This guide to work in the social and cultural history of insanity, provides a comprehensive summary of the debates on the growth of institutional care during the 19th and 20th centuries. Looking at the English model in terms of the significance of ethnicity, race and gender as well as political and cultural factors, the book also features studies in Wales, Scotland, Ireland, India and South Africa, and analyses the history of colonial medicine more generally.

The discovery and treatment of insanity remains one of the most debated and discussed issues in social history.

Focusing on the second half of the nineteenth century, The Politics of Madness provides a new perspective on this important topic, based on research drawn from both local and national material. Within a social and cultural history of the English political and class order, it presents a fresh appraisal of the significance of the asylum in the decades following the creation of a national asylum system in 1845.

Arguing that the new asylums provided a meeting...

The discovery and treatment of insanity remains one of the most debated and discussed issues in social history. Focusing on the second half of the nineteenth century, The Politics of Madness provides a new perspective on this important topic, based on research drawn from both local and national material. Within a social and cultural history of the English political and class order, it presents a fresh appraisal of the significance of the asylum in the decades following the creation of a national asylum system in 1845. Arguing that the new asylums provided a meeting place for different social...