The radicalism of Joseph Chamberlain: his ideas and actions in the context of Birmingham in the 1870s

In this paper, we set out the Radicalism of Joseph Chamberlain who may be said to represent the activist element among middle-class radicals of the 1870s. Behind his ideas and actions, we deal with a social group which some of middle-class radicals at that time formed around him. The discussion will be on what such radicals thought and actually did. The main purpose of this paper is thereby to examine the historical significance of 'Chamberlainite Radicalism' in the 1870s - the changing (or unchanging) 'situation' as the background and his ' motive' and ' purpose' within the situation. By using mainly the Joseph Chamberlain Papers in the University of Birmingham Main Library, we sum up the thesis of the radical group called the 'Birmingham Liberals' that the communal society should be incorporated into a civil society if the social order was to stay in balance under the changing and modernizing but still traditional society of the 1870s. But at the same time it becomes clear that Chamberlainite Radicalism had no idea of breaking up the existing social order, but had essentially the aim of restoring the balance of the social order under the name of' Advanced Liberalism'