Norman Gash (1912–2009)
Autore di Aristocracy and People: Britain, 1815-1865
Sull'Autore
Opere di Norman Gash
Politics in the Age of Peel: A Study in the Technique of Parliamentary Representation 1830-1850 (1971) 21 copie
Lord Liverpool: Life and Political Career of Robert Banks Jenkinson, Second Earl of Liverpool, 1770-1828 (1984) 15 copie
Wellington: Studies in the Political and Military Career of the First Duke of Wellington (1990) 1 copia
Politics in the Age of Peel 1 copia
Peel and Prosperity 1 copia
Etichette
Informazioni generali
- Data di nascita
- 1912-01-16
- Data di morte
- 2009-05-01
- Sesso
- male
- Nazionalità
- UK
- Luogo di nascita
- Meerut, India
- Luogo di morte
- Somerset, England, UK
- Istruzione
- Reading School, Reading, Berkshire, England, UK
Oxford University (St. John's College) - Attività lavorative
- historian
professor - Organizzazioni
- University of St Andrews
- Premi e riconoscimenti
- Commander of the Order of the British Empire
Fellow of the British Academy
Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
Utenti
Recensioni
Potrebbero anche piacerti
Statistiche
- Opere
- 14
- Utenti
- 182
- Popolarità
- #118,785
- Voto
- 3.5
- Recensioni
- 2
- ISBN
- 32
One factor in why Liverpool isn’t better remembered may be the conventionality of his childhood and personal life. While many of his prime ministerial counterparts experienced dramatic personal lives, Liverpool experienced an upbringing typical for his time. His father Charles Jenkinson was a career politician who, as was standard for the time, grew wealthy from the various sinecures he held. With his mother’s death barely a month after his birth, young Robert spent frequent time with relatives and at boarding schools, where he applied himself to his studies. After a couple of years at Oxford University, Jenkinson spent several months in France. His time there coincided with the outbreak of the French Revolution, a momentous period his firsthand observation of which did much to shape his burgeoning political views.
With his father a friend of the king, Robert had little difficulty winning a seat in Parliament. Establishing a reputation as a convincing and effective speechmaker, he became a junior minister in William Pitt’s administration and enjoyed a rapid rise. With Pitt’s resignation in 1801 Lord Hawkesbury (as Jenkinson became known when his father was made Earl of Liverpool in 1796) became Foreign Secretary in Henry Addington’s ministry. When Pitt returned Hawkesbury became Home Secretary, and was even offered the premiership when Pitt resigned for the second and final time in 1806, but declined the opportunity. After a brief period in opposition, Hawkesbury returned to office as Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, in which capacity he served until Spencer Perceval’s assassination in June 1812 created a vacuum that Liverpool (the earldom to which Hawkesbury succeeded in 1808) was selected to fill.
Gash devotes well over half of his book to chronicling Liverpool’s premiership, which covered some of the most tumultuous years in Britain’s history. Foremost on his agenda was his country’s ongoing war with Napoleonic France, to which was soon added a war with the United States. In waging both Liverpool enjoyed good fortune, as in less than three years Britain had achieved victory over France and gained a peace in America that preserved Britain’s hold on Canada. Yet the transition to peace proved no less challenging, as his government struggled with reducing defense expenditures while simultaneously coping with social unrest fueled by an economic recession. Political radicalism posed a persistent challenge, with the thwarting of the Cato Street Conspiracy in 1820 doing little to assuage the unease created by the attempt to assassinate Liverpool and his cabinet in one fell swoop. And persisting through all of this was the ongoing difficulties posed by the unpopular king George IV, whose marital woes were exploited by the radicals as a weapon against the administration.
Liverpool managed these affairs through a combination of prudent judgment and good interpersonal skills. Throughout the book Gash notes his ability to get along with people of often difficult temperament, which aided his ability to hold together a government containing ministers of conflicting viewpoints. Nevertheless, the strain inevitably told on his well-being, and the loss of his beloved wife Louisa in 1822 deprived him of his main source of emotional support. Though Liverpool soon remarried, the exhausting toll of his job undoubtedly played a role in triggering the massive cerebral hemorrhage Liverpool suffered in April 1827, which forced his retirement and contributed to his death a year later.
In his introduction Gash states that his goal in writing this book was ”simply to uncover more about Liverpool as a person and as a politician.” Though he declaims any pretensions to having written the definitive account of his subject’s life and times, his modesty shouldn’t diminish his achievement with this book. With it he gives readers a lucid account of Liverpool’s career, one grounded in both his subject’s personal papers and the author’s own masterful grasp of the politics of the era. While it may not be the comprehensive study of Liverpool that Gash believes is warranted, it is nonetheless a good overview of Liverpool’s life and one that makes a convincing case for why he deserves far greater recognition than he has received until now.… (altro)