Volume VII of The History of the University of Oxford completes the survey of nineteenth-century Oxford begun in Volume VI. After 1871 both teachers and students at Oxford were freed from tests of religious belief. The volume describes the changed mental climate in which some dons sought a new basis for morality, while many undergraduates found a compelling ideal in the ethic of public service both at home and in the empire. As the existing colleges were revitalized, and new ones founded, the academic profession in Oxford developed a peculiarly local form, centred upon college tutors who stood in somewhat uneasy relation with the University's professors. The various disciplines which came to form the undergraduate curriculum in both the arts and sciences are subject to major reappraisal; and Oxford's 'hidden curriculum' is explored through accounts of student life and institutions, including organized sport and the Oxford Union. New light is shed on the social origins and previous schooling of undergraduates. A fresh assessment is made of the movement to establish women's higher education in Oxford, and the strategies adopted by its promoters to implant communities for women within the masculine culture of an ancient university. Other widened horizons are traced in accounts of the University's engagement with imperial expansion, social reform, and the educational aspirations of the labour movement, as well as the transformation of its press into a major international publisher. The architectural developments–considerable in quantity and highly varied in quality–receive critical appraisal in a comprehensive survey of the whole period covered by Volumes VI and VII (1800-1914). By the early twentieth century the challenges of socialism and democracy, together with the demand for national efficiency, gave rise to a renewed campaign to address issues such as promoting research, abolishing compulsory Greek, and, more generally, broadening access to the University. Under the terrible test of the First World War, still more deep-seated concerns were raised about the sider effects of Oxford's educational practices; and the volume concludes with some reflections on the directions which the University had taken over the previous fifty years. series blurb No private institutions have exerted so profound an influence on national life over the centuries as the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Few universities in the world have matched their intellectual distinction, and none has evolved and maintained over so long a period a strictly comparable collegiate structure. Now a completely new and full-scale History of the University of Oxford, from its obscure origins in the twelfth century until the late twentieth century, has been produced by the university with the active support of its constituent colleges. Drawing on extensive original research as well as on the centuries-old tradition of the study of the rich source material, the History is altogether comprehensive, appearing in eight chronologically arranged volumes. Together the volumes constitute a coherent overall study; yet each has a unity of its own, under individual editorship, and brings together the work of leading scholars in the history of every university discipline, and of its social, institutional, economic, and political development as well as its impact on national and international life. The result is a history not only more authoritative than any previously produced for Oxford, but more ambitious than any undertaken for any other European university, and certain to endure for many generations to come.

This book focuses on sciences in the universities of Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the chapters in it provide an overview, mostly from the point of view of the history of science, of the different ways universities dealt with the institutionalization of science teaching and research. A useful book for understanding the deep changes that universities were undergoing in the last years of the 20th century. The book is organized around four central themes: 1) Universities in the longue durée; 2) Universities in diverse political contexts; 3) Universities and academic research; 4) Universities and discipline formation. The book is addressed at a broad readership which includes scholars and researchers in the field of General History, Cultural History, History of Universities, History of Education, History of Science and Technology, Science Policy, high school teachers, undergraduate and graduate students of sciences and humanities, and the general interested public.

This study of T.H. Green views his philosophical opus through his public life and political commitments, and it uses biography as a lens through which to examine Victorian political culture and its moral climate. The book deals with the political and religious history of Victorian Britain in examining the basis of Green's Liberal partisanship. It demonstrates how his main ethical and political conceptions—his idea of "self-realisation" and his theory of individuality within community—were informed by evangelical theology, popular Protestantism and an idea of the English national consciousness as formed by religious conflict. While the significance of Kantian and Hegelian elements in Green's thought is acknowledged, it is argued that “indigenous” qualities of Green's teachings resonated with values shared alike by elite and rank-and-file Liberals during the mid and late Victorian era. In examining Green’s beliefs about the historical evolution of English liberty, his championing of (Liberal) Nonconformity and Nonconformist causes and his approval of religious bases of community, this study analyzes the ripening of a Greenian moment and traces Green’s influence on Liberal, quasi-socialist and Conservative social reform down to the 1920s. The lasting impact of Green’s teachings on British and Western political philosophy, apparent in the current vogue for communitarianism in liberal theory, indicates limitations of the “secularization thesis” still tacitly accepted by historians of Western political thought.

Over his long and illustrious career, Knud Haakonssen has explored the role of natural law in formulating doctrines of obligation and rights in accordance with the interests of early modern polities and churches. The essays collected in this volume range across this exciting and contested field. These 13 new essays acknowledge Haakonssen's immense academic achievement and give us new insights into the cultural and political role of law and rights in a variety of historical contexts and circumstances.

The global economic crisis has required governments across the globe to reconsider their spending priorities. It is within this demanding economic context that higher education systems have been steadily restructured with in many ways the English model in the vanguard of change. This book focuses in particular upon the policy of removing almost entirely public support for the payment of student fees. This has emerged from a steady process of change, which has broad political support and is underwritten by the idea that higher education is now seen more as a private than a public, good. As this shift has occurred (not a new innovation but rather a return to what once prevailed as more of a market in English higher education) so the relationship between government and the higher education has evolved with the latter now attempting to steer the development of the system through a state-regulated market. The book has a strong comparative dimension that draws upon US higher education to illustrate both the possible advantages and potential hazards to the marketization strategy. It concludes that any such strategy needs to be accompanied by state regulation if it is to function effectively, particularly to stimulate price competition, encourage innovation from new entrants, and provide consumer protection for students paying high fees.

G. R. Searle's absorbing narrative history breaks conventional chronological barriers to carry the reader from England in 1886, the apogee of the Victorian era with the nation poised to celebrate the empress queen's golden jubilee, to 1918, as the 'war to end all wars' drew to a close leaving England to come to term with its price - above all in terms of human life, but also in the general sense that things would never be the same again. This was an age of extremes: a period of imperial pomp and circumstance, with a political elite preoccupied with display and ceremony, alongside the growing cult of the simple life; the zenith of imperialism with its idealization of war on the one hand, the start of the Labour Party, a socialist renaissance, and welfare politics on the other; and a radical challenging of traditional gender stereotypes in the face of the prevailing cult of masculinity. Under Professor Searle's historical microscope, all the details of daily life spring into sharp relief. Half-forgotten figures such as Edward Carpenter, Vesta Tilley, and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman take their place on stage beside Oscar Wilde, the Pankhursts, and Lloyd George. Motoring and aviation, to become such an intrinsic part of life within the next decades, had their beginnings in this period as pastimes for the rich. From the wretched slums of England's great cities to their bustling docks and factories, from the grand portals of Westminster to the violent political challenges of the Ulster Unionists and the militant suffrage movement, from Blackpool's tower and beach packed with holidaymakers to the trenches of the Western Front, the energy, creativity, and often destructive turmoil of the years 1886-1918 are brought into focus in this magisterial history. THE NEW OXFORD HISTORY OF ENGLAND The aim of the New Oxford History of England is to give an account of the development of the country over time. It is hard to treat that development as just the history which unfolds within the precise boundaries of England, and a mistake to suggest that this implies a neglect of the histories of the Scots, Irish, and Welsh. Yet the institutional core of the story which runs from Anglo-Saxon times to our own is the story of a state-structure built round the English monarchy and its effective successor, the Crown in Parliament. While the emphasis of individual volumes in the series will vary, the ultimate outcome is intended to be a set of standard and authoritative histories, embodying the scholarship of a generation.

G.R. Searle's narrative history breaks conventional chronological barriers to carry the reader from England in 1886, the apogee of the Victorian era with the nation poised to celebrate the empress queen's golden jubilee, to 1918, as the 'war to end all wars' drew to a close.

This book examines the role western-education and social standing played in the development of Indian nationalism in the early twentieth century. It highlights the influences that education abroad had on a significant proportion of the Indian population. A large number of Indian students - including key figures such as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Jawaharlal Nehru - took up prominent positions in government service, industry or political movements after having spent their student years in Britain before the Second World War. Having reaped the benefits of the British educational system, they spearheaded movements in India that sought to gain independence from British rule. The author analyses the long-term impact of this short-term migration on Britain, South Asia and Empire and deals with issues of migrant identities and the ways in which travel shaped ideas about the 'Self' and 'Home'. Through this study of the England-Returned, attention is drawn to contemporary concerns about the politicisation of foreign students and the antecedents of the growing South Asian student population in the USA and Europe today, as well as of Britain's growing South Asian diaspora.

In the first decades of the 20th century, five women - Katherine Routledge, Maria Czaplicka, Winifred Blackman, Beatrice Blackwood and Barbara Freire-Marreco - arrived at Oxford to take the newly created Masters in Anthropology. Though their circumstances differed radically, all were intent on visiting and studying remote communities a world away from their own. Through their work, they resisted the prejudices of the male establishment, proving that women could be explorers and scientists, too. In the wastes of Siberia; in the villages and pueblos of the Nile and New Mexico; on Easter Island; and in the uncharted interior of New Guinea, they found new freedoms - yet when they returned to England, loss, madness and self-doubt awaited them. Frances Larson's masterful group biography is a revelatory portrait of five hidden heroines of British scholarship.

This issue of History of Universities, Volume XXXI / 1, contains the customary mix of learned articles and book reviews which makes this publication such an indispensable tool for the historian of higher education. The volume is, as always, a lively combination of original research and invaluable reference material.