Charity, philanthropy, and reform : from the 1690s to 1850

The essays in this volume explore continuities and changes in the role of philanthropic organizations in Europe and North America in the period around the French Revolution. They aim to make connections between research on the early modern and late modern periods, and to analyze policies towards poverty in different countries within Europe and across the Atlantic. Cunningham and Innes highlight the new role for voluntary organizations emerging in the late eighteenth century and draws out the implications of this for received accounts of the development of welfare states. Front Matter....Pages i-xi Introduction....Pages 1-14 State, Church and Voluntarism in European Welfare, 1690–1850....Pages 15-65 Head versus Heart? Voluntary Associations and Charity Organization in England, c.1700–1850....Pages 66-86 ‘To the Charitable and Humane’: Appeals for Assistance in the Eighteenth-Century London Press....Pages 87-107 Charity as Boundary Making: Social Stratification, Gender and the Family in the Italian States (Seventeenth-Nineteenth Centuries)....Pages 108-129 Transforming the Nation and the Child: Philanthropy in the Netherlands, Belgium, France and England, c.1780–c.1850....Pages 130-147 Religion, Philanthropy and the State in Late Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century Ireland....Pages 148-167 ‘La Charité est une Mère’: Catholic Women and Poor Relief in France, 1690–1850....Pages 168-192 English Rational Dissent and Philanthropy, c.1760–c.1810....Pages 193-207 The Evolution of a Transatlantic Debate on Penal Reform, 1780–1830....Pages 208-227 The Anglo-American Unitarian Connection and Urban Poverty....Pages 228-242 Back Matter....Pages 243-262 The essays in this book explore continuities and changes in Europe and North America in the period which straddles the French Revolution. They have been written with the aim of making connections between the substantial historiographies of the early modern and late modern periods; in so doing, they emphasize the new role for voluntary organizations which emerged in the late eighteenth century and draw out the implications of this for received accounts of the development of welfare states. They also compare and explain differences and similarities in the treatment of poverty in different countries within Europe and explore the networks of philanthropy which crossed Europe and spanned the Atlantic. Written from the perspective of donors, the essays are alert to the differing roles of men and women in charitable and philanthropic activity, to the impact of denomination, and to the ways in which philanthropists were drawn into wider reforming movements.