Businessmen in the House of Commons: A Comparative Study of the 1852-1857 and the 1895-1900 Parliaments
Issue Date
2009-05-11Author
Rosser, Alexander Sutherland
Publisher
University of Kansas
Format
374 pages
Type
Dissertation
Degree Level
Ph.D.
Discipline
History
Rights
This item is protected by copyright and unless otherwise specified the copyright of this thesis/dissertation is held by the author.
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Businessmen in the House of Commons: A Comparative Study of the 1852-1857 and 1895-1900 Parliaments is a comparative study of the social position of business members of Parliament in mid and late nineteenth British society and the impact of the change in social position upon the activities of these business MPs in the House of Commons in the Parliament of 1852-1857 and the Parliament of 1895-1900. Utilizing information from Dod's Parliamentary Companion and a number of biographical dictionaries, an archive of the members of the House of Commons was created for each Parliament listing information such as name, constituency, schools attended, profession, landholdings, positions on selected issues, and government positions held. The parliamentary activities of the members were traced through review of Hansard and the British Sessional Papers. Although there were few businessmen involved in the mid-century government, those members of the Parliament of 1852-1857 who were identified as businessmen participated in debate, divisions, sponsorship of legislation, and committee participation often to a much greater extent than did MPs in other professional categories. However, by the end of the century, with growing social acceptance of businessmen and participation in government, including businessmen sitting in the Cabinet, business participation in the everyday activities of the latter Parliament declined. Next, the data from the end-of-the-century Parliament was used to make a detailed study of the subsequent history of the business firms associated with the business MPs in this later Parliament to test the Wiener Thesis of British business decline. Wiener attributed this decline to the mis-education in public schools of the sons and grandsons of late Victorian entrepreneurs. Of 287 businessmen in this Parliament, the Dictionary of Business Biography listed 66 whose businesses can be traced over the following century. What is found is that there seems to be little direct correlation between public school education and business decline. Rather, decline seems to be industry specific, with public school educated men running both successful and unsuccessful businesses. Indeed, certain successful businesses, such as banking, were and still are disproportionately run by public school graduates.
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