Academic literature on the topic 'Disraeli'

Who was Clara?By Kaj ThaningIn this essay the author describes his search for Clara Bolton and her acquaintance with among others Benjamin Disraeli and the priest, Alexander d’Arblay, a son of the author, Fanny Burney. He gives a detailed account of Clara Bolton and leaves no doubt about the deep impression she made on Grundtvig, even though he met her and spoke to her only once in his life at a dinner party in London on June 24th 1830. Kaj Thaning has dedicated his essay to Dr. Oscar Wood, Christ Church College, Oxford, and explains why: “Just 30 years ago, while one of my daughters was working for Dr. Oscar Wood, she asked him who “Mrs. Bolton” was. Grundtvig speaks of her in a letter to his wife dated June 25th 1830. Through the Disraeli biographer, Robert Blake, Dr. Wood discovered her identity, so I managed to add a footnote to my thesis (p. 256). She was called Clara! The Disraeli archives, once preserved in Disraeli’s home at Hughenden Manor but now in the British Museum, contain a bundle of letters which Dr. Wood very kindly copied for me. The letters fall into three groups, the middle one being from June 1832, when Clara Bolton was campaigning, in vain, for Disraeli’s election to parliament. Her husband was the Disraeli family doctor, and through him she wrote her first letter to Benjamin Disraeli, asking for his father’s support for her good friend, Alexander d’Arblay, a theology graduate, in his application for a position. This led to the young Disraeli asking her to write to him at his home at Bradenham. There are therefore a group of letters from before June 1832. Similarly there are a number of letters from a later date, the last being from November 1832”.The essay is divided into three sections: 1) Clara Bolton and Disraeli, 2) The break between them, 3) Clara Bolton and Alexander d’Arblay. The purpose of the first two sections is to show that the nature of Clara Bolton’s acquaintance with Disraeli was otherwise than has been previously assumed. She was not his lover, but his political champion. The last section explains the nature of her friendship with Alex d’Arblay. Here she was apparently the object of his love, but she returned it merely as friendship in her attempt to help him to an appointment and to a suitable lifelong partner. He did acquire a new position but died shortly after. There is a similarity in her importance for both Grundtvig and d’Arblay in that they were both clergymen and poets. Disraeli and Grundtvig were also both writers and politicians.At the age of 35 Clara Bolton died, on June 29th 1839 in a hotel in Le Havre, according to the present representative of the Danish Institute in Rouen, Bent Jørgensen. She was the daughter of Michael Peter Verbecke and Clarissa de Brabandes, names pointing to a Flemish background. On the basis of archive studies Dr. Michael Hebbert has informed the author that Clara’s father was a merchant living in Bread Street, London, between 1804 and 1807. In 1806 a brother was born. After 1807 the family disappears from the archives, and Clara’s letters reveal nothing about her family. Likewise the circumstances of her death are unknown.The light here shed on Clara Bolton’s life and personality is achieved through comprehensive quotations from her letters: these are to be found in the Danish text, reproduced in English.Previous conceptions of Clara’s relationship to Disraeli have derived from his business manager, Philip Rose, who preserved the correspondence between them and added a commentary in 1885, after Disraeli’s death. He it is who introduces the rumour that she may have been Disraeli’s mistress. Dr. Wood, however, doubts that so intimate a relationship existed between them, and there is much in the letters that directly tells against it. The correspondence is an open one, open both to her husband and to Disraeli’s family. As a 17-year-old Philip Rose was a neighbour of Disraeli’s family at Bradenham and a friend of Disraeli’s younger brother, Ralph, who occasionally brought her letters to Bradenham. It would have been easy for him to spin some yarn about the correspondence. In her letters Clara strongly advocates to Disraeli that he should marry her friend, Margaret Trotter. After the break between Disraeli and Clara it was public knowledge that Lady Henrietta Sykes became his mistress, from 1833 to 1836. Her letters to him are of a quite different character, being extremely passionate. Yet Philip Rose’s line is followed by the most recent biographers of Disraeli: the American, Professor B. R. Jerman in The Young Disraeli (1960), the English scholar Robert Blake, in Disraeli (1963) and Sarah Bradford in Disraeli (1983). They all state that Clara Bolton was thought to be Disraeli’s mistress, also by members of his own family. Blake believes that the originator of this view was Ralph Disraeli. It is accepted that Clara Bolton 7 Grundtvig Studier 1985 was strongly attracted to Disraeli, to his manner, his talents, his writing, and not least to his eloquence during the 1832 election campaign. But nothing in her letters points to a passionate love affair.A comparison can be made with Henrietta Sykes’ letters, which openly burn with love. Blake writes of Clara Bolton’s letters (p. 75): “There is not the unequivocal eroticism that one finds in the letters from Henrietta Sykes.” In closing one of her letters Clara writes that her husband, George Buckley Bolton, is waiting impatiently for her to finish the letter so that he can take it with him.She wants Disraeli married, but not to anybody: “You must have a brilliant star like your own self”. She writes of Margaret Trotter: “When you see M. T. you will feel so inspired you will write and take her for your heroine... ” (in his novels). And in her last letter to Disraeli (November 18th 1832) she says: “... no one thing could reconcile me more to this world of ill nature than to see her your wife”. The letter also mentions a clash she has had with a group of Disraeli’s opponents. It shows her temperament and her supreme skill, both of which command the respect of men. No such bluestockings existed in Denmark at the time; she must have impressed Grundtvig.Robert Blake accepts that some uncertainty may exist in the evaluation of letters which are 150 years old, but he finds that they “do in some indefinable way give the impression of brassiness and a certain vulgarity”. Thaning has told Blake his view of her importance for Grundtvig, and this must have modified Blake’s portrait. He writes at least: “... she was evidently not stupid, and she moved in circles which had some claim to being both intellectual and cosmopolitan.”He writes of the inspiration which Grundtvig owed to her, and he concludes: “There must have been more to her than one would deduce by reading her letters and the letters about her in Disraeli’s papers.” - She spoke several languages, and moved in the company of nobles and ambassadors, politicians and literary figures, including John Russell, W.J.Fox, Eliza Flower, and Sarah Adams.However, from the spring of 1833 onwards it is Henrietta Sykes who portrays Clara Bolton in the Disraeli biographies, and naturally it is a negative portrait. The essay reproduces in English a quarrel between them when Sir Francis Sykes was visiting Clara, and Lady Sykes found him there. Henrietta Sykes regards the result as a victory for herself, but Clara’s tears are more likely to have been shed through bitterness over Disraeli, who had promised her everlasting friendship and “unspeakable obligation”. One notes that he did not promise her love. Yet despite the quarrel they all three dine together the same evening, they travel to Paris together shortly afterwards, and Disraeli comes to London to see the them off. The trip however was far from idyllic. The baron and Clara teased Henrietta. Later still she rented a house in fashionable Southend and invited Disraeli down. Sir Francis, however, insisted that the Boltons should be invited too. The essay includes Blake’s depiction of “the curious household” in Southend, (p. 31).In 1834 Clara Bolton left England and took up residence at a hotel in the Hague. A Rotterdam clergyman approached Disraeli’s vicar and he turned to Disraeli’s sister for information about the mysterious lady, who unaccompanied had settled in the Hague, joined the church and paid great attention to the clergy. She herself had said that she was financing her own Sunday School in London and another one together with the Disraeli family. In her reply Sarah Disraeli puts a distance between the family and Clara, who admittedly had visited Bradenham five years before, but who had since had no connection with the family. Sarah is completely loyal to her brother, who has long since dropped Clara. By the time the curious clergyman had received this reply, Clara had left the Hague and arrived at Dover, where she once again met Alexander d’Arblay.Alex was born in 1794, the son of a French general who died in 1818, and Fanny Burney. She was an industrious correspondent; as late as 1984 the 12th and final volume of her Journals and Letters was published. Jens Peter .gidius, a research scholar at Odense University, has brought to Dr Thaning’s notice a book about Fanny Burney by Joyce Hemlow, the main editor of the letters. In both the book and the notes there is interesting information about Clara Bolton.In the 12th volume a note (p. 852) reproduces a letter characterising her — in a different light from the Disraeli biographers. Thaning reproduces the note (pp. 38-39). The letter is written by Fanny Burney’s half-sister, Sarah Harriet Burney, and contains probably the only portrait of her outside the Disraeli biographies.It is now easier to understand how she captivated Grundtvig: “very handsome, immoderately clever, an astrologer, even, that draws out... Nativities” — “... besides poetry-mad... very entertaining, and has something of the look of a handsome witch. Lady Combermere calls her The Sybil”. The characterisation is not the letter-writer’s but that of her former pupil, Harriet Crewe, born in 1808, four years after Clara Bolton. A certain distance is to be seen in the way she calls Clara “poetry-mad”, and says that she has “conceived a fancy for Alex d’Arblay”.Thaning quotes from a letter by Clara to Alex, who apparently had proposed to her, but in vain (see his letter to her and the reply, pp. 42-43). Instead she pointed to her friend Mary Ann Smith as a possible wife. This is the last letter known in Clara’s handwriting and contradicts talk of her “vulgarity”. However, having become engaged to Mary Ann Alex no longer wrote to her and also broke off the correspondence with his mother, who had no idea where he had gone. His cousin wrote to her mother that she was afraid that he had “some Chére Amie”. “The charges are unjust,” says Thaning. “It was a lost friend who pushed him off. This seems to be borne out by a poem which has survived (quoted here on p. 45), and which includes the lines: “But oh young love’s impassioned dream /N o more in a worn out breast may glow / Nor an unpolluted stream / From a turgid fountain flow.””Alex d’Arblay died in loneliness and desperation shortly afterwards. Dr. Thaning ends his summary: “I can find no other explanation for Alexander d’Arblay’s fate than his infatuation with Clara Bolton. In fact it can be compared to Grundtvig’s. For Alex the meeting ended with “the pure stream” no longer flowing from its source. For Grundtvig, on the other hand the meeting inspired the lines in The Little Ladies: Clara’s breath opened the mouth, The rock split and the stream flowed out.”

Not many statesmen of world renown have had reputations as accomplished novelists. Benjamin Disraeli (1804-81) was a novelist who wanted to become a politician, a great politician. He succeeded and, in so doing, challenged his biographers to make connections between his thought, as expressed in his numerous political writings and novels, and his actions, as evidenced by his career as a leading Conservative politician in Victorian England. Disraeli's novels were like masks. Whatever the story line, whatever the configuration of main characters, the ambitious Disraeli, hungry for recognition, can be found somewhere inside. His psychology, his values, his objectives all can be discovered with greater or lesser facility in his novels. The writings of Disraeli the novelist serve as an instrument to penetrate the facade of Disraeli the politician.The political novel allows the reader to experience political constructs in context. Political tracts seldom have the power to draw their readers into a sense of intimacy with their implications for everyday life. To the extent that a novelist can generate empathy in the reader for his characters, the reader can begin to feel the outrage, despair, joy, or tediousness of a political or social circumstance. Disraeli employed the novel to good purpose to express and spread his political ideas. But these ideas represented less of a coherent political platform than an agenda of his personal reactions to the politics of his day, particularly as they related to his own political advancement.

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) has long suffered accusations of insincerity and expediency, especially with regard to his religious position. The mercurial novelist and prime minister famously evaded reference to his theological opinions. His official biographers, W.F. Moneypenny and G.E. Buckle, claimed that an “absolute reticence as to his personal religion was one of [Disraeli's] marked characteristics” (qtd. in Vincent 38). In June of 1832 – early in Disraeli's literary career – a critic in the Monthly Review even charged him with outright irreligion. The subject of the column was Disraeli's new novel Contarini Fleming (1832), which called itself a “psychological romance.” Speaking to the protagonist's various experiments with the hedonism of poetic expression, devout Roman Catholicism, and political pragmatism throughout the novel, the reviewer asked, “What are we to understand by the exemption from ‘sectarian prejudices’? The absence of religion. What is meant by the [artist's] ‘flowing spirit of creation’? Simply that there is no God” (qtd. in Letters 1: 284). Days after the review was published, Disraeli wrote to his sister, Sarah, “I suppose you have read the Review in the Monthly [-] where I am accused of Atheism, because I retire in Solitude to write novels” (Letters 1: 284).

This article questions the dominant historiographical approaches to understanding the career of Benjamin Disraeli, which view him either as more opportunistic than most of his political contemporaries or as more ‘continental’ in his outlook. It emphasizes his determination to understand English history and values, and argues that a desire to defend and realize his conception of England gave his career coherence. He saw himself as a foe of dangerous cosmopolitan ideas that were damaging the national character and creating social disharmony. This allowed him to cast all his major political initiatives in a heroic, elitist yet restorative light. He conceived those initiatives as a response to the damage inflicted by the domestic and international crises of the 1830s and 1840s. Indeed it is arguable that as a result Disraeli's political strategy in later life was in some ways both quixotic and outdated.

Most of Disraeli's recent biographers have drawn attention to the anti-Semitism which he experienced as a schoolboy and as an aspiring politician at the raucous free-for-all of the early Victorian hustings. But the barrage of anti-Semitism directed at him when he was prime minister between 1874 and 1880 has not received the same scholarly attention. Lord Blake, for example, in a work of almost 800 pages, devotes only three short sentences to the anti-Semitism of this period. To some degree it is easy to see why this is so. Although Disraeli was baptized into Christianity just before he turned thirteen, he was so harangued and ridiculed as a Jew during his early election campaigns that the anti-Semitic mood of the public could not be ignored, either by contemporary observers or by historians. The anti-Semitism he faced as prime minister, however, was not literally thrust in his face, and it did not intrude on his public appearances. It is perhaps understandable then that historians, contemplating the marked contrast between the vigorous Jew baiting of Disraeli's early elections and the absence of it in his later ones, would assume that, whatever prejudices might lurk in private diaries, letters, and memoirs, expressions of anti-Semitism in that most public of all arenas, the world of politics, were now unacceptable. Increasing political decorum, the triumph of liberal and nonconformist ideologies, the Emancipation of the Jews in 1858, their continuing acculturation and assimilation, their greater role in public life, and of course Disraeli's own prominence as leader of the “national” party combined, it might be argued, to create a political and social climate in which public expressions of anti-Semitism were neither profitable nor respectable.

This thesis offers a new understanding of Benjamin Disraeli's religious thought. Historians remember Disraeli as a mercurial self-fashioner, who adopted various personae throughout his public life. In focusing on his eccentric self-fashioning as a political actor and novelist, many scholars have removed Disraeli from his nineteenth-century intellectual contexts in their analyses of his ideology. No full-length study of Disraeli's religious position yet exists; instead, writers have subsumed his ideas about Judaism into analyses of his strategic presentation of Jewishness, and dismissed his Christian religious practice as politically expedient. This study takes a different approach. Rather than asking whether Disraeli can be considered a Christian or a Jew, it examines the complicated religious ideas that emerge from his body of written work, and especially from his novels. Disraeli's Judeo-Christian theism was panoramically and imaginatively conceived, and therefore less invested in complex Victorian ecclesiastical politics than the religious beliefs of some of his parliamentary contemporaries. Nevertheless, his publicly-expressed ideas about faith can be comfortably situated within the dynamic religious atmosphere of nineteenth-century Britain. The main arguments are offered in Chapters 2-5, which consider salient religious themes in Disraeli's work: his inflection of the Bible in his early novels, his figurative notion of Zionism, his religious conception of chosenness, his interest in ‘Neology' and biblical criticism, the religious assumptions that undergird his language of race, and his view of England's soil and constitution as sacred. Chapter 1 provides important contexts for these discussions by outlining the manner in which Disraeli's work intervened in the religious debates of his time. Placing Disraeli's religious ideas in these contexts not only fills an important gap in Disraeli scholarship; it also addresses methodological issues in writing religious history. Twentieth-century histories focused on Disraeli's Romanticism, orientalism, racial otherness, and political ideology at the expense of his engagement with the religious testimonies and traditions of his time. This thesis therefore offers an important corrective to both Disraeli studies and Victorian historical scholarship.

This thesis studies Benjamin Disraeli's use of the form of the "Bildungsroman" to invent and discover himself. It shows how Disraeli's own life was developing as a "Bildungsroman" while writing four of his twelve novels, Contarini Fleming, Coningsby, Sybil and Lothair, during the period 1832-1870. As each of these four novels is studied in turn in Chapters I-IV respectively, Disraeli's recurring hero appears in four guises, thus illustrating how the form of the "Bildungsroman" undergoes subtle changes. In the open-ended Contarini Fleming (1832) with its emphasis on youth and ambition, Disraeli had intended to create a work similar to the classical German "Bildungsroman" portraying the development of a character. Despite its many comparisons with Goethe's paradigmatic Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, Disraeli's early novel has more of an affinity with Stendhal's Le rouge et Ie noire. The eponymous hero of Coningsby has the distinguishing quality of "insipidness" and is seen from the perspective of an exemplary class representative of the aristocracy. This novel is taken as an example of the English "Bildungsroman", an English "fairy story" because Coningsby's destiny is already predetermined. The hero of Sybil, Charles Egremont's conviction is that one's identity is not inherited but created, which returns to the classical ideal of "Bildung", and which Disraeli reformulated as "vocation". It is argued that poverty and its relief was not the theme of Sybil but was used to point to the opportunities open to a reeducated aristocracy. In Chapter IV it is shown that it is only with Lothair, written in old age, that Disraeli discovers himself and achieves a successful classical "Bildungsroman". The narrator evaluates the represented events in a restrained and indirect manner and demonstrates a concern with analysing what is involved in the hero's discovery of himself and the world. The "Bildungsroman's" valorization of the existing social order prompts Lothair to look towards the past. He refuses to consider the future still open and his discontinuation of the quest for a philosophy of life is presented as a sign of his achieved maturity and his "Bildung" is concluded. In these four self-referential works Disraeli constructed a composite character whose biography was that of the author himself.

This thesis explores the ways in which the Victorian Tory politician and novelist Benjamin Disraeli developed his own racial thinking. In response to the anti-Semitism of the period he became convinced that race was the key to understand how society worked. The thesis traces his use of the category of race as a key axis of social difference and how race intersected in his thinking with class, culture, gender and nation and empire. It analyses his development of a one-nation-politics discussing his social criticism and his focus on those who were marginal to the mid-Victorian nation – working-class men, the Irish and women. The thesis demonstrates how in his attempt to integrate the Irish into this unified nation he increasingly came to categorise their militant separatism as the cause of Ireland’s misery. It investigates his conception of the politics of empire and how it was bound together with his one-nation vision and it outlines the ways in which his doctrine of race legitimated his imperial interventions. Drawing on all available sources of Disraeli’s thought, the thesis is a historically embedded discourse analysis that utilizes methods from political history, social and cultural history, biographical approaches and cultural studies. It treats novels, letters and parliamentary speeches as well as other political and social interventions as differently constituted and situated discourses which need to be understood as distinct and sometimes contradictory entities which nevertheless form a whole. Inspired by Hannah Arendt’s discussion of Disraeli as a Jew who fought back this thesis explores the complex ways in which mid-Victorian discourses of identity and belonging were interwoven with discourses of race.

Pour en finir avec le mythe du "masque" disraelien, l'auteur propose une nouvelle approche de la personnalite complexe de benjamin disraeli. En majeure partie grace a l'etude de ses douze romans, est mise en evidence l'evolution de la pensee et de l'attitude critique de disraeli envers ses propres origines juives et le concept de race (chapitre un), puis envers la moralite victorienne (chapitre deux). Souffrant bien moins d'insincerite chronique que d'un simple sentiment d'inferiorite du a sa judeite marquee et a la bisexualite que suggerent ses romans, les tensions et paradoxes de la vie et de la pensee de disraeli sont a mettre sur le compte d'une lente construction identitaire dont les principales etapes sont visibles dans son oeuvre romanesque. Vu sous cet angle, le mythe du monstre d'ambition ou du masque mysterieux cede la place a la realite d'un etre humain de chair et de sang, plus tolerant que ses contemporains, assoiffe de reconnaissance sociale autant qu'intellectuelle, et luttant difficilement contre le regard desapprobateur - a demi interiorise - que portait sur lui son epoque. Cette discussion est suivie de nombreuses annexes. Est donnee tout d'abord la bibliographie chronologique des oeuvres de disraeli, de son pere isaac et de sa soeur sarah, qui eurent tous deux une influence certaine sur la formation de son caractere. On trouvera ensuite le texte inedit, precede d'un commentaire, du premier conte de disraeli (intitule aylmer papillon), ainsi qu'une presentation thematique des extraits les plus memorables des douze romans etudies
Wishing to do away with the myth of the "disraelian mask", the author suggests a new approach to benjamin disraeli's complex personality. Mostly based on the study of the novelist's twelve works, from vivian grey to falconet, this discussion focuses more particularly on the evolution of disraeli's thought and attitude towards his jewish origins and the concept of "race" (chapter one), and towards victorian morality (chapter two). His reputation as a chronically insincere man is here challenged and replaced with the perception that, harassed by an inferiority complex stemming from his marked jewish background and the bisexuality that his novels suggest, the tensions and paradoxes of his life and work should rather be attributed to his slow quest for the identity that would eventually make him feel confortable with himself. In other words, for the long-time notion that disraeli was a mysterious statesman devoured by ambition, this analysis aims at substituting the more probable and humanreality of a man who was more tolerant than his contemporaries, who needed both social and intellectual recognition, and endeavoured to fight the narrow prejudices of his time. Several appendices conclude the discussion. The bibliography of all the works of benjamin disraeli is given in chronological order, followed by those of this father isaac and his sister sarah, both of whom exerted no small influence on the building of his character. Finally, preceded by a commentary, the hitherto unpublished text of disraeli's first tale aylmer papillon is quoted in full, and memorable excerpts from his twelve novels are thematically arranged in order to provide the reader with an idea of his point of view on various subjects

Throughout the last century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli?s influence and reputation as an imperialist has been praised, demonized, and denied. Though always a target of considerable political criticism, Disraeli?s advancement and, some might even say, invention of British imperial nationalism was celebrated by contemporary politicians, academics, and the general population who considered him ?inextricably entwined? with the notion of empire. However, twentieth century historiography largely downplayed and discounted Disraeli?s influence on late nineteenth century imperial British expansion by focusing not on imperialism as an ideology, but as a phenomenon of economics and power; aligning its genesis with the Industrial Revolution, and the socio-economic theories of Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and John Atkinson Hobson. But, since the publication of Edward Said?s Orientalism in 1978, which reevaluated the cultural and social relationships between the East and the West, Disraeli?s impact on Britain?s colonial century has yet again come to the forefront of imperial British historiography. Disraeli?s rhetoric and political acumen regarding Britain?s eastern empire directly (through the proclamation of Victoria?s title Empress of India in 1876) and indirectly (through his assertion of Conservative Principles at the Crystal Palace in 1872) established a significant hierarchical social structure and consciousness that still pervades British culture today.

Cette thèse étudie le début de carrière d’Enoch Powell de 1946 à 1968 et analyse l’évolution de son système de pensée qui oscilla entre la tradition paternaliste disraélienne et la tradition libérale. Elle montre ainsi, d’une part, que le consensus butskellite de l’après-guerre fut très largement un mythe et, d’autre part, que la rupture thatchérienne ne fut pas seulement préparée par Mme Thatcher et ses gourous dans les années 1970, mais par un long travail de réflexion et d'expérimentation au cœur duquel on trouve Enoch Powell. Après une formation au Département de Recherche Conservateur pendant trois ans, Powell devint député pour la première fois en 1950 et rejoignit le groupe "One Nation" qu’il quitta en 1955. Lors de ses neuf premières années politiques, il s’intéressa principalement à la situation de l’Empire britannique et à la politique du logement. Il tenta à partir de 1952 de convaincre ses collègues du groupe "One Nation" de défendre plus activement des positions libérales au détriment du paternalisme disraélien. Puis, pendant ses trois expériences ministérielles successives – au Logement, au Trésor et à la Santé, il appliqua des idées libérales sans toutefois renier complètement la philosophie disraélienne, car le Premier Ministre Macmillan défendait une approche paternaliste qui visait à mettre en œuvre les conceptions qu’il avait développées vingt ans auparavant dans son ouvrage intitulé The Middle Way. Powell refusa de participer au gouvernement de Douglas-Home en 1963, décida dès lors de rompre avec l’héritage de Macmillan et inventa le powellisme. Il devint le chantre du libéralisme en Grande-Bretagne avant d’être marginalisé au sein de son parti en 1968 à cause de ses vues nationalistes exposées dans le discours des "Fleuves de Sang"
This thesis is a study of the early stages of Enoch Powell’s career, from 1946 to 1968, and an analysis of his system of thought, which wavered between the disraelite paternalistic tradition and the liberal one. It thus shows that, on the one hand, the post-war butskellite consensus was mainly a myth, and on the other hand, the Thatcherite revolution was not only prepared beforehand by Mrs Thatcher and her gurus in the 1970s, but was also the outcome of a long process of reflection and experimentation Powell played a major role. After a three-year training at the Conservative Research Department, Powell was elected as Member of Parliament for the first time in 1950 and joined the One Nation Group, which he left in 1955. During his first nine political years, he focused primarily on the situation of the British Empire and on housing policy. From 1952 onwards, he tried to convince his One Nation colleagues that they should defend liberal stances more actively, at the expense of disraelite paternalism. Then, during his three mandates in the Ministries of Housing, of the Treasury and of Health, he applied liberal ideas without entirely denying the disraelite philosophy, for Prime Minister Macmillan defended a paternalistic approach aiming at implementing the ideas he had developed twenty years before in The Middle Way. Powell refused to be part of the 1963 Douglas-Home Government and consequently decided to break with Macmillan’s legacy thereby inventing Powellism. He became the champion of liberalism in Great Britain before being ostracized within his party in 1968 on account of his nationalistic views as presented through the "Rivers of Blood" speech

This thesis argues that Oakeshott's theory of civil association and his reading of modem European history offer a plausible way of comprehending the general historical character of the British Conservative tradition. Focusing on two broad periods, it claims that as different as the facets of 19th-century 'paternalism' and 20th_ century 'libertarianism' are, they can nevertheless be understood as interpretations of the same Conservative core. A novel Oakeshottian approach is suggested whereby its subject is understood as a tradition. This draws on the Conservative structure which consists of two categorically distinct parts - philosophical assumptions and practical politics, a divide only further emphasised by the anti-ideological stance. In order to achieve a holistic view of the tradition, its philosophical and practical layers are tied together by way of considering the Conservative assumptions in terms of their historical implications and by extracting from behind the relatively long periods of Conservative politics their main philosophical positions. Based on this scheme, it is possible to juxtapose Hegel's and Oakeshott's complementary readings of societas with Disraelian Toryism and Thatcherism. It is found that while sharing the idea of civil association, the two creeds still differ significantly since they stem from different perceptions and historical contexts. This works both period-wise but also in parallel since the threat to societas was perceived as multifaceted - both collectivism and radical individualism were considered dangerous by Conservatives. As representatives of the 'paternalist' and 'libertarian' subtraditions, the thesis focuses on some salient general features of the Disraelian and Thatcherite streams and finds them representing the distinguished Oakeshottian assumptions. Likewise, the ideas of some prominent Disraelian and Thatcherite protagonists are considered. Despite the often significant differences in their views, it is argued that their broader understanding of the role of the state relies on the idea of societas.

This chapter talks about Benjamin Disraeli and his policies, which elicited strong reactions, and who was known to some as a vulgar, cynical careerist and for others a visionary, patriotic statesman. The chapter emphasizes Disraeli as a Jew, and being Jewish was central to his self-understanding despite having been baptized at the age of 12. It also reviews accounts of Disraeli's Jewishness in which historians and biographers have labelled him variously a proto-Zionist, a Marrano, a racist, a proud Jew, and a self-hating Jew. The chapter examines the complex, ambivalent character of what being Jewish meant to Disraeli at different times in his life. It investigates Disraeli's consciousness of being a Jew as a fixed cultural or biological inheritance that emerged and evolved over several decades in response to external changes in his life and stabilized only when he was in his forties.

This chapter considers Lady Battersea's observation of Benjamin Disraeli's ideas about race that were central to his self-definition and was consistent with contemporary interpretations of his character and beliefs. It links Disraeli's political behaviour and thinking to his ethnic background, which Lady Battersea called his racial instincts. It also mentions Disraeli's biographers, historians, and political scientists who hesitated to view his racial concerns as central to his identity and career, preferring to ignore or at least minimize them. The chapter talks about Stephen Graubard, who confessed that it was difficult to understand why Disraeli charged Sidonia to instruct Coningsby in the greatness of the Jewish race. It refers to Disraeli's biographer Robert Blake who dismissed Disraeli's Jewishness in favour of the Italian 'streak' in his character.