Britain 1780-1945: Society under Pressure

Britain 1780-1945: Society under Pressure develops the ideas and chronological scope that I put forward in my earlier studies of Britain’s social and economic development during the late-eighteenth, nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. The result is a new two volume history of British society between 1780 and 1945 of which this is the first volume. I have taken the opportunity of extending the chronological limits of the book from 1914 to 1945 and have radically restructured my earlier work rewriting each chapter to take account of recent thinking in an attempt to make it less Anglo-centred, white and male in character. The result is an examination of issues ignored in my earlier work, for instance, the racial tensions in the years before and after the First World War and questions of same-sex relationships. The volume considers the critical developments in Britain’s industrialisation, its economy, the revolution in how people and things were moved around the country, demographic developments between 1780 and 1945, its social structures and finally its systems of belief.