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The later nineteenth century was a time of regulation and codification, which was part of the Victorian search for reliability and respectability. This book examines the intersection between empire, navy, and manhood in British society from 1870 to 1918. It sheds light upon social and cultural constructions of working-class rather than elite masculinities by focusing on portrayals of non-commissioned naval men, the 'lower deck', rather than naval officers. Through an analysis of sources that include courts-martial cases, sailors' own writings, and the HMS Pinafore, the book charts new depictions of naval manhood during the Age of Empire. It was a period of radical transformation of the navy, intensification of imperial competition, democratisation of British society, and advent of mass culture. The book argues that popular representations of naval men increasingly reflected and informed imperial masculine ideals in Victorian and Edwardian Britain. It explains how imperial challenges, technological changes and domestic pressures transformed the navy and naval service from the wake of the Crimean War to the First World War. How female-run naval philanthropic organisations domesticated the reputation of naval men by refashioning the imagery of the drunken debauched sailor through temperance and evangelical campaigns is explained. The naval temperance movement was not singular in revealing the clear class dimensions in the portrayal of naval manhood. The book unveils how the British Bluejacket as both patriotic defender and dutiful husband and father stood in sharp contrast to the stereotypic image of the brave but bawdy tar of the Georgian navy.
Historians and political scientists have deemed the twentieth century 'the Conservative Century', owing to the electoral and cultural dominance of the Conservative Party in Britain. This book traces the relationship among women, gender and the Conservative Party from the 1880s to the present, and thereby seeks to fill that gap. A gender inclusive approach allows for a more nuanced understanding of political machinations, power and the unprecedented popularity of both conservatism and unionism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The suffragette Christabel Pankhurst, was regarded as a charismatic, radical figure, who was the co-leader of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), a notorious suffrage organization campaigning for the parliamentary vote for women in Edwardian Britain. In 1928 Lady Iveagh, Vice-Chairman of the National Union of Conservative Associations (NUCA), claimed that one million women were members of the Conservative Party. The book focuses on how the Primrose League re-made itself for its female members between 1914 and 1932. It shows that the Conservative Party leadership and male candidates were keen to present themselves as the champions of home interests, playing up their family-man credentials against their rowdy electoral culture of Labour. The book also examines inquires how the deliberate choice of middlebrow rhetoric as well as the language of citizenship enabled Conservative women to construct a cross-class language of democracy. It explores British conservatism, highlighting the history of the Tory Party as part of the study of women and their sectional interest in 'the politics of gender'.
-election, February 1908 Thackeray.indd 36 1/10/2013 10:11:11 AM The working man’s pint and the housewife’s budget 37 petition proved unpopular as the expenses led to a rise in the local rates and was seen as a slur against Worcester’s civic pride.2 Historians have paid little attention to how Unionists sought to develop appeals to gendered identities on the ground in Edwardian Britain. In a 1993 article Jon Lawrence argued that the Conservative Party encouraged a more domesticated social culture in response to the rising influence of women in political activism, shedding
across Edwardian Britain.7 While anti-socialist appeals to suburbia may have had a limited purchase, Edwardian Unionists also appear to have struggled to develop effective links to working-class interests. David Jarvis claims that whilst Unionists achieved significant success in municipal elections as a result of their ability to mobilise ratepayers, they struggled to repeat such success in parliamentary contests, in part as a result of their deterministic reading of class.8 According to Jarvis, the politics of tariff reform was ‘couched in an intellectual framework
, peaceable politics. Grassroots Unionism had flourished in Edwardian Britain, attracting a wide range of activists of both sexes. And yet, the hyper-masculine culture of the wartime radical right threatened to set back Unionist efforts to widen the appeal of their politics. Such concerns were made all the more important as the female activist became increasingly important to grassroots politics during the war. Male-led Unionist organisations lost many of their members to the armed forces. In particular, the Junior Imperial League was devastated, with six-tenths of members
As anxieties about the possibility of an invasion circulated in Edwardian Britain, ex-cavalry Sergeant-Major Edward Baker established an independent female unit of mounted first aiders trained to undertake ambulance work behind the front line. He had first conceived the notion of his Corps, which took the name First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, or FANY, after being wounded in the shin in a cavalry charge against the Mahdists in 1898 at the Battle of Omdurman in the Sudan. The inhospitable landscape proved taxing to the horse-drawn field-ambulance wagons that slowly
This chapter examines the ways that the British Admiralty treated both acts and allegations of indecency during the early twentieth century. Despite the trope of the gay sailor, remarkably little attention has been devoted to the history of homosexuality in the Victorian and Edwardian British Navy. The chapter historicises the role that the state has played in disciplining sexuality and the potential effect that such efforts had upon the maintenance of discipline and efficiency of the fleet. While few personal accounts have been left, court martial cases offer a lens through which we might understand how sex was expressed afloat. The source base for this chapter includes select courts-martial cases of indecency that are contextualised with a broader statistical survey of Admiralty disciplinary records pertaining to indecency. Research from these courts-martial records suggests the limited effects of punitive disciplinary reforms in deterring acts of indecency and the difficulties that the Admiralty faced in policing men’s sexual activities aboard ship. In particular the chapter finds that a significant proportion of these cases involved boy ratings as both perpetrators and victims.
A New Naval History brings together the most significant and interdisciplinary approaches to contemporary naval history. The last few decades have witnessed a transformation in how this topic is researched and understood, and this volume captures the state of a field that continues to develop apace. It examines – through the prism of naval affairs – issues of nationhood and imperialism; the legacy of Nelson; the sociocultural realities of life in ships and naval bases; and the processes of commemoration, journalism and stage-managed pageantry that plotted the interrelationship of ship and shore. This bold and original publication will be essential for undergraduate and postgraduate students of naval and maritime history. Beyond that, though, it marks an important intervention into wider historiographies that will be read by scholars from across the spectrum of social history, cultural studies and the analysis of national identity.
conservative associational cultures were not removed by the onset of the tariff reform campaign; rather, the development of the tariff leagues was a response to a growing sense that existing conservative organisations were failing to respond effectively to the advances made by the Liberal Party in the early 1900s. Despite its wide-ranging concerns, tariff reform was clearly no panacea to cure the Unionists’ ills; far from it. The Unionist alliance lost three successive general elections in Edwardian Britain whilst supporting tariff reform. Stanley Baldwin’s ill
and Political Union (WSPU), the most notorious of the many suffrage organisations campaigning for the parliamentary vote for women in Edwardian Britain.1 The WSPU was founded by Emmeline Pankhurst on 10 October 1903 at her home, 62 Nelson Street, Manchester. Christabel was present, as were some local socialist women who were members of the Independent Labour Party (ILP).2 All the Pankhurst family –E mmeline and her three daughters, Christabel, Sylvia and Adela, as well as her son, Harry – were ILP members of the local Manchester Central Branch.3 However