Skip navigation

Stephen Thompson MPhil MA PhD

J.H. Plumb Fellow, Christ's College and Visiting Research Associate, HPSS

History of information gathering and social policy in early nineteenth-century Britain; political economy, population theory and social statistics in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

Career

Qualifications

  • 2005 BA (History) University of Cambridge
  • 2006 MPhil (Economic and Social History) University of Cambridge
  • 2009 MA University of Cambridge
  • 2010 PhD University of Cambridge

Research

My current research addresses the links between political economy, information gathering and public policy in early industrial Britain. In my recently completed doctoral thesis I analysed the impact of census data on early nineteenth-century debates about national income accounting, fiscal policy, poor relief and parliamentary reform. I am currently revising my thesis for publication.

In addition, I have started a new research project which is concerned with the evolution of English welfare provision during the 'long eighteenth century' (c. 1660-1834). At present, I am investigating two largely neglected features of the welfare regime: the formation of statutory local poor law authorities (precursors in some respects of nineteenth-century poor law unions), and the relationship between statutory relief and charitable endowments. Both areas of research employ different scales of analysis - parochial, county and national - to illuminate the uneveness of welfare provision in this period.

Publications

Journal articles

  • Thompson, S.J., 'Parliamentary enclosure, property, population, and the decline of classical republicanism in eighteenth-century Britain', Historical Journal, 51 (2008), pp. 621-42, doi:doi:10.1017/S0018246X08006948&sid=libx&genre=article">10.1017/S0018246X08006948

Book chapters

Public engagement

Seminars & conference papers

  • 'Parochial, regional or national? Local poor relief legislation and the English Poor Law, 1660-1841', Population, economy and welfare: a conference in honour of Richard M. Smith, Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge, September 2011.
  • 'Measuring the national wealth in late eighteenth-century Britain', Economic History Society Annual Conference, University of Cambridge, April 2011
  • 'Re-drawing the boundaries of British democracy? Census data and the 1832 Reform Act', Broken Down by Age, Sex and Religion: The History of the Census in Britain, The British Library, March 2011
  • 'Political arithmetic and war in British economic thought, c. 1670-1800', Economic and Social History of the Premodern World, 1500-1800, Institute of Historical Research, January 2011
  • 'Social statistics and social policy in Hanoverian Britain', Economic History Society Annual Conference, University of Warwick, April 2009
  • ''Hurried and confused' or 'no more than Mr. Pitt did'?: Re-thinking the reform crisis, 1831-2', British History in the Long Eighteenth Century Seminar, Institute of Historical Research, February 2009
  • 'From the 'rule of three' to the 'Drummond scale': population statistics and parliamentary reform in early nineteenth-century Britain', Seminar in Modern Economic and Social History, University of Cambridge, November 2008
  • 'Population statistics and the 1832 Reform Act', Numbers, norms and the people: statistics and the public sphere in modern Britain, Oxford Brookes University, September 2008
  • ''All the horrors of a bellum servile': Robert Southey's defence of the old poor law', Robert Southey and the Contexts of Romanticism, Keswick, Cumbria, March 2008
  • 'Geographies of knowledge: census-taking and state-formation in early nineteenth-century Britain', Historical and Cultural Geography Seminar, University of Cambridge, February 2008

Teaching

  • Historical Tripos: Part I, Paper 5 (British Political and Constitutional History 1700-1914) and Paper 10 (British Economic and Social History 1700-1914)
  • MPhil in Economic and Social History: Advanced Paper on the History of Economic and Social Thought

External activities