Emigration and the State, 1803–1842: the Nineteenth-Century Revolution in Government reconsidered

Abstract

Some years ago in this journal, Oliver MacDonagh suggested a general framework for the study of administrative growth and change in nineteenth century Britain. The chief significance of this work is that it views the transformation of executive government as ‘a genuine historical process’. In the peculiar circumstances of the nineteenth century, he argues, administration was’ creative and self-generating’ in the sense that its functional and structural elaboration operated ‘beyond the control or comprehension of anyone in particular’. To this extent, administrative development is depicted as having remained remarkably free from the influence of ‘external forces’, while breeding and feeding off its own internal momentum.