Manchester and Lille in Transnational Perspective, 1860 – 1914
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Provincial Modernity: Manchester and Lille in Transnational Perspective, 1860 – 1914 Harry Andrew Higgo Stopes UCL This thesis is submitted for the degree of PhD. 1 I, Harry Andrew Higgo Stopes, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 2 Abstract In this thesis I explore the ways middle classes in two provincial cities imagined the relationship between the city and the rest of the world. How did they make sense of local identity in the light of economic, geopolitical and cultural globalisation? I examine the political cultures and social structures that sustained their ways of thinking, showing how their responses were shaped by the economic connections of the two textile cities, and were articulated in municipal cultural policy around art galleries and the opera. I follow other historians in arguing that although the nineteenth century is typically portrayed as the age of nationalism, the cultures of 'second cities' make a powerful contribution to the development of European modernity. Where I depart from other work on second cities is in my desire to work comparatively and with a transnational frame. I show that ideas about local character informed the ways provincial elites responded to globalisation around the turn of the century. In the first research chapter I discuss the composition of the middle classes in the two cities, and the institutions and practices which bound them together. In the second research chapter I discuss opera in Lille. Nineteenth century opera is traditionally seen as an important way for its patrons to promote particular ideas about national identity. In this chapter I show how it was also used to make statements about local identity, and to connect the city to the latest European trends. The third research chapter concerns the Manchester municipal art gallery. I show how municipal management was used to express ideas about local prestige and sophistication. I also show that municipal councillors looked to cities in Germany for examples of how to manage the gallery, and make it respond to local needs, which they identified with industry. In the final chapter I examine the various ways in which local elites used industry and commerce to imagine in concrete terms the relationship between the city and the globe. I show how they produced, collected and disseminated knowledge about the world through local institutions, principally the Chambers of Commerce. 3 Table of Contents Abstract 3 Acknowledgements 6 List of Abbreviations 8 Epigraph 9 Introduction: Where and when in the world? 10 0.1 Alderman Jabez Foodbotham, Chairman of the Bradford City Tramways 10 and Fine Arts Committee 0.2 Thesis Methods and Questions 13 0.3 'Millions! Millions! Chateaux! Liste civile!': An introduction to the society 15 and politics of Lille and Manchester in the nineteenth century 0.4 The meaning of the local 25 0.5 Provincial Modernity 30 0.6 The city in the world 36 0.7 Comparative and transnational history 40 0.8 Thesis structure and sources 44 Chapter One: From Citadin to Citoyen? The provincial middle classes in 47 the nineteenth century 1.1 Introduction: The industrial middle classes, cosmopolitan provincials 47 1.2 Who were the provincial middle classes? Social and professional 58 backgrounds 1.3 'A place in the world': The horizons of the provincial middle classes 69 1.4 The flexibility of the local: a biographical approach 79 1.5 Conclusions: the middle classes, the city and the world 87 Chapter Two: Northerners 'in the Italian style': Opera as a vehicle for 89 transnational imaginations in Lille and Manchester 2.1 Introduction 89 2.2 The opera audience as an imagined community 93 2.3 The politics of the opera: municipal control 105 2.4 'Décentralisation théâtrale' 116 2.5 'Lydéric, Sauveur de Flandres' : Regionalism and transnational exchange in 123 the opera 2.6 Conclusions: Lille and Manchester, similarities and differences 133 Chapter Three: 'Stretching out the hand of friendship from one town to 141 another': the art gallery and the local state in Manchester and Lille 3.1 Introduction 141 3.2 The Manchester International Art Exhibition of 1860 148 3.3 The incomplete municipalisation of the Manchester gallery 160 4 3.4 'Stretching out the hand of friendship from one town to another' 169 3.5 Conclusions: the comparison with Lille, what's wrong with Manchester? 181 Chapter Four: Capitalist cosmopolitanism: the economic roots of 190 transnational imaginations 4.1 Introduction 190 4.2 Transnational networks and the gathering of knowledge about the world 197 4.3 Tariffs and free trade: Local interests and global trade 204 4.4 Imperial globalisation: Where the city stands 214 4.5 Time, space and the invention of tradition: historicising industrialisation 222 4.6 'The actual point of contact between Lancashire and the World': Transport 231 as the concrete means through which globalisation is imagined 4.7 Conclusions 242 Conclusions and Further Questions 244 Bibliography 251 Unpublished Primary Material 251 Published Primary Material – Newspapers 254 Published Primary Material – Books and Pamphlets 254 Published Primary Material - Periodicals 262 Published Primary Material – Edited Collections 263 Secondary Material - Articles 263 Secondary Material – Chapters in Edited Collections 274 Secondary Material - Books 283 Online Sources 313 List of illustrations The Towers, Didsbury 18 Map of Lille, 1874 33 Portrait of Edmund Ashworth 64 Lecture notes by John Ernest Phythian 77 Photograph of members of the Société des Sciences, Lille, 1902 84 Portrait of Géry Legrand 110 Lydéric, opera libretto 126 Royal Manchester Institution, 1861 160 Portrait of Walter Butterworth 178 Portrait of Edmond Faucheur 200 Port of Manchester imagined in 1950 234 5 Acknowledgements There have been many moments during the last few years when I did not believe I would ever manage to complete this thesis. It has, at times, been a painful experience. That I eventually emerged on the other side is down in large part to the patient support and the wise guidance of my supervisor, Axel Körner. I often didn't believe him when he told me, but the fact that he had such faith in me and my work was a powerful inspiration. Bernhard Rieger was a good natured second supervisor. His incisive comments on an early semi-complete draft encouraged me to settle in for the long haul. One thing that he said about this project back in the first year of my PhD has stuck with me ever since and informs my final conclusions. Tariq Jazeel took on the role of a kind of auxiliary supervisor during my interdisciplinary year as a Geographer, and bore my presence with good humour and kindness. The Arts and Humanities Research Council funded my research, as did the UCL Graduate School for one year, through its Cross Disciplinary Studentship. Both the Graduate School and the UCL History Department granted me extra funds for archive and conference trips. I am very grateful to all of them for their support. Having been at UCL for my undergraduate, postgraduate, and research degrees has meant that I have made many friends in the department. My first personal supervisor Antonio Sennis taught me early on that an academic could be good company. Nicola Miller supervised my second year long essay, and it was her praise and encouragement that led me to believe that academia could be for me. Eleanor Robson, as Graduate Tutor, made a number of valuable suggestions for which I am very grateful. Many people outside of the university have been important sources of encouragement and insight. I was supported by helpful staff at all the archives I visited, but I would especially like to thank Tony at Manchester Central Library and Hervé Passot at the Archives du Nord. I wish also to give special thanks to Geoffrey Cantor and Sabine Nollau, for reasons of which they are well aware. Teaching has always been a great pleasure, and I thank my students and colleagues in the History departments at UCL, Royal Holloway, and Queen Mary for the trust they put in me, the thought-provoking questions they asked, and the essays they wrote. It was a welcome distraction from writing a thesis, as well as a reminder of what I consider to be the best thing about academia. 6 When I wrote the first draft of my UCAS personal statement at the age of 17, I began with a quotation from a popular history of Manchester, declaring that I wanted to study 'Chartists and chart hits'. I was persuaded by my History teacher that this would not strike the right tone, and I changed it. I now know how wrong he was. I am proud to finally be writing about the history of the city I grew up in, helping it, I hope, to escape from some dead ends of historiography and popular condescension. I am thrilled to have found, in Lille, another city that I love almost as much. To Aurelien, Julien, Nicolas, Max, Julien O, Aline, Boxing Club des Flandres and the bar staff at Le Poste, je vous en dois une. I have found in the last few years a renewed affection for friends, colleagues and comrades past and present, near and far. Amanda Hughes, Andrew O'Hagan, Andrew Smith, Ashna Sarkar, Ben Mechen, Camila Gatica Mizala, Cari Tuhey, Charlotte Lydia Riley, Dan Sewell, David Sim, Edward Simpson, Hannah Young, Isaac Schling, Jenna Bass, Laura Schwartz, Lenny Hodges, Lucy Dow, Myka Abramson, Neil Loughlin, Nemira Gasiunas, Rob Tunningley, Sarah Shin and Will De Freitas have all been sources of insight, laughter, and kindness. Rupinder, Dhanveer, Rees, Carson, Juliet, Michael and Justin remind me that history is most valuable when it helps us to see our way to somewhere else.