This accessible study investigates the role of banks in financing British industry. Despite the City of London's importance as a financial center, there has been much dispute over the level of support that banks have given to British industry. Michael Collins weighs the conflicting arguments. Is there evidence of failure in the money markets? Has the estrangement of financial and industrial capital hindered Britain's economic development? He places these and other questions in a historical context and provides a survey of recent literature on this contentious subject.

Why did sixty million people leave Europe for overseas destinations between 1815 and 1930? What were the social and economic causes and effects of this mass migration? Why did some people emigrate and not others, and why did so many emigrants return to Europe? This short, comprehensive survey answers these and other questions regarding emigration from different parts of Europe. Written specifically for undergraduate students, it reviews the current literature in several European languages, summarizes both economic and demographic theories, and analyzes the relation between economic change in...

The Poor Law had a profound impact on English society. Designed to reform the poor as much as to relieve poverty, it also shaped institutions of government and determined people's expectations and assumptions about social welfare. The English Poor Law, 1531-1782 provides a concise synthesis of recent scholarly work together with full references, explaining the origins of this unique system of welfare, and showing how it played a central role in English social and political development from the Reformation to the Industrial Revolution.

Why did slums and suburbs develop simultaneously? Were class antagonisms to blame? Why did the Victorians believe there was a housing problem? The history of housing between 1780 and 1914 encapsulates many problems associated with the transition from a largely rural to an overwhelmingly urban nation, whose unprecedented pace imposed immense tensions within society. This book reviews the recent arguments and guides the student of social history to further reading, making it an ideal introduction to a central issue in nineteenth-century history.

The Irish Famine of 1846-50 was one of the great disasters of the nineteenth century. Cormac O Grada's concise survey puts the Famine in the context of the Irish economy, assesses the Famine itself, and discusses its many consequences. Despite a devastating food shortage, the huge death toll of one million was hardly inevitable; a less doctrinaire attitude to famine relief could perhaps have saved many lives. This book provides an up-to-date introduction to an event of major importance in the history of nineteenth-century Ireland and Britain.

The debate over "Britain in decline" still rages in the academic, political and public spheres. In this concise undergraduate book, B.W.E. Alford examines Britain's economic development within a framework of political, social and cultural factors, including topics such as the alleged process of deindustrialization, the role of sterling, labor relations and the impact of government policy. Professor Alford provides a clear and essential introduction to the subject, yet shows how complex and deep-rooted are the causes of the "British Disease."

In his short but authoritative study, Roy Porter assesses the impact of disease on the English before the widespread availability and public provision of medical care, incorporating into the revised edition new perspectives offered by recent research. He examines the medical profession, attitudes to doctors and disease, and the development of state involvement in public health. Drawing together much fragmentary material and providing a detailed bibliography, this book is an important guide to the history of medicine and to English social history.

The rise of Japan from a position of relative international obscurity in the mid-nineteenth century to that of third largest industrial nation in the 1980s has elicited an enormous amount of interest among academics. This short book provides an overview of Japanese economic history between 1868 and 1941. It introduces and surveys the current state of scholarship on Japan, touching upon almost all elements of the Japanese historical experience. A select bibliography (now updated to 1994) is provided to help the reader pursue the subject in more detail.

This book is a short but comprehensive survey of the work on the history of the family in Western Europe and North America, for the period 1500-1914. Updated to include material published between 1980 and 1994, it aims to provide students of family history with a structured and balanced critique of and guide to the huge literature on the subject. Professor Anderson focuses particularly on the strengths and limitations of different approaches that have been adopted in the discipline, and seeks connections among themes, countries and periods.

This book is intended to be a guide to the burgeoning literature on the history of childhood. Harry Hendrick reviews the most important debates and main findings of a number of historians on a range of topics including the changing social constructions of childhood, child-parent relations, social policy, schooling, leisure and the thesis that modern childhood is "disappearing." The intention of this concise study is to provide readers with a reliable account of the evolution of some of the most important developments in adult-child relations during the past one hundred years. The author draws...