Wealth and Welfare An Economic and Social History of Britain 1851-1951 [Paperback]

This collection of essays explores the questions of what counted as knowledge in Victorian Britain, who defined knowledge and the knowledgeable, by what means and by what criteria.

During the Victorian period, the structure of knowledge took on a new and recognizably modern form, and the disciplines that we now take for granted took shape. The ways in which knowledge was tested also took on a new form, with oral examinations and personal contacts giving way to formal written tests. New institutions of knowledge were created: museums were important at the start of the period (knowledge often meant classifying and collecting); by the end, universities had taken on a new promince. Knowledge expanded and Victorians needed to make sense of the sheer scale of information, to popularize it, and at the same time to exclude ignorance and error - a role carried out by encyclopedias and popular publications.

The concept of knowledge is complex and much debated, with a multiplicity of meanings and troubling relationships. By studying the Victorian organization of knowledge in its institutional settings, these essays contribute to our consideration of these wider issues.

1. Introduction
Part I
The Anatomy of the British Economy
2. Aristocrats, agriculture and the land
3. Industrialists and the urban economy
4. The service economy
5. The growth of the British economy
Part II
Globalization and Deglobalization
6. Free trade and protectionism
7. Capital exports
8. The rise and demise of the gold standard
9. Rebuilding the international economic order?
Part III
Poverty, Prosperity and Population
10. Births and marriages
11. Deaths and disease
12. Rich and poor
13. Cultures of consumption
Part IV
Public Policy and the State
14. Taxing and spending
15. Education
16. From the poor law to the Liberal social reforms
17. War, reconlƒ(