Understanding Decline
Perceptions and Realities of British Economic Performance

A collection of essays which emphasises the centrality of Britain's decline over two centuries.

Peter Clarke (Edited by), Clive Trebilcock (Edited by)

9780521036849, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 21 June 2007

332 pages, 1 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.3 x 1.9 cm, 0.507 kg

"...pushes into the undergrowth of long-running debates." David J. Jeremy, Business History Review

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.

Subject Areas: Postwar 20th century history, from c 1945 to c 2000 [HBLW3], British & Irish history [HBJD1]