English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit, 1850–1980

by Martin J. Wiener

• ISBN13: 9780521843768
• ISBN10: 0521843766
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-09-27
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

England was the world’s first great industrial nation. Yet the English have never been comfortable with industrialism. Drawing upon a wide array of sources, Martin Wiener explores the English ambivalence to modern industrial society. His work reveals a pervasive middle- and upper-class frame of mind hostile to industrialism and economic growth. From the middle of the nineteenth century to the present, this frame of mind shaped a broad spectrum of cultural expression, including literature, journalism, and architecture, as well as social, historical, and economic thought. Now in a new edition, Wiener reflects on the original debate surrounding the work and examines the historiography of the last twenty years. Written in a graceful and accessible style, with reference to a broad range of people and ideas, this book will be of interest to all readers who wish to understand the development - and predicament - of modern England.

Table of Contents

Preface to the first edition	ix
Introduction to the new edition	xiii
Part I: The setting
1 The Janus face of modern English culture	3	(8)
Cultural values and economic lag	3	(2)
Progress and its discontents	5	(2)
The revolution that never was	7	(4)
2 Victorian society: accommodation and absorption	11	(16)
A re-formed elite	12	(4)
The shaping of a gentleman	16	(11)
Part II: A world view
3 A counterrevolution of values	27	(14)
The high-water mark of industrial values	27	(3)
Middle-class intellectuals and gentry values	30	(11)
4 The "English way of life"?	41	(40)
North and South	41	(1)
"It's an old country"	42	(4)
"Our England is a garden"	46	(5)
In country sleep	51	(13)
Architecture: the myth made tangible	64	(8)
The staying power of the Southern Metaphor	72	(9)
5 The wrong path?	81	(15)
Industrialization reappraised	81	(7)
The American specter	88	(2)
The snares of economic growth	90	(6)
Part III: Toward behavior
Introduction	96	(2)
6 Images and politics	98	(29)
Conservatives: Toryism versus industrial capitalism	98	(13)
Churchmen: economic growth versus a moral society	111	(7)
Labour: the vision of "Merrie England"	118	(9)
7 The gentrification of the industrialist	127	(30)
Finance versus industry	128	(1)
"Industry is a leper"	129	(3)
Education and the image of industry	132	(5)
Industrialists as aspiring gentry	137	(8)
A gentlemanly economy	145	(12)
Part IV. Industrialism and English values
8 An overview and an assessment	157	(10)
The cultural domestication of the industrial revolution	157	(2)
Postindustrialism or de-industrialism?	159	(3)
"Modernization": un-English?	162	(5)
Appendix: British retardation - the limits of economic explanation	167	(4)
Notes	171	(40)
Index	211