This ambitious and provocative study provides a unique narrative of nineteenth-century English political history. Based on extensive research the book draws on critical theory to read and interpret a vast range of oral, visual and printed sources, in an attempt to expand our conception of the politics of the period. Read in the context of such sources, nineteenth-century English politics becomes resolved into a story about the struggle to define the nation's constitution, past, present and future. It suggests the existence of a popular strain of English libertarian politics, albeit one whose radical and democratic potential was gradually closed down. In short, despite the invention of a liberal constitution in this period, politics became less (not more) democratic, a lesson which the author sees as pertinent for many struggling to live in, or establish, liberal democratic constitutions in our own times.
- ISBN13 9780521115087
- Publish Date 25 June 2009 (first published 2 September 1993)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Cambridge University Press
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 448
- Language English