The Pursuit of Stability: Social Relations in Elizabethan London by Ian W. ArcherReview by: Julia MerrittSocial History, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Oct., 1993), pp. 427-428Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4286156 .

Accessed: 17/06/2014 19:54

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Taylor & Francis, Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Social History.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.89 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 19:54:12 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

SHORT NOTICES

Ian W. Archer, The Pursuit of Stability: Social Relatons in Elizabethan London (I99I), xvi + 307 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, ?30.00).

Ian Archer's impressive work on Elizabethan London follows in the wake of current debate on the relative stability of the capital during a period of tremendous change, but its contri- bution to scholarship is far wider than its title would suggest. Historians such as Valerie Pearl, A. L. Beier, Peter Clark and Steve Rappaport have all discussed, with varying degrees of pessimism, the strains imposed on the capital's social fabric during the Elizabethan period. These pressures peaked during the 'crisis' dec- ade of the I 590s, when plague, poor harvests and soaring inflation hit London with particular severity. Dr Archer's thoughtful book produces an analysis that challenges the overwhelmingly gloomy picture of the capital painted by his- torians such as Beier, but at the same time questions Rappaport's rosier view of London and the prospects open to ambitious Londoners.

The book addresses the 'problem' of London's stability through a series of linked essays, each offering a different and distinctive angle on the question. Dr Archer finds that the explanation for London's ultimate social stability during this period rests in the complex and overlapping nature of ties between the City's governors and those they governed. He emphasizes the re- ciprocal nature of these ties, and the relative responsiveness of the elite to serious dissatisfac- tion from below, all of which enabled it to defuse potential disorder. London's parishes, wards and livery companies, Dr Archer shows, played an important role in this process, promoting a

sense of corporate awareness and basic trust in City government. At the same time, these institutions helped to maintain social discipline and patterns of deference (through the selective distribution of charity, for example), as well as providing informal redress of grievances.

Archer's account does not underplay the gravity of threats to London's stability or the scale of the problems such as massive immi- gration, poverty and crime. Instead, it demon- strates how they were tackled at many levels of London society. Just as importantly, Dr Archer also points out that the lack of cohesion among the City's dispossessed and aggrieved ultimately prevented the development of any organized opposition to the government. The Pursuit of Stability also interrogates the notion of 'stability' itself. The author compares London with con- tinental cities as well as placing the experience of Elizabethan London within the history of its own medieval past. Within this framework, Archer suggests that the City's governors prob- ably exaggerated the threat posed to London's poor. Nevertheless this belief in the capital's volatility is essential to understanding policy- making during periods such as the I 59os, as Archer demonstrates.

Archer's study draws upon a vast range of sources to build up a rich and nuanced picture of Elizabethan London. Individual chapters on London's livery companies, the making and implementation of social policy and the nature of social relations at the parish level add greatly to

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.89 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 19:54:12 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

428 Social History VOL. i8: NO. 3

our knowledge of the workings of the capital. It is only in his discussion of religion that the 'stability' debate seems to stifle the author's creative energies. In particular, the book does little to capture the religious life of the capital, apart from the specific issue of social control.

Overall, however, this is an impressive and wide-ranging study. The excellent bibliography will also prove of use to social historians and specialist London historians alike.

Julia Merritt University of Sheffield

J. R. Dinwiddy, Radicalism andReform inBritain, Z780-Z850 (I9Z), XX + 452 (Hambledon Press, ?C38.oo). This book usefully brings together in a single volume twenty-two essays by the late John Dinwiddy, published in various journals, pam- phlets and collections during the 19705 and I980s. They range across the period and the territory which he made his own: political debate in the late eighteenth and early nine- teenth centuries. Two irreplaceable essays are included - his study of Christopher Wyvill, published as a Borthwick paper in I97I, and his account of Robert Waithman and City radical- ism in the early years of the nineteenth century. There are a number of exploratory pieces on Bentham, of course - he was general editor of the Complete Works of yeremy Bentham for several years - and useful investigations of radicalism and conservatism during the 1790s, early social- ism, Luddism, Chartism, and of such key figures as Charles James Fox, Burke, Burdett and James Mill.

These essays are all crisply and precisely written - models of clarity of organization and of prose style. Dinwiddy's approach often tends towards the history of ideas but he was always very focused on the precise political and social context of any particular argument. His writing

is also based on long and laborious hours in the archives: his thoroughness is sometimes intimi- dating. This is certainly a substantial collection of essays, essential reading for any student of the period.

John Dinwiddy was a gentle, distant and self-effacing man, a genial sceptic, but he was generous with his time and his concern - to the benefit of generations of postgraduate students at Royal Holloway and at the University of London Institute of Historical Research. The product of Winchester School and Oxford, and a schoolmaster at Eton for several years, he was certainly a patrician - as Harry Dickinson's Introduction to the volume makes clear. Yet his inaugural lecture, which he sadly did not live to deliver, was a comparison of the social views of Marx and Bentham and its makes his unfashion- able social democratic values explicit (see 434). But then it is not difficult in a number of these essays to detect a John Dinwiddy who was also an old Foxite Whig and a bit of a Jacobin. He continues to be missed.

John Seed Roehampton Institute, London

Gerhard A. Ritter and Klaus Tenfelde, Arbeiter im Deutschen Kaisereich z87z-z9z4

(I992), Xi + 889 (J. H. W. Dietz Nachf., Bonn, DM iI8).

This book is the first in a four-volume history of the working class and the labour movement in Imperial Germany, each the work of these two authors. These four volumes are in turn part of a multi-volume history of the German working class and organized labour from i8oo to I933 -

an ambitious project published by Dietz, owned by the Social Democratic Party.

The first two chapters provide an outline of the economic and political structure of Imperial Germany. Chapter 3 looks at processes of class formation. Chapters 4 to 7 deal with more specific dimensions of working-class experience - geographical origins, unemployment, differ- ent types of work experience, incomes and working conditions, relations with employers

and forms of internal stratification within the working class. Chapter 8 focuses on labour, society and the state, discussing for instance the influence of organized schooling and religion, the impact of social reform, the influence of the military. A final chapter summarizes the major themes and conclusions of the book as a whole.

Every chapter of Arbeiter im Deutschen Kaiserreich underlines the sheer diversity of working-class experience in Germany between I870 and 1914 and the difficulties of making generalizations. Ritter and Tenfelde are ex- tremely cautious in claiming typicality and concede the provisional character of their find- ings. They acknowledge the limited value of traditional sources, such as the memoirs and

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.89 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 19:54:12 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions