Prof. François Poirier

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This is one of the courses redesigned in association with the Department of British and American Studies of

at Kosice (Sk)

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The making of modern Britain

The making of modern Britain

TD 1h30 - ECTS 3
Taught by François POIRIER

Contents
Reformation to Revolution ; the industrial revolution and its political consequences ; the British Empire to its apex.

Description
The discovery of America by Europeans shifts the centre of trade from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. This shift, contemporary with the birth of 'modern' ideas, accompanies the growth of English power, an original political system and early industrialisation. The shaping of social and cultural identities, emerging from often violent conflict, will be studied under six headings: 1.1. Politics and Religion, 16th-17th c.: Reformation from above; 1.2. Politics and Religion, 16th-17th c.: Religious idiom or motivations in the English Revolution(s); 2.1. Causes and social consequences of the industrial revolution; 2.2. The political expression of class divisions in the 19th c.; 3.1. The Empire: ideologies and realities; 3.2. The peak of British power and domestic tensions.

Bibliography

Textbook to use

• BERNAS, Colette, GAUDIN, Elisabeth, POIRIER, François, The Document in British Civilisation Studies-Understanding, Analysis, Commentary, Gap: Ophrys, 1992, 422 p.

• PUGH, Martin, Britain since 1789, A Concise History, London: Macmillan, 1999, x + 254 p.
• HILL, Christopher, Reformation to Industrial Revolution (1967), Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1969, 306 p.
• MAY, Trevor, An Economic and Social History of Britain 1760-1970, Londron: Longman, 1987, 442 p.
• HOBSBAWM, Eric J., Industry and Empire, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1968, 1969, 384 p.
• BRIGGS, Asa, A Social History of England (1983), Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1985, 432 p.
• SPECK, W.A. A Concise History of Britain 1707-1975. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. 1993. 210 p.

• 1.1 COLLINSON, P. (ed), The Sixteenth Century, 1485-1603, Oxford University Press, 2001, 260 p.
• 1.2 JONES, J.R. (ed.), Liberty Secured? Britain before and after 1688, Stanford University Press, 1992, xiv + 408 p.
• 2.1 HUDSON, Pat, The Industrial Revolution, London: Howard Arnold, 1992, xii + 240 p.
• 2.2 SYKES, Alan, The Rise and Fall of British Liberalism 1776-1988, London: Longman, 1997, viii+316 p.
• 3.1 MORRIS, James (Jan), (Vol. 1), Heaven's Command (1975), Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1979, 554 p., (Vol. 2), Pax Britannica (1969), Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1979, 544 p., (Vol. 3), Farewell the Trumpets (1978), Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1979, 576 p.
• 3.2 PUGH, Martin, The March of Women. A Revisionist Analysis of the Campaign for Women's Suffrage, 1866-1914, OUP, 2000, xii+303 p.

Assessment
Continuous assessment
One written and one oral presentations, prepared at home, of a piece of documentary analysis (20% each) + one written documentary analysis in three hours without extra documents (40%), weekly quizz average mark of no less than 7 quizzes out of 10 (20%)
Incapacitated or resits
one written documentary analysis in three hours without extra documents (100%)

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1. General

Work in this module is done exclusively on 'primary' or 'authentic' documents -- two adjectives that can be questioned. Let us say that we study a given society at a given period through the documents this society produced, as does a professional historian. Of course, this can only be done efficiently and relatively quickly if one does not need to reinvent the wheel every day: it is necessary to make full use of the 'secondary' or 'learned' literature produced on our subject since the period studied. It is like a see-saw movement, as we cannot understand 'primary' documents without the help of previous knowledge transmitted to us by historians, authors of 'secondary' material, but our understanding of primary documents contributes to further knowledge or inflexion or change of interpretation -- so long as new interpretations are possible, the work of the historian is not at an end. The work you are required to do is then something which is clearly defined and limited by the document you have to study, which is quite reassuring, while at the same time can be very creative work, as you have to produce ideas and interpretations which, perhaps, nobody ever thought of before you. At this level (semester 5), you are still required to work on isolated documents, cut out for you. But your work will be richer and more satisfying if you take the initiative of confronting such documents to others, so that you find the means of breaking loose from the construction imagined by the teacher through his personal selection of sources. This is what the textbook we recommend is meant for, it was intended to be a constant invitation to confront sources in different ways. Extra documents will be given as hand-outs or online, and you can suggest your own selection for the benefit of other students.

Ideally, each session is divided into three bits of 30 minutes, but proportions may vary depending on students' attention to this or that issue. The first bit is a collective discussion of the documents enlightened by the lecture of the previous week. It is lively when all of you have studied the documents on the list of that day, it is boring when such is not the case. In any case, it is entirely dependent on you. If more time were available, this would be the occasion for oral presentations by students -- but there's not time and see below. The second bit is a lecture by the teacher. As time is very short, this is made only of a sketchy outline and is meant primarily to help you in your readings by giving basic clues and keys to understanding, by presenting the core of a problematic. It does not replace such reading, on the contrary, the more you read, the more the teacher will be able to say in a short time. Here again, the interest of the exercise is sustained mostly by your own activity. The third bit is an illustration of the lecture with one or two documents. The documents are indicated beforehand, and if students have already read them, it can develop into a discussion. Again, the liveliness of the exercise depends on you.

The documents on the list are extremely varied, including songs and caricatures, pompous discourse and thrilling novels, advertising and housewife handbooks, religious stuff as well as poetry. You should never lose sight of the specific genre to which the document belongs. A songster and a preacher generally do not address the same audience, or not in the same way, even when it looks as if they were broaching the same subject.[1]

Work on a document begins with answering a series of preliminary questions which help elucidate its meaning or meanings, as we shall see later on. But before this, a number of students need to know the formal requirements of their assessment, before they know anything about its contents. Here is the amount of work that will be required.

[1] The most important study of this variation is by an American sociologist of the 'Chicago school', Erwing GOFFMAN, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Garden City, N.Y : Doubleday, 1959, xii,+259 p. BACK TO TEXT

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2. Your work

You are to provide three instances of documentary analysis from a series selected by the teacher, out of which you will make you own selection, within a mandatory schedule: two pieces of homework (20% each), one end-of-term exam (40%) (the remaining 20% are covered by 10 quizzes, of which you must do at least 7, see below). One of the two homework exercises has to be an oral presentation. As there is no time to present it live in the classroom, students must give their oral work to the teacher as an electronic file (aif, mp3, mid, mov, wav..., preferably through the medium of a USB stick or CD-ROM or via bluetooth transmission on campus), or tape (but no microcassette, please). At the start of term, students are distributed in three groups. For group A, work will deal with themes 1 (i.e. 1.1 and 1.2 considered as one) and 2.2; group B, themes 1 (i.e. 1.1 and 1.2 considered as one, same as group A) and 3.1; group C, themes 2.1 and 3.2., so that everybody has something definite and formal to produce more or less every month.

All work must include a bibliography of more than one title, excluding the textbook and other anthologies, and not including websites (generally useful, but often unreliable), and the bibliography must be accompanied with a justification (see template). You must select your bibliography out of its actual use in your work, and a good bibliography is one that enables you to compare differing views. As every analysis in the field of humanities is in the last instance dependent on an interpretation, it is out of your study of existing ones, so as to assimilate or reject them knowingly, that you will build your own. There is a simple penalty: no bibliography (according to criteria delineated here), no mark.

All academic work belongs to the world of rational argument. Your task is to develop a substantiated case in favour of your chosen interpretation, which may include, if it is relevant with the particular document you are working on, criticism of other interpretations.

There is no documentary analysis if there is no document. It sounds so obvious... but students tend to forget it. Your document is not an excuse to copy down or recite the teacher's lecture or chunks of books read in the library and reproduced without the slightest regard for their relevance to the particular document at hand. Any work or part of it that does not bear on the document is considered off course. Penalty: the minimum mark (= nil).

But documentary analysis requires a perspective, a contextualisation, i.e. much more than the mere repetition of the text (if it is a text) in simplified or diluted terms, much more than a (boring) paraphrase. Penalty: paraphrase is akin to work not done and the mark is ... nil.

Thus, as already stated above, documentary analysis implies an exchange between the precise study of the document itself and solid knowledge on the period. Without such knowledge, the document remains a cipher. But thanks to the study of the document, general knowledge is greatly improved. This is what makes such a work a creative exercise and every year, students develop new and interesting ideas which their teachers had never thought of.

One of the tasks to perform is to act as a passeur between the society and period studied and our (less knowledgeable) contemporaries. The task is to revive what was at stake in a foreign country and times past, so that our friends today where and when we live understand this distinct society. It is necessary to use today's tools of analysis to be understood by our contemporaries, but such must not replace the analysis of the intellectual tools of the period studied. This is the reason why the argument you develop cannot strictly follow the same line as in the document you study. If you are a slave to it, you cannot show much more than what is already in full sight.

Your problem is to CONVINCE in a RATIONAL ARGUMENT.

Lastly, three remarks on your BEHAVIOUR:

The distribution of homework by the teacher emphasises the most important contributions you are expected to make, but does not excuse you from contributing the rest of the time. Every week, ALL students must have studied ALL documents on that day's list, otherwise there is no debate. They must also have read material on these documents (relevant chapters or books, for which see bibliography and further reading available on this website) and reviewed their notes taken during the previous classes. Quizzes to check that the work is done will be held every week from the 3rd week, bearing on all things studied since the beginning of term, the results of which will count as 20% of the final mark in continuous assessment. Every week, theses quizzes will bear on issues relevant to the whole ground covered since the beginning of term. Anybody failing to get a more than average mark three times running on such quizzes should ask serious questions about their possibility of future success.

And quite obviously, everybody is expected to bring every week his or her copy of the textbook and other documents. The textbook can be found second hand for a very reasonable price.

Third remark, and it is a reminder: continuous assessment is closed to absentee students. They are expected to show up at EVERY session. Nobody can be absent from the course, and from the above quizzes, more than three times.

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3. Quality control

Before you hand in any homework, ask yourself the following questions :

1. Have I included a bibliography? -- with more than one title, not counting anthologies and websites, each one justified and fully referenced. See norms:

http://www.univ-paris13.fr/CRIDAF/Masters/CARIAF-M2-D.htm#3

http://www.mla.org/main_stl.htm

3. Have I really concluded my work? i.e. confirmed or rejected or qualified the hypothesis presented in the introduction.

4. Have I fully referenced all quotations? have I resisted the temptation to copy down entire pages from books, forgetting to write down I was not their author? the teacher would easily find me out and I would have committed something called plagiarism.  This is not simply contrary to academic and scholarly ethic, it is a petty crime: the theft of a well-honed phrase is just as serious as the theft of a secret chemical formula.

5. Have I really avoided erring off course? Have I managed to write down more than a paraphrase?

6. Have I written in academic style and proper English? Avoid the most frequent mistakes committed by non-native speakers of English (e.g. verbs after modals and auxiliaries, gender and number issues, lexical confusions, overuse of the definite article, etc.)? Good training is available not only with all your teachers but also online, thanks to this website dedicated to English for Academic Purposes for non-English students:

http://www.uefap.com/

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4. Method

As explained by Colette Bernas in your textbook, some preliminary work of investigation is necessary before you begin the analysis proper. Such work, consisting in getting to know the period and the document, can be articulated through a series of simple questions:

When and where was the document produced? This is the issue of contextualisation, i.e. mustering all your knowledge on the time and place of the document so as to grasp the main relevant issues. Contextualisation can be done at three different levels: over the very long term, over the medium term, over the short term. For instance, the speeches of prime minister Harold Wilson in the 1960s are characteristic of a specifically English rhetoric used in political discourse since the Reformation in their abundance of moral references (long term); they are dominated by a preoccupation for the decline of Britain since the First World War and accelerated in the 1960s (medium term); they respond in opportunistic and skilful mode to immediate economic and political challenges and pressures (short term).

Who created the document? We do not need the intimately private biography of the author, who may be a collectivity rather than a single person, who may be very anonymous commoner, a nobody rather than a famous writer or artist whose name is in dictionaries. But we need to know who in social, cultural and political terms. For instance, we do not care to know whether Harold Wilson's mum loved him well or not, but it is useful to know he started a career as an academic, that he went into politics very early, was associated to the Left of the Labour Party in the Attlee government, and was elected leader of Labour by a coalition between the intellectual Left backing him, moderate trade union leaders, who fund the party, and reformers on the Right of the party -- a balance which proved impossible to maintain.

Whom does the document address? Not necessarily the person or persons officially mentioned in the text or dedication as addressees. A speech in the Commons is formally addressed to the Speaker of the House, but in fact it is meant for other MPs and beyond them, perhaps, the whole country.

What? of course, very simply, what is it about?

Why and what for? i.e., what prompts the creation of the document, what is at stake, what are the tensions? and what would the author or authors hope to achieve in the minds of the public (readership or audience) for that particular document? what transformation of attitudes? Speeches and pamphlets and books and songs are not written, or caricature drawn, for the sake of idle talk: all are a response to the dynamics of some situation which the authors hope to change or maintain. For instance, it is as a response to the seamen's strike in 1966 that Harold Wilson coins the phrase "reds under the bed" in a famous speech meant to disparage the strikers who are popular and challenging the economic strategy of the Labour government.

How? what rhetorical, stylistic, etc. devices are being used to achieve the aims of the author(s)? What is specific to the genre of the document. E.g., a newspaper article follows very strict rules of composition depending on its status (leading article, survey, column...); a song may be of a particular well rehearsed type, in an established format. And as songs are mentioned, do not forget they are meant to be sung. This is the reason why the textbook provides you with the score (or sheet music) of the song. You are not expected to provide a full musicologist's analysis, but you should pay attention to melody an rhythm, which may emphasise the meaning or qualify it. For instance the lyrics of "By Jingo!" seem to be of the war-mongering sort, but is the music entirely serious?[2]Sound files on this website will help those who are unfamiliar with music scores. Just click and listen! There are links in the work plan further on this site. And they are all recapped here. A picture may correspond to a particular technique, a particular artistic school, etc. (For this, see the new 2nd year course as it develops here).

What hints and clues? In answers to "how", something more subtle may be found:
(i) There are elements of the document meant by the author(s) to be immediately visible for everyone. E.g. Harold Wilson in the 1960s used sprinkle his speeches with economic statistics, a few complex phrases and instances of formal logic, so as to give evidence of his economic competence.
(ii) But there are other elements, also meant by the author, but in a more devious way. E.g. Wilson nearly always began a speech with a self-quotation, meaning he had already defended the same idea or performed the same actions -- simply because his opponents accused him, often quite rightly, of changing tack often in a short period of time. So that his self-quotations, often with a changed meaning thanks to decontextualisation, were meant to emphasise his consistency.
(iii) Lastly, some elements in the document are just involuntary signs of the times, which the author(s) cannot escape. E.g. Harold Wilson kept saying, in the 1960s, that he wanted a 'virile' economy, a 'virile' society, a 'virile' Parliament... 'Virile' was his favourite word of praise and no one saw anything wrong with it -- while thanks to his own policy and perhaps within his own government a number of the factors were being hatched that would lead to the feminist dynamics of the next decade. His spontaneous use of such an adjective hints to the unconscious machismo of the period, not his own in particular (in fact, he was the first prime minister to entrust women with high-ranking ministerial positions in the Cabinet), hints to a form of male dominance incorporated in the minds of most women at the time.

Your analysis
Once you have answered all these questions, it is quite likely you have begun to develop an interpretation of the document. But, as stated above, your exercise bears on a society that is remote in both time and space. This is why you must follow the structure of your own argument to explain that of the document. The order in which you present your ideas must not be enslaved to that of the document, nor to the order of the above list of questions, but must obey your own demonstrative logic. There must be a logical sequence of your ideas and they must be substantiated by empirical evidence, i.e. by elements found in this and other documents, by historical 'facts'[3] found in secondary sources, etc. The numbering of the various moments or parts of your reasoning does not matter -- and by the way, do not, in general, tell us that the document is divided into so many parts: you divide it if you wish, but you tell us WHY -- the main thing is that you are logical, informed and convincing.

When unsure, read one of the fully developed examples in your textbook.
[2] The best introduction to the typology of traditional English songs remains A.L. LLOYD, Folk Song in England (1967), London: Panther, 1969, 445 p. Numerous reprints, reissues and editions. BACK TO TEXT
[3] On historical 'facts', see E.H. CARR, What is History? (1961), Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1987 and numerous new editions, 188 p. BACK TO TEXT

YOU CAN TYPE YOUR HOMEWORK DIRECTLY INTO THIS TEMPLATE OR USE IT AS REFERENCE