Understanding Decline: Perceptions and Realities of British Economic Performance (Cambridge Studies in American Theatre)

Cambridge University Press
Edition: First Edition, 12/11/1997
EAN 9780521563178, ISBN10: 0521563178

Hardcover, 332 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm
Language: English

The theme of British economic decline is inescapable in contemporary debates about Britain's economic performance and sense of national identity. Understanding Decline is a serious contribution to an important argument, approached in a way that is accessible not only to the specialist academic market but to students of economics, history and politics. Barry Supple, to whom the volume is dedicated, when Professor of Economic History at Cambridge was concerned with various aspects of this historical problem. Indeed, his 1993 Presidential Address to the Economic History Society, 'Fear of failing', already a classic, is reprinted here as a highly effective keynote essay. Other essays pick up this theme in diverse but essentially unified ways, seeking to assess British economic performance in different ways over the past two centuries. They include case-studies through which the reality of decline can be explored, while differing perceptions of decline are examined in a number of essays dealing with ideas and policy issues.

Frontispiece Barry Supple
Notes on contributors
Note on references
Preface Peter Clarke and Clive Trebilcock
Introduction
national performance in a personal perspective Barry Supple
1. Fear of failing
economic history and the decline of Britain Barry Supple
2. 'A great deal of ruin in a nation' Donald Winch
3. The security of the realm and the growth of the economy, 1688–1914 Patrick K. O'Brien
4. British economic decline and human resources Simon Szreter
5. The myth of decline
an urban perspective Jay Winter
6. Phoenix
financial services, insurance and economic revival between the wars Clive Trebilcock
7. Keynes, New Jerusalem, and British decline Peter Clarke
8. Social policy, saving, and sound money
budgeting for the New Jerusalem in the Second World War Jose Harris
9. 1945–1951
years of recovery or a stage in economic decline? Bernard Alford
10. The end of empire and the golden age Charles H. Feinstein
11. Macmillan's audit of empire, 1957 Tony Hopkins
12. Apocalypse when? British politicians and British 'decline' in the twentieth century David Cannadine
13. Measuring economic decline Peter Temin
Publications by Barry Supple
Index.