settlements, 1660-1689

  • Jan. 12. Introduction: England, Britain, United Kingdom?
  • Jan. 14. Paul Kléber Monod, “The Culture of Politics," Imperial island: a history of Britain and its empire, 1660-1837 (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 51-60 (handout)
William enters London, 1690, Dutchfrom W.A. Maguire, ed., Kings in Conflict (Belfast, 1990).
week 2. Revolution Settlement, 1688-1715
  • Jan. 19. Monod, “Preserving the Constitution,” Imperial island, 61-77 (Online Reserve, OR)
  • Jan. 21. Monod, “The Fortunes of War, 1689-1710," Imperial island, 99-116 (OR)
Sacheverell Riots, 1710 from Black, An Illustrated History of Eighteenth-Century Britain, 120 (© British Museum, Daniel Burgess's Presbyterian meeting-house in Carey Street, London, is wrecked by the mob.)
week 3. Making of the English Ruling Class, 1714-1760 Hogarth, Cutler's Feast

week 4. Britain, America, and Europe in the Revolutionary Age, 1714-1815
from Black, An Illustrated History of Eighteenth-Century Britain, 196 (© the National Trust Photographic Library. Robert Clive returned from India with fame and fortune as the victor of Plessey, 1757, and bought an estate in Shropshire. Sat as MP for Shrewsbury. Election jugs were part of the process of "treating" the constituents.)

week 5. Britain circa 1815

  • Feb. 9. Ellis Wasson, “War and Revolution, 1763-1814," A History of Modern Britain: 1714 to the Present (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 65-90 (OR)
  • Feb. 11. Wasson, “A United Kingdom, 1815," A History of Modern Britain, 94-122 (OR)
"The Fellow Prentices at their Looms" by William Hogarth, 1747from Black, An Illustrated History of Eighteenth-Century Britain, 35 (Mid-18th century machines were still dependent on human energy. Note the broadside song or poem of D. Defoe's Moll Flanders hung upon the idle apprentice's loom.)

week 6.  Industrial Britain: The First Modern Society

 
James Gillray, "Fashion before Ease" (2 Jan. 1793)from W. Glyn and J. Ramsden, Ruling Britainnia: A Political History of Britain, 1688-1988 (1990).

week 7. Parliamentary Reform and Reformers, 1815-1840s

Spinning Demonstration in Crystal Palace, 1851(Illustrated London News)from Roberts, A History of England, 2:463 (Spinning Demonstration in Crystal Palace, 1851)
week 8. Victorian Social Consensus (and the Irish Question)
"Work," Ford Madox Brown, c. 1863
week 9.  Victorian Empire
British Empire, 1927

week 10. Liberalism versus Socialism, 1890s-1914

  • March 23. Arnstein, chs. 11 (pp. 199-209 only) & 12 (esp. pp. 222-243)
  • March 25. MID-TERM EXAM II
Cat and Mouse Act, 1913
week 11. The Killing Front, 1914-1918
Trench warfare, WWIfrom Roberts, A History of England,2:703 (from Imperial War Museum)
week 12. The Long-Weekend and the Slump, 1919-1935
 

week 13. Britain's War, 1935-1945

Evacuation of Dunkirk, June 1940Dunkirk

week 14. The People's Peace and I'm all Right Jack, 1945-1960s
National Health Service (NHS) Hospitalfrom Roberts, A History of England, 2:788

week 15. Northern Ireland and Devolution
"Blair goes on the road past Wigan Pier to see how the other half live" (The Independent, December 7, 1999) "TONY BLAIR insisted yesterday that he led a 'One Nation' government and declared that the most important divide in the country was between the rich and the poor rather than the North and the South....  Mr Blair, launching a Government report into regional inequalities, said recent speculation about the extent of the North-South divide was an 'over-simplification'."

Issued by Textbook Rental:

  • Walter L. Arnstein, Britain Yesterday and Today: 1830 to the Present, 8th ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001) [TRS 12.431]
  • Charles Dickens, Hard Times (Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 1854, 1996) [24.772]
  • George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1937, 1958) [13.315]
  • Sandra Koa Wing, Our Longest Days: a People's History of the 2nd World War (London: Profile Books, 2009) [11.145]
His 3110 provides a narrative of British history from the Revolution of William and Mary through the upheavals of the late 20th century. It stresses the social, economic, and even religious bases of struggles about parliamentary democracy and imperial domination. It also provides a chance to understand the contemporary issues in Britain from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries by using primary documents.  
Goals:
  1. Develop an understanding of the basic narrative of modern British history (1660-2000)
  2. Compare/contrast the British basic narrative to periods and concepts of modern European/World history: industrial revolution, political revolution and stability, partisanship and parliamentary democracy, urbanization, social class, war, decolonialism
  3. Discuss and write about the relation between ideas and action, between the intellectual elite and socio-economic realities
  4. Understand and use some interesting primary sources and secondary works on modern British history
  5. Three themes:
    a. Industrious Britain and Social Class
    b. The Rise and Fall of Imperial Britain
    c. The Experience of War (the relation between the home front and the trenches)
  

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last updated on February 9, 2010