Abstract
Chamberlain’s story, as the first self-made businessman to enter the Cabinet, the founder of a political dynasty and, arguably, the first truly modern politician, is perhaps unique in British political history. Unsurprisingly, his life was frequently celebrated while he was still alive, mainly by his adopted city of Birmingham. In a lavish civic publication marking the beginning of the twentieth century, Chamberlain’s biography is presented second, only preceded by the current Lord Mayor, and notes that as the current Colonial Secretary he was ‘more than ever prominent among British statesmen’.1 Given the length of his career, and his undoubted influence in local, national and international politics, his life has largely been studied by political biographers, beginning before he had even died. Often overlooked, Alexander Mackintosh wrote the first full biography of Chamberlain in 1906 and produced a second edition shortly after his death in 1914. He tried to remain impartial, but noted how difficult this was, as for many, ‘he [Chamberlain] was either saint or devil’.2 He revealed his own position when he commented that Chamberlain’s changes of political view ‘were unusually numerous and violent’ and that they did not merely happen ‘in the judgement of his youth, but in those of his ripe and mature manhood’.3
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Notes
W.T. Pike (ed.), Birmingham at the Opening of the 20th Century: Contemporary Biographies (Brighton: W.T. Pike, 1900), p. 52.
A. Mackintosh, Joseph Chamberlain: An Honest Biography, 2nd edn (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1914), p. ix. Mackintosh capitalised on the interest in Chamberlain’s life by writing a second book, The Story of Mr Chamberlain’s Life (London, 1914) in the same year.
Peter Fraser actually managed to produce the first single-volume biography of Chamberlain since Mackintosh in the years between volume IV and the final two volumes of the official biography. P. Fraser, Joseph Chamberlain: Radicalism and Empire, 1868–1914 (London: Cassell, 1966).
D. Judd, Radical Joe: Life of Joseph Chamberlain (London: H. Hamilton, 1977);
R. Jay, Joseph Chamberlain: A Political Study (Oxford University Press, 1981);
J.E. Powell, Joseph Chamberlain (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977).
C.W. Hill, An Illustrated Life of Joseph Chamberlain, 1836–1914 (Aylesbury: Shire, 1973);
J. Tann, Joseph’s Dream: Joseph Chamberlain and Birmingham’s Improvement (University of Birmingham Press, 1978).
H. Browne, Joseph Chamberlain: Radical and Imperialist (London: Longman, 1974);
R. Grinter, Joseph Chamberlain: Democrat, Unionist and Imperialist (London: Arnold, 1971).
R. Jay, Joseph Chamberlain: A Political Study (Oxford: Clarendon, 1981), p. 348.
P. Marsh, The Discipline of Popular Government: Lord Salisbury’s Domestic Statecraft: 1881–1902 (Hassocks: Harvester, 1978).
D. Nicholls, ‘Review of Joseph Chamberlain: Entrepreneur in Politics’, Social History, 20.2 (May 1995), pp. 257–60; J. Harris, ‘Review of Joseph Chamberlain: Entrepreneur in Politics’, Independent, 21 August 1994; J. Parry, ‘Review of Joseph Chamberlain: Entrepreneur in Politics’, London Review of Books, 16.12 (23 June 1994).
J.E. Powell, Joseph Chamberlain (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1977), p. 151.
M. Balfour, Britain and Joseph Chamberlain (London: Allen and Unwin, 1985).
P. Marsh, The Chamberlain Litany: Letters within a Governing Family from Empire to Appeasement (London: Haus, 2010).
J.P. Gehrke, ‘Municipal Anti-Socialism and the Growth of the Anti-socialist Critique in Britain, 1873–1914’ (PhD thesis, University of Minnesota, 2005), p. 69.
See I. Cawood, The Liberal Unionist Party, 1886–1912: A History (London: I.B. Tauris, 2102).
M. Bentley, Lord Salisbury’s World: Conservative Environments in Late Victorian Britain (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001);
J.M. Lawrence, ‘Class and Gender in the Making of Urban Toryism, 1880–1914’, English Historical Review, 108 (1993), pp. 629–52;
F. Trentmann, Free Trade Nation: Commerce, Consumption and Civil Society in Modern Britain (Oxford University Press, 2008).
A.B. Rodrick, Self-Help and Civic Culture: Citizenship in Victorian Birmingham (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004).
E.P. Hennock, Fit and Proper Persons: Ideal and Reality in Nineteenth Century Urban Government (London: Arnold, 1973).
R. Ward, City State and Nation: Birmingham’s Political History, 1830–1940 (Chichester: Phillimore, 2005).
M.C. Hurst, Joseph Chamberlain and West Midland Politics, 1886–1895: Dugdale Society Occasional Papers No. 15 (Oxford: Dugdale Society, 1962).
See also I. Cawood, ‘The Unionist “Compact” in West Midland Politics 1891–1895’, Midland History, 30 (2005), pp. 92–111;
I. Cawood, ‘Joseph Chamberlain, the Conservative Party and the Leamington Spa Candidature Dispute of 1895’, Historical Research, 79 (2006), pp. 554–77.
M.C. Hurst, Joseph Chamberlain and Liberal Reunion: The Round Table Conference 1887 (London: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1967).
See, for example, J.R. Moore, ‘Liberal Unionism and the Home Rule Crisis in Leicester, 1885–1892’, Midland History, 26 (2001), pp. 177–97;
J.R. Moore, ‘Manchester Liberalism and the Unionist Secession, 1886–1895’, Manchester Regional History Review, 15 (2001), pp. 31–40;
C. Burness, ‘Strange Associations’: The Irish Question and the Making of Scottish Unionism, 1886–1918 (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2003);
M. Roberts, ‘“Villa Toryism” and Popular Conservatism in Leeds, 1885–1902’, Historical Journal, 49 (2006), pp. 217–46;
A. Windscheffel, Popular Conservatism in Imperial London, 1868–1906 (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2007);
I. Cawood, ‘The Persistence of Liberal Unionism, 1886–1912’, in G. Doherty (ed.), The Home Rule Crisis, 1912–1914 (Cork: Mercier Press, 2014).
P. Marsh, Joseph Chamberlain: Entrepreneur in Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 668.
Quoted in A.B. Cooke and J.R. Vincent, The Governing Passion: Cabinet Government and Party Politics in Britain, 1885–86 (Hassocks: Harvester, 1974), p. 43.
D. Dilks, Neville Chamberlain 1896–1929 (Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 72.
D. Willetts, The Conservatives in Birmingham (Molesey : Centre for Policy Studies, 2008); Greg Clark, speaking in the House of Commons, 7 July 2014.
N. Timothy, ‘It is Time for the Conservative Party to Remember Its Historical Debt to Radical Joe’, Conservative History Journal, 2.3 (2014), p. 61.
See, for example, G.J. Barnsby, Socialism in Birmingham and the Black Country 1850–1939 (Wolverhampton: Integrated Publishing Services, 1998);
E. Hopkins, ‘Working Class Life in Birmingham between the Wars 1918–1939’, Midland History, 15 (1990), pp. 129–50.
W.S. Churchill, Great Contemporaries (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1937), p. 57.
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Cawood, I. (2016). Conclusion Joseph Chamberlain: His Reputation and Legacy. In: Cawood, I., Upton, C. (eds) Joseph Chamberlain. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137528858_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137528858_11
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