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The Politics of Deference

David Cresap Moore

A Study of the Mid-Nineteenth Century British Political System.

The great historian D.C. Moore’s masterpiece, long unavailable. It is an essential fulcrum for all attempts to explain the nature of the 19th century English political system, and the great and continuous changes that occurred within that system as a preface to modern English society.

Moore shows that the principal factors which changed the Victorian political system were those that derived from its working in the context of the changing economic and social environment in the industrial revolution and its immediate aftermath.


The book reflects the premise that the key to the nature of any political system lies in the relationship between the formal political structure and the structure of the effective groups within that society.

Comments

“Moore is a very learned man. He is a master of the poll books in which the votes of the enfranchised were recorded between the first and second Reform Acts. He draws from these poll books many valuable conclusions.” – A .J. P. Taylor, New York Review of Books.

“Cresap developed these revisionist points most fully in his magnum opus, The Politics of Deference. Here he deployed a greater range of evidence and extended the argument to the Second Reform Act of 1867…he had launched an extraordinarily fruitful debate and permanently transformed scholarly thinking about the 19th-century British political system. – Professor Anthony Brundage, California State Polytechnic University.