Distant Strangers: How Britain Became Modern

Berkeley Series in British Studies #9

by James Vernon

What does it mean to live in the modern world? How different is that world from those that preceded it, and when did we become modern?

In Distant Strangers, James Vernon argues that the world was made modern not by revolution, industrialization, or the Enlightenment. Instead, he shows how in Britain, a place long held to be the crucible of modernity, a new and distinctly modern social condition emerged by the middle of the nineteenth century. Rapid and sustained population growth, combined with increasing mobility of people over greater distances and concentrations of people in cities, created a society of strangers.

Vernon explores how individuals in modern societies adapted to live among strangers by forging more abstract and anonymous economic, social, and political relations, as well as by reanimating the local and the personal.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, British Literature, Academic

186 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Bfisher · Rating 4 out of 5]

James Vernon is an academic historian (UC Berkeley), so, as one might expect, the prose is not sparkling, although it is reasonable for a book that will probably be on the reading list for a lot of freshmen and sophomores. However, it is readable, and mercifully short, and it does make an interesting argument - that what we think of as modernity was initially expressed in Britain, and not primarily in response to the Industrial Revolution, but as a means for organization a society that was rapidly changing from a rural society organized on local, personal structures to an urban society composed of strangers and regulated by impersonal structures.

[C. B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vernon sets out to write a punchy little theory about a major historical concept: modernity. He does so well, arguing that modernity is defined by a society of strangers. The book is very admirable for how it attempts to return to ‘big’ historical claims after many years of postmodern caution and an associated tendency towards smaller scale studies. This is an essential move for us to make as historians. I might characterise this book as ‘metamodernist’, as it tries to take the lessons of intense postmodern scepticism while simultaneously being engaged in a positive and confident sort of historical scholarship.

[Michael Primiani · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really great case study on British modernity but he implies that farther-reaching concerns will be outlined by the book as well (using this as a framework for other countries becoming modern) but this is not demonstrated. Also, ignoring labour and industrialization completely in his explanation is a little too simplistic. Nevertheless, I thought this was a concise read and an interesting theory.

[Mina Savic]

I am not going to rate this book, because if we talk about the enjoyment I obviously did not enjoy it at all, but I knew I wouldn’t and it wasn’t made for that. I also can’t say if it was a good history book because I don’t have enough knowledge on the subject and how am I to say that? So let’s say I am glad I finished it and hopefully it will give me something for my essay...

[Keon Sohn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite decent and easy to absorb. Vernon seems to be utilizing Anderson's framework of an Imagined Community to understand Britain's transition into modernity, and he succeeds in pushing a compelling narrative, or, as he would describe, a mode of analysis. Good read. 4 stars.

[Xq Huang · Rating 5 out of 5]

过去我们找工作，办调动，上户口一准是要找熟人的，严重的是这类事情没熟人根本是办不成的，因为没有规则。后来很多事有规则了，比如小孩上学、医院看病、买火车票等等，没有熟人还是很难办，理由是资源有限，极为可笑。我们这一代人，包括之前的父辈们都根深蒂固地认为，没有熟人办不成事。《远方的陌生人》告诉我们与陌生人打交道则促成了英国的现代文明，200多年前的伦敦就有几百家咖啡馆，它为陌生人之间创造了熟悉的机会，更多的是与陌生人打交道促进了高效运作政府的产生，也自然熟人经济没有了市场。

[Judith Arendall · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read. Very short.

[Peter Loftus · Rating 2 out of 5]

A lot of leaps here - a few too many for me :)

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this daring return to the macro-histories of decades past, James Vernon explores how Britain between 1830-80 became the first modern nation. Vernon offers three ways in which Britain became modern: the creation of a "society of strangers," caused by a demographic explosion, urbanization, and increased mobility over ever-greater distances; the creation of abstract, impersonal ways of negotiating social, economic, and political needs in this society of strangers; and the dialectical nature of this modernity: the development of abstract forms occurred in tandem with the re-embedding of personal relations (7). _Distant Strangers_ will likely be a significant and highly controversial work in Victorian studies for years to come.