The transformation of Britain, 1830-1939

The Making of Britain #5

by G.E. Mingay

In a little over a century, between 1830 and 1939, both the landscape and society of Britain were a rural world became an urban (and suburban) world. The pace and scale of change a vast surge in population was housed in cities and towns, while the countryside became stagnant and neglected. Industry and trade demanded communication and transport on an unparalleled scale, and a network of railways spread into almost every corner of the British Isles. Technology was applied not on a local and limited scale, as in earlier centuries, but in every facet of life. Motor cars, radio and cinema, new and better means of waging war-were all part of this technological transformation of what had been a predominantly traditional society. By 1939, Britain had won and then lost the industrial supremacy of the world; the colonial empire gained over the same period was shortly to go the same way.

Genres: History

233 pages, Hardcover

First published April 3, 1986

About the author

Professor Gordon Edmund Mingay, 1923-2006, was a British agrarian historian and lecturer.

Mingay served to lieutenant Commander in the Royal Navy from 1942 to 1947.

Lecturer London School of Economics, 1957-1965.
Reader University Kent, Canterbury, 1965-1968,
Professor agrarian history, 1968-1986,
Emeritus professor agrarian history, from 1987.

He was a member of the British Agricultural History Society (and it's president from 1986).