Nineteenth-Century Britain: A Very Short Introduction

First published as part of the best-selling The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain, Christopher Harvie and Colin Matthew's Very Short Introduction to Nineteenth-Century Britain is a sharp but subtle account of remarkable economic and social change and an even more remarkable politicalstability. Britain in 1789 was overwhelmingly rural, agrarian, multilingual, and almost half Celtic. By 1914, when it faced its greatest test since the defeat of Napoleon, it was largely urban and English. Christopher Harvie and Colin Matthew show the forces behind Britain's rise to its imperialzenith, and the continuing tensions within the nations and classes of the 'union state'.

Christopher Harvie is Professor of British and Irish Studies at Tubingen in Germany. Colin Matthew is editor of the Gladstone Diaries and author of an award-winning life of the Victorian statesman.