The World Wide Web of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge: On the Global Circulation of Broughamite Educational Literature, 1826–1848

Branding political, religious, or scientific knowledge as "useful" connoted reform and an intention to align society with the emerging industrial age. [...]usefulness" and "reform" were legitimate and positive positions across the entire political spectrum and signalled a pr...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Victorian periodicals review 2017-12, Vol.50 (4), p.703-720
Main Author:	JOHANSEN, THOMAS PALMELUND
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	1778-1868 1800-1899 19th century Antebellum period Baron Biographies Brougham and Vaux, Henry Brougham Brougham, Henry Peter Chinese languages Competition Education reform Educational literature educational reform Educational theory English language English literature Evangelicalism globalization Great Britain History Internet Knowledge Libraries Literary translation Modernity Natural history Periodicals Political and social views Politics Publishing Religion Science Secularism Society Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (Great Britain) University colleges Welsh language
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Summary:	Branding political, religious, or scientific knowledge as "useful" connoted reform and an intention to align society with the emerging industrial age. [...]usefulness" and "reform" were legitimate and positive positions across the entire political spectrum and signalled a progressive sense of modernity, especially after 1832.14 In locations abroad, the notion of "useful knowledge" was equally open to appropriation. Forsell enlisted bishops, professors, and other non-political members to serve on the society's board. [...]the progressive impulse from Britain was translated into a conservative vision of reform that was more about the preservation of the established order and a romanticist idealization of the peasantry than it was about social and political change in the wake of industrialization.18 In 1833, two German translations of the SDUK's Results of Machinery appeared, one published in Lübeck and the other in Leipzig, "after the fifth English edition and the French translation. [...]the lack of explicitly religious content made it uninteresting to the Welsh readership.24 The periodical experienced a loss of more than £200 by its termination in 1835. [...]the editors of the Chinese Repository were so inspired by Davis's and the SDUK's arguments on the legitimacy and desirability of cheap periodical literature that they decided to cut their price by half.46 Casts of woodcuts were not the only items sent between China and London.
ISSN:	0709-4698 1712-526X 1712-526X