Editors:
Makes an important contribution to an emerging strand of historiography focused on questions of risk and governance in modern Britain
Ranges across various subjects, from ‘drunk driving’ in Victorian cities to critiques of apparently needless ‘elf n’ safety’ regulations
Emphasises the complex nature of what come to be defined as ‘risks’, and the contestation surrounding both definitions and strategies to manage them
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Table of contents (13 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Environmental Risks
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Front Matter
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Occupational Risks
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
About this book
For more than 200 years, everyday life in Britain has been beset by a variety of dangers, from the mundane to the life-threatening. Governing Risks in Modern Britain focuses on the steps taken to manage these dangers and to prevent accidents since approximately 1800. It brings together cutting-edge research to help us understand the multiple and contested ways in which dangers have been governed. It demonstrates that the category of ‘risk’, broadly defined, provides a new means of historicising some key developments in British society. Chapters explore road safety and policing, environmental and technological dangers, and occupational health and safety. The book thus brings together practices and ideas previously treated in isolation, situating them in a common context of risk-related debates, dilemmas and difficulties. Doing so, it argues, advances our understanding of how modern British society has been governed and helps to set our risk-obsessed present in some much needed historical perspective.
Editors and Affiliations
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Department of History, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, United Kingdom
Tom Crook
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School of Social, Historical and Literar, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, United Kingdom
Mike Esbester
About the editors
Tom Crook is Lecturer in Modern British History at Oxford Brookes University, UK. He has published a number of edited collections, including (with Glen O’Hara) Statistics and the Public Sphere: Numbers and the People in Modern Britain, c. 1800–2000 (2011). He is currently completing a study of modernity and the governance of public health in Victorian and Edwardian England.
Mike Esbester is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Portsmouth, UK. His research focuses on the history of risk, safety and accident prevention in modern Britain, and has been funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health. He co-edited the April 2015 issue of Technology & Culture, on the international history of road safety.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Governing Risks in Modern Britain
Book Subtitle: Danger, Safety and Accidents, c. 1800–2000
Editors: Tom Crook, Mike Esbester
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-46745-4
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan London
eBook Packages: History, History (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-137-46744-7Published: 09 May 2016
Softcover ISBN: 978-1-349-69133-3Published: 19 December 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-1-137-46745-4Published: 26 April 2016
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIV, 315
Number of Illustrations: 3 b/w illustrations, 4 illustrations in colour