In this reading, British history was the victim of the culture wars in the American and Canadian academies, which had branded British history as that of DWM (Dead White Men) and encouraged history departments to replace historians of Britain with those of other parts of the world. The report's (Stansky Report) prescription for this malaise was for British historians to take an imperial turn that acknowledged the contagious and exploitive presence of empire. This is now the orthodoxy of the field in the United States, where the history of imperial Britain has new resonance as America has increasingly trodden in the shadows of the British Empire by intervening in the very regions once colonized by Britain. All of a sudden, whether one is a champion or critic (and *there are* champions who ha... (查看原文)
...administrative reforms...actually produced a new governing caste. This caste styled themselves as gentlemen and cultivated very particular understandings of the personal character and social milieu of the administrator. Upper-division clerks were considered generalists capable of careful analysis and considered judgement, and their disinterested style of thought and independence of character was identified as the preserve of a gentlemanly liberal arts education at certain private schools and Oxbridge...
Below this elite caste of gentlemanly governors came the so-called specialists, men with specific technical knowledge upon which the state's expanding services depended. These men were not the products of the character factories of private schools and Oxbridge; their expertise lay instea... (查看原文)
在伍尔夫，世界发生断裂并重新诞生的时刻就是“1910年12月左右”( on or about December 1910）。史家则倾向于用各种革命的时间点——比如无处不在的1789年——来确定早期和晚期现代时期的分界，但大部分历史学家发现了，即便是这些极具戏剧性的历史事件，也不过是漫长变化过程中的一部分罢了。显然，英国绝不是在短暂的十年内就成为现代国家的，更别说一年，甚或一个月。大转型的规模和本质在19世纪30年代就初露头角，但直到19世纪80年代甚至20世纪，社会、政治和经济组织的新模式才被接受、归化。 (查看原文)
伴随着1830年“曼彻斯特——利物浦”铁路线的盛大启动动，铁路的时代到来了，但它的出现并未终结公路上的马车旅行。首先，铁路延伸得很慢。1838年，英国仅有500英里的铁道，但19世纪40年代的投机热潮使得约翰·拉斯金( John Ruskin)所描绘的“横贯我们国家框架的全新钢铁脉络”在1850年以前已然就位，600英里的铁道贯穿了英国的主要城镇。一些地区——尤其是康沃尔威尔士和苏格兰高地——要等到19世纪下半叶才进入迅速成熟的铁路网络。及至1914年，这个网络已经覆盖了2万英里的范围。然而，仍有1/6的地区未设立火车站点，其中许多地方仍然依靠马车进行旅行——的确，在1901年从事商业载客的马匹相较王1851年多出了3倍，即使单个的公路一马车旅程数量在1835年达到了1000万的峰值，但铁路仍然迎来了一个快速大众运输的全新时代。 (查看原文)
