The Periodical The Examiner’s Coverage of the Crimean War in 1854 and the Problems of the Concept of Progress
The weekly periodical The Examiner is well-known by name to historians of Victorian Britain but no serious attempts appear ever to have been made to investigate its precise profile over its approximately eighty-year publication run or to identify exactly what justifies its habitual qualification as...
Αποθηκεύτηκε σε:
| Τόπος έκδοσης: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/rfcb, |
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| Κύριος συγγραφέας: | |
| Μορφή: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Γλώσσα: | Anglais |
| Έκδοση: |
Revue française de civilisation britannique
2026
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| Θέματα: | |
| Διαθέσιμο Online: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Περίληψη: | The weekly periodical The Examiner is well-known by name to historians of Victorian Britain but no serious attempts appear ever to have been made to investigate its precise profile over its approximately eighty-year publication run or to identify exactly what justifies its habitual qualification as ‘progressive’ or ‘radical’ or whether such ‘progressivism’ or ‘radicalism’ implied different, fluctuating values as the nineteenth century wore on. Famously, the periodical was where Alfred Tennyson chose to publish his Charge of the Light Brigade, itself an ambiguous reflection on aristocratic military ‘blundering’ during the Battle of Balaclava (1854), and the Crimean War of 1853-1856 offers itself up as rich case study material revealing markers of the Examiner’s purported progressive values and their evolution over time. After establishing a reasonably solid understanding of the nature and profile of the periodical’s editorial staff, this article draws on extensive, and hitherto largely under-investigated, primary source material both from key historical moments before the Crimean War and from key moments during the siege of Sevastopol. It will be shown that the aura of revolt associated with The Examiner in its fiery inaugural years had faded by the time of the Crimean War, partly because of historical change, but also partly because of the innate ambiguities of the concept of progress and its complex relationship to bourgeois goals and ideology. |
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