Example research essay topic: 19 Th Century Proportional Representation - 1,795 words

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One of the most powerful states in the World History the Britain was experiencing a very significant and controversial period of its history in years 1900 - 1910. These were due to various reasons. In this research we are going to examine the situation that arose in this country in terms of political and social and economical standpoint. We shall try to get some insights on the factors that were influencing these conditions and what choices did the country have in terms of where to go. Britain had various opportunities during the time period and it was rather important for the leaders of the country to choose the correct decisions. The country had a clearly established tendency of going towards the development of democracy at the end of the 19 th century and further on going.

We can take a close look at the development of democracy by examining the issue of parliamentary reform between 1832 and 1914. This reform can be approached from several perspectives one of which is democratic and others are liberal and conservative approaches to the development of the issue. With the Reform Acts being seen as part of a smooth evolutionary process whose end product is universal suffrage, we can conclude that there were some critical movement among the leading class people and the rest of the country as well. (Machin 59) It gives the impression that the main historiographical issues have been settled, and therefore fails to convey the excitement of a subject whose conclusions can never be more than provisional. We can definitely state that the very issue of the growth of democracy begs too many questions.

For, after all, none of the men of 1832, 1867 or 1884 - 5 believed even in universal male suffrage, let alone universal suffrage. Their concern was as much to defeat democracy as to promote it; and they gave genuine democrats, whether radicals or Chartist, very short shrift. The rise of democracy in Britain does not stress sufficiently that, in Norman Gash's words, the three nineteenth-century Reform Acts were carried by sharply contrasting methods and with sharply contrasting motives (Machin 77). Machin emphasizes principle rather than parliamentary tactics. Yet only the first Act, that of 1832, could be said to have been genuinely principled and that, paradoxically, was the only one of the six Reform Acts between 1832 and 1948 in which the new franchise qualifications in both county and borough were in all cases higher than the lowest of the existing qualifications. Another important issue that concerned the rise of democracy and the overall situation in the country was electoral behavior.

Although this can do little more than hint at the richness of the literature on the subject, the issue definitely concerned people. The House of Lords experienced a great deal of reform, which impacted the welfare of the state greatly. The 1911 Parliament Act promised more than has been subsequently achieved in the direction of democracy. (Machine 88) It sought to deal with an immediate unsatisfactory situation, and so failed to set out, clearly and systematically, ... a Second Chamber, suitable for a modern democracy. That is why, 80 years afterwards, fulfillment of the intentions of its authors, as set out in the preamble to the Act, is still awaited. (Machin 122) Another great aspect that influenced the socio-political situation in Britain was the issue of gender roles influence of the country stability. It is stated in the discussion that there was a great deal of female suffrage and also proportional representation during the time period. (Proportional Representation: Critics of the British Electoral System, 1832 - 1945, OUP 1992) The idea of the underlying theories and presuppositions influenced supporters and opponents of these reforms.

In order to discover the issue in depth we may return to A. H. Birch's Representative and Responsible Government (Machin 101). The Rise of Democracy in Britain had a strong political impact on the development of the country during 1900 - 1910 s.

Another significant concept that is considered rather influential when we look at the issues of development and making the right choices for the country was the issue of the foreign policy that was implemented during the time period. Primarily we are going to focus our attention in the direction of the relationships with Russia and The United States. These were the primary relations that had a great impact on the welfare of the country than. The conduct of Anglo-Russian relations in the two decades before the downfall of the Romanov monarchy in February 1917 has attracted much scholarly attention. Researchers such as Dominic Level, David Maclaren McDonald, Keith Neilson and Zara Steiner have examined both the institutions and mechanisms of foreign policy on both sides. Michael Hughes Diplomacy before the Russian Revolution: Britain, Russia and the Old Diplomacy, 1894 - 1917 is one of the first such studies to adopt a comparative approach and to help us in the research.

The author is concerned not to furnish merely another guide to relations between Britain and Russia in the reign of Nicholas II. Instead he seeks to establish the validity of the well-known charges laid against old diplomacy by contemporary critics before and after the First World War. The bulk of the monograph examines the British and Russian Foreign Offices, the respective embassies in London and St Petersburg, as well as their consular services between 1894 and 1914. The treatment accorded each power is distinctly uneven, as 120 pages are devoted to Britain whereas only 53 focus upon Russia. There is a significant portion of the information about Britain drawing on a wide, if well-known, array of archival and published primary sources. While Dr Hughes has consulted published Russian language primary materials, he has not made use of the archives of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Finally we closely see the issue of both powers in the Great War. The major conclusion of the survey is that the accusations levied by critics on both the left and right were fundamentally unfair. (Hughes 54) The organization and operation of the diplomatic establishments in Great Britain and tsarist Russia were frequently governed by domestic considerations. The autonomy of their members varied enormously according to a host of circumstances, particularly developments in the domestic environment. Hughes can discover little evidence that the foreign policy professionals were consistently able to dictate the course of policy before 1914. (Hughes 114) While it was the case that Sir Edward Grey as Foreign Secretary established considerable latitude of action for the Foreign Office in Russian policy-making after 1906, in the course of the Great War the Foreign Offices influence diminished significantly. In Russia, by contrast, there remained chronic uncertainty about the proper role of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the foreign policy-making process before and after the revolution of 1905. Furthermore, most practitioners of the old diplomacy in Britain and Russia were unwilling to countenance resort to war before 1914.

Indeed they devoted enormous efforts to avoiding hostilities in incidents such as at the Dogger Bank in 1904. The weaknesses of the two powers is not disguised here, diplomatic establishments, in particular the Russian with its prevailing ethos of the dilettante. It is his contention that at least high Foreign Office officials, as well as diplomats and consuls inside Russia, were men of intelligence and flexibility. (Hughes 214) Another important issue, which is going to be last but definitely not the least in this research is the critical relation between Britain and Ireland. These two nations were experiencing some conflicts that influenced both countries. Almost a decade has elapsed since Graham Davis produced The Irish in Britain, 1815 - 1914 (Mc Raid 59), the first major synthesis of research on the experiences of Irish migrants in Victorian and Edwardian Britain. It is stated that the development of Irish settlements had significant influence on the importance of the spiritual and social bonds engendered by Irish Catholic culture, the contribution of the Irish in Britain to radical and labor politics, and the adverse- and sometimes violent- reactions of the native population to Irish migrants, while the chapter on the Protestant Irish and their associational culture provides a particularly well-informed and informative study of a group whose experiences have been relatively neglected by historians (as the author acknowledges in his useful bibliographical essay).

MacRailds analysis would have been strengthened by a more detailed examination of Irish migration in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries (although, in fairness, research on the Irish in Britain has scarcely touched this period), by greater emphasis on the sheer diversity of the Irish migrant experience suggested by current research, and by less emphasis on the theme of anti-Irishness (which was not all-embracing and varied in both time and place). Nevertheless, the strengths of this study far outweigh its defects and the author, one among a new generation of scholars working in the field of Irish Studies, has made an important contribution to the historiography of Britain. (McRaild 97) To summarize the research we have made on the issue of the overall development of Britain in 1900 - 1910 we have to state that the country was experiencing some difficult times during the period. The notion of soon coming war, the foreign policy, the British-Irish relationships, and many other political and social factors were the main contributors to the difficulty of the situation. A large wave of Jewish migration to Britain at the end of 19 th century had its contribution as well.

The House of Lords and the House of Representatives actually did pretty well, because the country was able to overcome the difficulties of the era and establish descent environment for the people of Britain. One of the core figures that were helping the country and the nation at the time period was Herzl. Historians wrote a great deal of writings that support this idea. But as an overall conclusion we may state that the British Empire had a great period of its establishment during the years 1900 - 1910.

Although right after this period the Great War began, Britain was ready to such consequences of the worlds politics and was able to enter the war with a pretty well economical standing back than. The war actually made lots of destructions but they occurred mostly on non-British territory. Bibliography: Donald M. MacRaild, Irish Migrants in Modern Britain, 1750 - 1922, and London: Macmillan, 1999. Michael Hughes, Diplomacy Before the Russian Revolution: Britain, Russia and the Old Diplomacy, 1894 - 1927, London: Macmillan, 1999.

Ian Machin, The Rise of Democracy in Britain, 1830 - 1918, London: Macmillan, 2001. Find Will, Insight Into the British History, 1800 s to Present, New York: Viking Press, 1997. Proportional Representation: Critics of the British Electoral System, 1832 - 1945, OUP 1992.

Research essay sample on 19 Th Century Proportional Representation