Favouritism, Patronage and the ‘Family System’ in England, c.1700–1850

This article examines the interrelationships between familial, social, political and professional ideas about favouritism in England. It shows that there was a cross-fertilisation of discourses over the century-and-a-half between c.1700 and 1850, when favouritism was increasingly problematised in the domestic, social and professional spheres. Although several issues were identified as emanating from its practice, it was the very role of the family itself that increasingly made favouritism so deeply objectionable to those who articulated a vision of social and professional mobility and advancement based on merit rather than interpersonal relationships and family structures. Indeed, the link between the body politic and family was reformulated from the age of reform onwards as concerns about favouritism were directed inward to the privatised family and then to the pathologised individual. Overall, therefore, this article demonstrates that the institution of the family was both conceptually and practically fundamental to the meta-structure of social, professional and political life, long beyond the early modern period

Body politic · Family life · Institution · Interpersonal communication · Interpersonal relationship · Political science · Politics · Social mobility · Social science · Sociology · Gender Studies · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Law · Psychology · Social Psychology

• Hephaestion and Alexander

  Hugh Smith, Simon Taylor•The English Historical Review•2009

  Add to list

• John Wilson Croker

  Open Access•C I Hamilton•The Historical Journal•2000

  Add to list