Since the work of Butterfield and Namier in the 1930s, it has commonly been said that eighteenth-century England appears atomised, left with no overall interpretation. Subsequent work on religious differences and on party strife served to reinforce the image of a divided society, and in the last ten years historians of the poor and unprivileged have suggested that beneath the surface lurked substantial popular discontent. Professor Cannon uses his 1982 Wiles Lecture to offer a different interpretation - that the widespread acceptance of aristocratic values and aristocratic leadership gave a remarkable intellectual, political and social coherence to the century. He traces the recovery made by the aristocracy from its decade in 1649 when the House of Lords was abolished as useless and dangerous. After the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the peerage re-established its hold on government and society. Professor Cannon is forced to challenge some of the most cherished beliefs of English historiography - that Hanoverian society, at its top level, was an open elite, continually replenished by vigorous recruits from other groups and classes. He suggests that, on the contrary, in some respects the English peerage was more exclusive than many of its continental counterparts and that the openness was a myth which itself served a potent political purpose. Of the prospering burgeoisie, he argues that the remarkable thing was not their assertiveness but their long acquiescence in patrician rule, and he poses the paradox of a country increasingly dominated by a landed aristocracy giving birth to the first industrial revolution. His final chapter discusses the ideological under-pinning which made aristocratic supremacy acceptable for so long, and the emergence of those forces and ideals which were ultimately to replace it.

This was the first paperback edition of a classic work of recent English historiography, first published in 1981. In analysing the population of a country over several centuries, the authors qualify, confirm or overturn traditional assumptions and marshal a mass of statistical material into a series of clear, lucid arguments about past patterns of demographic behaviour and their relationship to economic trends. The Population History of England presents basic demographic statistics - monthly totals of births, deaths and marriages - and uses them in conjunction with new methods of analysis to determine population size, gross production rates, expectation of life at birth, age structure and net migration totals. The results make it possible to construct a new model of the interplay of economic and demographic variables in England before and during the industrial picture of English population trends between 1541 and 1871 is a remarkable achievement and in a short preface, the authors consider the debate engendered by the book, the impact of which has been felt far beyond the traditional disciplinary confines of historical demography.

This concise volume for students reviews the literature on the population history of Britain and Ireland.

Who own's England? Behind this simple question lies this country's oldest and darkest secret. This is the history of how England's elite came to own our land - from aristocrats and the church to businessmen and corporations - and an inspiring manifesto for how we can take control back.

Containing over 25,000 entries, this unique volume will be absolutely indispensable for all those with an interest in Britain in the twentieth century. Accessibly arranged by theme, with helpful introductions to each chapter, a huge range of topics is covered. There is a comprehensiveindex.

This book investigates demographic behaviour and population trends in Italy during the emergence of the Roman Empire. It unites literary and epigraphic sources with demographic theory, archaeological surveys, climatic and skeletal evidence, models and comparative data. Also featured is a chapter on climate change in Roman times.