Making words Flesh: Changing Roles of University Learning and the Professions in 19th Century England

Abstract

In 19th century Oxford and Cambridge, university learning, with itsemphasis on the Classics, is often thought to have been at odds with thetendencies of the modern world. Sometimes its influence is even seen aspernicious, bearing an anti-entrepreneurial bias that stifled Britain'seconomic development. This article argues that, on the contrary, anindeterminate body of learning in the universities cooperated withindeterminate social values in the professions to produce a new,deliberative liberalism: a kind of cultural capital that embraced a newmodernity, and gave a new authority to British administration andgovernment in the 20th century.