Les Hungry Forties

De nos jours, le terme « Hungry forties », a été utilisé assez librement par les historiens pour décrire l’Angleterre des années 1840, indiquant le rôle majeur de la pauvreté, comme le ferment d’émergence d’un radicalisme populaire et de la campagne des libres échangistes contre les Corn laws protectionnistes. Ainsi, la formule a été inventée uniquement au début du XXe siècle alors que la mémoire des années 1840 s’était largement reconstruite comme un élément de la campagne édouardienne contre le retour au protectionnisme menacé par le mouvement de la réforme des tarifs douaniers. L’expression « Hungry Forties’ » est ainsi devenue un instrument efficace pour orchestrer une opposition populaire à la réforme tarifaire, prenant une part significative dans la victoire des Libéraux aux élections de 1906. « Les Hungry Forties » deviennent alors la dernière part d’une mémoire populaire, fréquemment réactualisée dans les années d’Entre-deux-guerres et transmises par l’intermédiaire de supports culturels et éducatifs incluant des livres et les émissions de radio scolaires. Cependant, de plus en plus critiquée depuis les années 1920 par les historiens de l’économie, l’expression été largement abandonnée dans les années 1960 et son usage a, de ce fait, échappé à un examen historique et linguistique minutieux.To the present day the term ‘The Hungry Forties’ has been loosely used by historians to describe England in the 1840s, indicating the supposed prevalence of poverty as the backcloth to the emergence of popular radicalism and the free trade campaign against the protectionist Corn laws. Yet the term was invented only in the early twentieth century when memories of the 1840s were carefully reconstructed as part of the Edwardian campaign against a return to protection threatened by the tariff reform movements. ‘The Hungry Forties’ then became a hugely successful device in orchestrating popular opposition to tariff reform, playing a significant part in the Liberal victory in the election of 1906. Thereafter ‘The Hungry Forties’ became a lasting part of popular memory, frequently revived in the interwar years and transmitted through a variety of cultural and educational means including school textbooks and early radio broadcasts for schools. Although increasingly criticised by economic historians from the 1920s, the term was only largely abandoned in the nineteen-sixties, although since then its usage has occasionally escaped close linguistic and historical scrutiny.Bis heute wird der recht unklare Ausdruck „The Hungry Forties“ verwendet, um das England der 1840er Jahre zu beschreiben. Der Begriff verweist auf die angenommene zentrale Bedeutung der Armut als Hintergrund der Entstehung eines populären Radikalismus und der Freihandelskampagne gegen die protektionistischen Corn Laws. Der Begriff kam allerdings erst im frühen 20. Jahrhundert auf, als die Erinnerungen an die 1840er Jahre rekonstruiert wurden. Diese Rekonstruktion war Teil der edwardianischen Kampagne gegen eine Rückkehr zum Protektionismus, welche durch die Tarifreformbewegungen drohte. Die Bezeichnung „The Hungry Forties“ wurde auf diese Weise zu einem erfolgreichen Instrument zur Orchestrierung des Widerstandes der Bevölkerung gegen die Tarifreform und spielte 1906 eine wichtige Rolle für den Wahlsieg der Liberalen. „The Hungry Forties“ wurden in der Folge ein bleibender Bestandteil der Volkserinnerung, der in der Zwischenkriegszeit regelmäßig aufgegriffen und mit verschiedenen kulturellen und erzieherischen Mitteln verbreitet wurde, zum Beispiel in Schulbüchern und frühen Radiosendungen für Schulen. Wirtschaftshistorikerinnen und -historiker kritisierten den Begriff ab den 1920er Jahren allerdings zunehmend. In den 1960er Jahren wurde er weitgehend aufgegeben, weshalb er sich einer eingehenden linguistischen und historischen Prüfung entzogen hat

Americans’ Global Warming Beliefs and Attitudes

This report presents results from a national study of what Americans understand about how the climate system works, and the causes, impacts, and potential solutions to global warming. Among other findings, the study identifies a number of important gaps in public knowledge and common misconceptions about climate change. Educational levels: Graduate or professional, Undergraduate upper division, Undergraduate lower division, General public

State versus market in the early historiography of the industrial revolution in Britain c.1890–1914

This article reveals how the emerging historiography of industrialisation in Britain moulded a lasting division between two explanations of its origins, one emphasising discontinuity, individual enterprise, and free markets, the other evolutionary change, the role of the state and the importance of empire. Both views were historically informed but led in contrary directions in the highly polarised politics of early twentieth-century Britain, the former linked to support for free trade and liberalism as the basis of economic welfare, the latter to support for Conservative tariff reform and imperial reconstruction

‘He Describes What He Sees’: Byron’s Letters from Italy

Beginning with Keats’s influential snipe at Byron, ‘He describes what he sees – I describe what I imagine’, this essay examines Byron’s ways of seeing as a writer, specifically in his letters from Italy. What emerges is a complex sense of place respecting which any simple distinction between real and imagined cannot hold. For Byron, Italy is to a striking extent a product of its successive imaginings through history. This leaves him sceptical about any authority assumed through the traveller’s experience of place, and thus potentially at odds with his own privileging of being ‘on the spot’. It places him, also, in an ambivalent relation to descriptive writing, which he repeatedly withholds as a correspondent

Subsidies, Bounties, and Free Trade: Issues and Perspectives, 1880-1940

This book puts together several contributions that, from various time, system and disciplinary perspectives, address the same questions – what has shaped subsidy laws? Which actors mould subsidy and State aid law and what forces are at work? The book includes reports from former or current negotiators, officials, practitioners and scholars, that focus on various attempts to regulate subsidies at the national, European and international levels. Prominence is given to the actual practice, and to the account given by the key actors, operating in the field since the 1970s. Various disciplines are interrogated – from history to law, from political science to economics. What comes out is a fascinating account that provides a goldmine of insights and leads for further enquiry in a topical and under-researched area

Lamb, Coleridge, and the Poetics of Publication

This essay explores the poetics of Lamb’s early letters to Coleridge. I argue for a sharp awareness, on Lamb’s part, of the potentially negative effect publication can have on literary writing. Lamb resists this at the level of epistolary form, by entwining his sonnets with the letters into which he writes them. Where Lamb’s poems, taken in themselves, remain modest performances, the letter-poem hybrid texts in which they participate are of significant critical interest. Among other things they establish a critique of Coleridge and his paying court to the literary marketplace. These insights, I go on to suggest, can also help us to understand both writers’ more mature work, notably the complex lyric-epistolary compound that is Coleridge’s ‘This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison’

Examination of How Knowledge and Attitudes About Alcohol Impact on Drinking Behavior and Drunk Driving

This study is about attitudes and behavior and how they influence drinking and drunk driving behavior. However, this study would not have been possible without the assistance of several people.Sociolog

Public Perceptions of the Health Risks of Extreme Heat Across US States, Counties, and Neighborhoods

Extreme heat is the leading weather-related cause of death in the United States. Many individuals, however, fail to perceive this risk, which will be exacerbated by global warming. Given that awareness of one’s physical and social vulnerability is a critical precursor to preparedness for extreme weather events, understanding Americans’ perceptions of heat risk and their geographic variability is essential for promoting adaptive behaviors during heat waves. Using a large original survey dataset of 9,217 respondents, we create and validate a model of Americans’ perceived risk to their health from extreme heat in all 50 US states, 3,142 counties, and 72,429 populated census tracts. States in warm climates (e.g., Texas, Nevada, and Hawaii) have some of the highest heat-risk perceptions, yet states in cooler climates often face greater health risks from heat. Likewise, places with older populations who have increased vulnerability to health effects of heat tend to have lower risk perceptions, putting them at even greater risk since lack of awareness is a barrier to adaptive responses. Poorer neighborhoods and those with larger minority populations generally have higher risk perceptions than wealthier neighborhoods with more white residents, consistent with vulnerability differences across these populations. Comprehensive models of extreme weather risks, exposure, and effects should take individual perceptions, which motivate behavior, into account. Understanding risk perceptions at fine spatial scales can also support targeting of communication and education initiatives to where heat adaptation efforts are most needed