Government in an English provincial town : the Corporation of Ipswich, 1720-95
Despite an increasingly rich historiography detailing the economic, cultural, and political development of eighteenth-century provincial towns, governance and politics under the municipal corporation has received little recent attention. For the most part, a conventional view prevails holding that the corporations were increasingly corrupt, under-resourced and institutionally obsolete. The rise of statutory authorities and other forms of government are seen as evidence of the ineffectiveness of the old corporate regimes. This thesis attempts to understand what sort of role the static, institutionally ossified municipal corporation was able to play in within a community undergoing important social, cultural, and economic changes over the course in the eighteenth century. In the case of Ipswich, Suffolk, it is argued that while the ancient Corporation did not function in accordance with modem standards of bureaucratic effectiveness and democratic openness, it nonetheless played central role in the life of the community. As an instrument of for the regulation of trade and the maintenance of commercially vital infrastructure, the Corporation operated with great effectiveness until the last decades of the eighteenth
Clemis, J. David
JN101 Great Britain ; HD2709 Corporations ; DA690.I6 Ipswich
Government in an English provincial town : the Corporation of Ipswich, 1720-95. Despite an increasingly rich historiography detailing the economic, cultural, and political development of eighteenth-century provincial towns, governance and politics under the municipal corporation has received little recent attention. For the most part, a conventional view prevails holding that the corporations were increasingly corrupt, under-resourced and institutionally obsolete. The rise of statutory authorities and other forms of government are seen as evidence of the ineffectiveness of the old corporate regimes. This thesis attempts to understand what sort of role the static, institutionally ossified municipal corporation was able to play in within a community undergoing important social, cultural, and economic changes over the course in the eighteenth century. In the case of Ipswich, Suffolk, it is argued that while the ancient Corporation did not function in accordance with modem standards of bureaucratic effectiveness and democratic openness, it nonetheless played central role in the life of the community. As an instrument of for the regulation of trade and the maintenance of commercially vital infrastructure, the Corporation operated with great effectiveness until the last decades of the eighteenth
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