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“Ah, well! They may write such things — [Humpty Dumpty's rhyme] — in a book. . .That's what you call a History of England, that is” — Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

It may be impossible to recover the past tel quel, but it is possible to say true or false things about it, and to draw true or false, humane or cruel, conclusions or morals. The Law and Medicine, for example, both value, and depend on, quite precise case histories as instructive precedents and, sometimes, as awful warnings. The fact that there are variant accounts of a crime, and the possibility of false witness, does not prevent us, in general, from having some faith in the judicial process (even aggrieved radicals regularly call for “impartial inquiries”). — Frederic Raphael, “Basse couture,” Times Literary Supplement, 15 October 2010

Timelines

A Timeline of British History
A Timeline of Victorian Legislation
A Brief Dictionary of the English Constitution (1866)
Corn Laws

Corn Laws
The Campaign for the Repeal of the Corn Laws
Richard Cobden and the Corn Laws
Reform Acts

Reform Acts: An Introduction
The Reform Act Crisis
Terms of the 1832 Reform Act
How Did the Tories Recover after the 1832 Reform Act?
Women's Suffrage

Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon (1827-91)
The National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies
The Women's Social & Political Union
Hastings, England, and the Battle for Women's Right to Vote
Prime Ministers

British Prime Ministers 1760-1901 (an overview of materials on 27 PMs)
Robert Banks Jenkinson, Earl of Liverpool
Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
The Duke of Wellington
William Lamb, the 2nd Viscount Melbourne
Edward Geoffrey Smith Stanley, Earl of Derby
Sir Robert Peel: An Overview
Lord John Russell
Benjamin Disraeli: An Overview
William Gladstone: An Overview
Other Figures

Queen Victoria
Edward VII
Henry Brougham
Angela Georgina Burdett-Coutts
John Bright
Bartle Frere
Sir Rowland Hill
George Hudson
Daniel O'Connell
Richard Cobden
General Charles Gordon
Henry Ponsonby
Keir Hardie
Economic History

France vs. England: Mid-nineteenth-century trade and economic theory
Economics: An Overview
Capitalism
Corn Laws
Abandonment and Restoration of the Gold Standard

Miscellaneous

Tory (see also Conservative Party)
Whig
The Liberal Triumvirate
Victorian Liberalism
Political Speeches
Reviews of Books about Victorian Political History
The Poor Law: sitemap (80 documents)
The Game Laws
The Small Size of National Government in the Age of Victoria
Nineteenth-Century Riots and Civil Disorders
Sensational Literature, the “unknown public,” and the political implications of this genre
Riots, Disaffection, and Repression, 1811-19
The Anti-Slavery Campaign in Britain
Chartism and The Chartist Movement
Working-class atheism and materialism
Emigration in Victorian Britain
Politics and Theology in Victorian Dissent
The Protestant Fight for Jewish Civil Liberties in Victorian England
The Victorian Legal System: Contemporary Accounts
Cities and towns
Letters from the Past: a collection of primary sources
Socialism, Marxism, and related reform movements in late-Victorian Britain

Sitemap
Chronology
Socialism
The Social Democratic Federation
The Fabian Society
Why Did England Not Have Revolution — The Halévy Thesis
The British Empire and International Relations

British Empire Overview
British Empire: An Introduction
Why did the British Empire expand so rapidly between 1870 and 1900?
Boer War
Crimean War: An Overview (200 documents)
Crimean War: An Introduction
The Chinese Opium Wars
The People's International League
The Role of the Victorian Army
Victorian Representations of War
The Lost Franklin Expedition to find the Northwest Passage
The Risorgimento or Wars of Italian Unification
Related Topics

Victorian Social History: An Overview
A Brief History of London
The Crystal Palace International Exhibition of 1851
The Railway Mania of the 1840s
Religious Revival and the Transformation of English Sensibilities
The Metropolitan Police
The Victorian Development of the Idea of "the Public Interest"
Victorian Jacobites
Related Web Resources
Pre-Victorian Political History

Before Victoria: People and Events Discussed in the Victorian Web
King George the Fourth (a.k.a. "Prinny")
French Revolution
Homepage/sitemap
An Introduction
Interregnum
The Restoration
The " Glorious Revolution "
Cromwell
The New Model Army
James I
James II
Jacobites
The Divine Right of Kings
Kings and Queens of England from 1485 to the Present