The modern professions have a long history that predates the development of formal institutions and examinations in the nineteenth century. Long before the Victorian era the emergent professions wielded power through their specialist knowledge and set up informal mechanisms of control and self-regulation.
Penelope Corfield devotes a chapter each to lawyers, clerics and doctors and makes reference to many other professionals - teachers, apothecaries, governesses, army officers and others. She shows how as the professions gained in power and influence, so they were challenged...

This text identifies the growth of the professions as a key element in Britain's modernization from 1700 to 1850. Professional power depended ultimately upon public trust in specialist knowledge, but the professions were subjected to a torrent of ridicule and satire. This analysis of the rise of the professions during this period centres on a discussion of the philosophical questions arising from the complex relationship between power and knowledge.

This book is an investigation of how societies have understood and described themselves. It is concerned both with the history of language and the language of history. The chapters include studies of societies in Germany, China, USA and India, pre-revolutionary France and 19th-century Britain and America.