Friendly patriots: British quakerism and the imperial nation, 1890-1910

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.

Useful for: those looking at different manifestations of the peace movement, the fin de sie?cle press and British imperialism, changes in Quakerism and the political impact of evangelicism; historians of war, religion, Nonconformity, education, passive resistance, and international and Anglo-German relations.