Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-21T22:38:55.635Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Civil society and the nature of urbanism: Britain, 1750–1850

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2009

R.J. Morris
R.J. Morris
Affiliation:
Dept of Economic and Social History, Edinburgh University, Edinburgh, EH8 9JY
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The concept of civil society provides a useful means of evaluating the social and political relationships of British towns. Civil society refers to the non-prescriptive relationships that lie between the state and kin. Such relationships are associated with the existence of the free market, the rule of law and a strong voluntary associational culture. Both theoretical analysis and historical evidence link civil society with the nature of urban places, their complexity, their function as a central place and their operation as a focus for flows of information. Between 1780 and 1820 the agencies of civil society in Britain provided an arena for making choices, for reasoned informed debate and for the collective provision and consumption of services in an open and pluralist manner.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 25 , Issue 3: Special Issue: Civil Society in Britain , December 1998 , pp. 289 - 301
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Knight, B. and Stokes, P., The Deficit in Civil Society in the United Kingdom, Foundation for Civil Society Working Paper, no. 1 (Birmingham, 1996).Google Scholar

2 Knight, B. and Stokes, P., Organising a Civil Society, Foundation for Civil Society Working Paper, no. 2 (Birmingham, 1997).Google Scholar

3 Ethnic Studies Network Bulletin, 10 02 1996.Google Scholar

4 Meller, H., ‘Urban renewal and citizenship: the quality of life in British cities, 1890–1990’, Urban History, 22 (1995), 63–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Gellner, E., Conditions of Liberty. Civil Society and its Rivals (London, 1994), 7.Google Scholar

6 Davidoff, L. and Hall, C., Family Fortunes (London, 1987);Google ScholarRoniger, L. and Günes-Ayta, A. (eds), Democracy, Clientelism and Civil Society (London, 1994).Google Scholar

7 Hall, J. (ed.), Civil Society. Theory, History, Comparison (Cambridge, 1995).Google Scholar

8 The edition used here is Ferguson, A., An Essay on the History of Civil Society, ed. Oz-Salzberger, F. (Cambridge, 1995).Google Scholar

9 Ibid., 182.

10 Ibid., 125.

11 de Tocqueville, A., Democracy in America, ed. Mayer, J.P. (London, 1994 edn).Google Scholar

12 Ibid., 189.

13 Ibid., 513.

14 Ibid., 522.

15 Putnam, R.D., Making Democracy Work. Civic Traditions in Modem Italy (Princeton, 1993).Google Scholar

16 Wirth, L., ‘Urbanism as a way of life’, in L. Wirth, On Cities and Social Life, ed. Reiss, A.J. (Chicago, 1964), 71 and 82. The essay itself was first published in 1938.Google Scholar

17 Gans, H.J., The Urban Villagers. Group and Class in the Life of Italian Americans (New York, 1962);Google ScholarYoung, M. and Wilmott, P., Family and Kinship in East London (London, 1957).Google Scholar

18 Jones, G. Stedman, Languages of Class. Studies in English Working Class History, 1832–1982 (Cambridge, 1983), 179–238;Google ScholarRoss, E., ‘Survival networks: women's neighbourhood sharing in London before World War One’, History Workshop, 15 (1983), 4–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Stacey, M., Tradition and Change. A Study of Banbury (Oxford, 1960).Google Scholar

20 Purvis, M., ‘Popular institutions’, in Langton, J. and Morris, R.J. (eds), Atlas of Industria lizing Britain, 1780–1914 (London, 1986), 194–7.Google Scholar

21 ‘Income of scientific and literary societies in England’, Journal of the Statistical Society of London, 4(1841), 255.Google Scholar

22 Pred, A., Urban Growth and the Circulation of Information in the United States System of Cities, 1790–1840 (Cambridge, Mass., 1973).Google Scholar

23 Leeds Mercury, 22 08 1840.Google Scholar

24 Ibid., 19 Sep. 1840.

25 General Minute Book of the Transactions of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, 19 05 1826Google Scholar (Archives Department, Leeds University Library); Wilderspin, S., On the Importance of Educating the Infant Poor… (London, 1924).Google Scholar

26 Leeds Soke Rate, DB 234, Leeds Division of West Yorkshire Archive Service.

27 Robertson, D. and Wood, M., Castle and Town. Chapters in the History of the Royal Burgh of Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 1928), 73.Google Scholar

28 Egan, P., Tom and Jerry. Life in London (London, 1869; 1st pub. London, 1821), 48.Google Scholar

29 Ibid., 51.

30 First Report of the Factory Commissioners, British Parliamentary Papers, 1833, vol. 20, C1, 65.Google Scholar

31 Chadwick, E., The Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain, ed. Flinn, M.W. (Edinburgh, 1965);Google ScholarCullen, M.J., The Statistical Movement in Early Victorian Britain (Brighton, 1975).Google Scholar

32 Fraser, D., ‘The Leeds churchwardens, 1828–1850’, Publications of the Thoresby Society, 53 (1970), 1–22.Google Scholar

33 Hollis, P., Ladies Elect: Women in English Local Government, 1865–1914 (Oxford, 1987).Google Scholar

34 Money, J., Experience and Identity. Birmingham and the West Midlands, 1760–1800 (Manchester, 1977);CrossRefGoogle ScholarWilliams, G.A., The Merthyr Rising (London, 1978).Google Scholar

35 Lees, L.H., ‘The study of social conflict in English industrial towns’, Urban History Yearbook (1980), 34–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36 Report of the Committee appointed by the Commissioners of Police to Inquire into the practicality of Suppressing the Practice of Common Begging (Edinburgh, 1812).Google Scholar

37 The First Report of the Society for the Suppression of Beggars (Edinburgh, 1813).Google Scholar

38 Report of the Society for the Relief of the Destitute Sick (Edinburgh, 1817).Google Scholar

39 Report of the Association for the Relief of Industrious Labourers and Mechanics out of Employment (Edinburgh, 1816).Google Scholar

40 Morris, R.J., ‘Voluntary societies and British urban elites, 1780–1850’, Historical Journal, 26 (1983), 95–118;CrossRefGoogle Scholaridem, ‘Clubs, societies and associations’, in Thompson, F.M.L. (ed.), The Cambridge Social History of Britain, 1750–1950, vol. 3 (Cambridge, 1990), 395–443;Google ScholarBarry, J., ‘Bourgeois collectivism? Urban association and the middling sort’Google Scholar, in idem and Brooks, C. (eds). The Middling Sort of People. Culture, Society and Politics in England, 1550–1800 (London, 1994), 84–112.Google Scholar Work by Peter Clark, Leicester University, was presented at the Urban History Group Meeting at Sussex University in 1997 and will greatly increase our depth of knowledge of associational culture in the earlier period.

41 The term ‘transparency’ is taken from an account of civil society in Poland between 1945 and 1990 by Jan Kubik, Rutgers University. His paper ‘Between the state and the networks of “cousins”. The role of civil society and non civic associations in the democratization of Poland, 1945–1990’ was presented to the conference ‘Civil Society before Democracy’, Princeton University, October 1996.

42 Giddens, A., The Consequences of Modernity (Cambridge, 1990).Google Scholar

43 Annual Report of Leeds General Infirmary, 1848–1849 (Leeds, 1849).Google Scholar

44 Second Annual Report of the Second Leeds Permanent Building Society (Leeds, 1851).Google Scholar

45 First Report of the Factory Commissioners, Parliamentary Papers, 1833, vol. 20, C 1, 103.

46 Gosden, P.H.J.H., Self-Help. Voluntary Associations in Nineteenth Century Britain (London, 1973).Google Scholar

47 Western, J.R., ‘The volunteer movement as an anti revolutionary force, 1793–1801’, English Historical Review, 71 (1956), 603–14;CrossRefGoogle ScholarMitchell, A., ‘The Association Movement of 1792–1793’, Historical Journal, 4 (1961), 56–77;CrossRefGoogle ScholarRoberts, M.J.D., ‘The Society for the Suppression of Vice and its early critics, 1802–1812’, Historical Journal, 26 (1983), 159–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48 Mackenzie, E., A Descriptive and Historical Account of the Town and County of Newcastle upon Tyne (Newcastle, 1827), 598.Google Scholar

49 Mackenzie, , A Descriptive and Historical Account, 603–713Google Scholar; Municipal Corporations in England and Wales, Parliamentary Papers, 1835, vol. 35, 1634–70.Google Scholar