This thesis examines the public image and dominant attitudes of British Friends between 1890 and 1910 through the Quaker press – The Friend, The British Friend, Friends’ Quarterly Examiner and Peace and Goodwill – as well as reports from Yearly Meeting and British Weekly, a Nonconformist newspaper. In essence, the author argues that this generation of Friends were the first entrenched within British society and politics, and were part of an ‘Alternative Establishment’; something which, despite commitment to their seventeenth-century tenets and nineteenth-century evangelicalism, they were unwilling to leave. By 1900, it is asserted, Quakers believed that they alone were the rightful leaders of Nonconformist denominations and the only people who could spiritually guide, educate and minister to those in power. Quakerism was considered by some to be on the verge of inspiring mass conversion.
Injected with religious zeal, a modernising and worldly approach, self-confidence, and the patriotism which abounded in Imperial Britain, Quakers set out to defend their faith and promote their ideals in the corridors of power. For the author, the key areas in which this ‘Friendly patriotism’ was expressed were the 1902 Education Act, the European Peace Movement and Anglo-German friendship. Yet at every turn, it is argued, Quakers were flattered by external compliments, blinkered by their own heritage and self-importance, and failed in their ideals. Their central tenet of pacifism was undermined by their: unwillingness to break the law under passive resistance against the 1902 legislation; inability to recognise the hypocrisy and hollowness of participating in a European Peace Movement, which manifested in ‘peace jamborees’ and lavish banquets with the glitterati; and their hubris and conviction that they would lead heads of state – namely Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, two undemocratic and militaristic rulers – to become grand peacemakers.
