1st Edition

The Habit of Authority Paternalism in British History

By A. P. Thornton Copyright 1966
402 Pages
by Routledge

402 Pages
by Routledge

402 Pages
by Routledge

First published in 1966, The Habit of Authority looks at the continuity of paternalism and its attitudes in the face of the rising principle of democracy in Britain. It seeks to show how this continuity affected, as it still does, class and convention, polity and politics; and how power, when transferred from aristocracy to the ranks below, took its assumptions with it. The book discusses... Read more

Introduction 1. The Colonization of England 2. The Estates of the Realm 3. English Authority Overseas 4. The Dislocation of Society 5. The Survival of the Ascendancy 6. Bonar Law’s Dynasty 7. Agents and Patients Index

Biography

A. P. Thornton was an academic and historian. He was Professor of History at University College, University of Toronto.

“Professor Thornton begins his book with a characteristic epigram that ‘most history is the history of what the thinker thinks important’ (p.16). In his case, being a student of the history of the British Empire, he believes that certain traits of English character- the habit of authority and its complement, the habit of deference- have much to do with its history.”

-David Spring, The Canadian Historical Review, University of Toronto Press, Volume 48, Number 1, March 1967