Secular Foundations of the Liberal State in Victorian Britain

Examines the entanglement of secularity and liberality in the foundation of the modern state in Britain. "Modern" Britain emerged from the outcome of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. The rather standard Whig account of the long nineteenth century is one of growing stability, progress and improvement. And yet nothing was preordained or inevitable about the period's stability. Ruling elites felt the constant anxieties of revolutionary terrorism. As Lubenow argues, it was a period of