A New England?: Peace and War 1886-1918 (New Oxford ... (ISBN 0199284407)

Fine study of English history from 1886 to 1918:
The author, Professor of History at the University of East Anglia, concludes, "Britain was thus being governed at the end of the nineteenth century by a `ruling class' narrowly based upon landed wealth and the ancient professions ..." He honestly describes the reality, but weakly resorts to inverted commas! Similarly, he shows how the ruling class was soft on Ulster loyalists, but harsh to Irish nationalists, trade unions and suffragettes, yet calls its attack on trade unions the `employers' offensive', again using inverted commas. For the Entente, in 1914 Imperial Russia's population was 140 million: 21 million (15%) were eligible to vote. France's was 39 million (the French Empire numbered another 54 million): 11 million (29%) could vote. The UK's was 46 million: 9 million (18%) could vote. The rest of the British Empire had 350 million colonial slaves, who could not vote on the war or anything else. For the Alliance, Germany's population in 1914 was 65 million (and of her colonies 6 million): 14 million (22%) could vote. Austria-Hungary's was 48 million; 10 million (21%) could vote. The French, Russian and British empires had a total population of 629 million, of whom 41 million (6.6%) could vote. Even excluding the populations of the French and British empires, the populations of France, Russia and Britain totalled 225 million, only 18% of whom could vote. Germany, its colonies and Austria-Hungary had a total population of 119 million: 24 million (20%) were entitled to vote. So the Alliance was more democratic than the Entente, and Germany, with 22% eligible to vote, was more democratic than Britain, with only 18%. Searle studies Britain's nationalism, gender, locality, occupation, religion and class; government, electoral and party systems; Ireland's struggle for national liberation; class struggle and the trade unions; the Empire and overseas investments, the Boer War ("We seek no gold fields. We seek no territory" said Lord Salisbury, who made sure that the British ruling class got them though); the Ententes with France and Russia; leisure and pleasure, art and culture, science and learning; and World War One, citing Rudyard Kipling's bitter epitaph on a dead soldier, "If any question why we died, Tell them, because our fathers lied."