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Contact Information:
Room: History: H010 (Humanities Building)
Telephone: 02476 150550
Office Hours: by appointment
Email: m.c.finn@warwick.ac.uk
On study leave 2009-10
Academic Profile
- PhD Columbia University, New York (1987)
- Fellow, Royal History Society (1995-present); Council member (2002-2005); Vice President (2010-2012)
- Editor, Journal of British Studies (1997-2001)
- Co-editor (with Colin Jones) of Cambridge Social & Cultural Histories (2002-present)
- Head of Department, History, University of Warwick (August 2006-July 2009)
- Founding Director, Warwick Institute of Advanced Study (April 2007-July 2009)
Undergraduate Modules Taught
Postgraduate Modules Taught
Selected Publications
'Slaves out of Context: Domestic Slavery and the Anglo-Indian Family, c. 1780-1840', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 19 (2009), pp. 181-203
'Anglo-Indian Lives in the Later Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century', forthcoming 2010 in Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies (early-view online version published 1 July 2009)
'Scenes of Literary Life: The Homes of England', in James Chandler, (ed.), The New Cambridge History of English Literature: The Romantic Period (Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 293-313.
'Henry Hunt's Peep into a Prison: The Radical Discontinuities of Imprisonment for Debt', in Glenn Burgess and Michael Festenstein, (eds), English Radicalism, 1550-1850 (Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 190-216
'The Authority of the Law', in Peter Mandler, (ed.), Liberty and Authority in Victorian Britain (Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 159-178
'Colonial Gifts: Family Politics and the Exchange of Goods in British India, c. 1780-1820', Modern Asian Studies, 40, 1 (February 2006), pp. 203-232
'Law's Empire: English Legal Cultures at Home and Abroad', Historical Journal, 48, 1 (March 2005), pp. 295-303
The Character of Credit: Personal Debt in English Culture, 1740-1914 (Cambridge University Press, 2003)
'Victorian Law, Literature and History: Three Ships Passing in the Night', Journal of Victorian Culture, 7, 1 (2002), pp. 134-46
'Scotch Drapers and the Politics of Modernity: Gender, Class and Nationality in the Victorian Tally Trade', in Martin Daunton and Matthew Hilton, eds., The Politics of Consumption: Material Culture and Citizenship in Europe and America (2001), pp. 89-107
'Men's Things: Masculine Consumption in the Consumer Revolution', Social History, 25, 2 (2000), pp. 133-55
'Working-class Women and the Contest for Consumer Control in Victorian County Courts', Past & Present, 161 (1998), pp. 116-54
'Being in Debt in Dickens' London: Fact, Fictional Representation and the Nineteenth-century Prison', Journal of Victorian Culture, 1, 2 (1996), pp. 203-36
'Women, Consumption and Coverture in England, c. 1760-1860', Historical Journal, 39, 3 (1996), 703-22
After Chartism: Class and Nation in English Radical Politics, 1848-1874 (Cambridge University Press, 1993)
Research
For the past decade, my research has focused on the intersections among social, cultural, legal and economic experience in modern Britain during the 'very long' nineteenth century, c. 1740-1914. These concerns lie at the heart of The Character of Credit: Personal Debt in English Culture, 1740-1914, and also inform my work as co-editor (with Colin Jones at Queen Mary, University of London) of CUP's monograph series, Cambridge Social & Cultural Histories. My current research, like The Character of Credit, explores the interface of literary and material life in modern Britain. But unlike my earlier work, this new project situates British society and culture within an imperial framework. Entitled 'Colonial Family Formations: Domestic Strategies in British India, 1780-1850', this study examines the ways in which family life shaped-and was in turn decisively influenced by-Britain's colonial encounter with Indian peoples. Topics included within the ambit of this project include letter-writing and the epistolary creation of family allegiance, the historical geography of imperial time, the impact of Romantic literature on colonial emotional regimes, the problematic operation of the 'rule of law' beyond the frontiers of the English legal system, the exchange and significance of Indian and British goods among colonial family networks through gifting and market mechanisms, and the competing claims of local, national and Western political identities in the Indian colonial context.
During 2004-2005, research on the 'Colonial Family Formations' project was substantially advanced by my ESRC-funded project, 'Colonial Possessions: Personal Property and Social Identity in British India' (RES-000-22-0790). The premise underpinning this aspect of my wider research project is that the exchange and consumption of European and Asian material goods fundamentally shaped Anglo-Indian family life and social identities in the decades that preceded the imposition of Crown rule in 1858. The project combines quantitative and qualitative analysis of primary source data (diaries, memoirs, private correspondence, probate inventories and wills as well as material objects) to provide an integrated analysis of select aspects of Anglo-Indians' engagement with consumer society. A searchable database of information derived from the inventories and wills, accompanied by a substantial User Guide, has been compiled in collaboration with the project's Research Assistant, Dr Matt Adams. The materials are available online from the UK Data Archive (Study # 5254), at http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/findingData/snDescription.asp?sn=5254. To date, papers delivered have included 'Furnishing the Colonial Mind: Books & Their Readers in British India, c. 1780-1840'; 'Romancing the Empire: Reading Practices and Preferences among the Anglo-Indian Elite'; Familiar Others: Household and Kin among the Anglo-Indian Elite, c. 1750-1860'; and 'Slaves out of Context: Domestic Slavery and the Anglo-Indian Family, c. 1780-1840'. Subjects addressed in these papers and articles include British book-ownership in India (novels, histories, Romantic poetry, dictionaries, etc); property relations and inheritance patterns among legitimate and illegitimate kin; and the manumission (or not) of Indian slaves 'owned' by Europeans.
I am happy to supervise MA and PhD students on topics that fall within the broad social, cultural, economic, legal and material history of Britain in the very long nineteenth century.
Research Topics Supervised (PhD)
Katherine Foxhall, 'Migrant Cholera: Medical Experience of Emigration from Britain and Ireland, 1815-1870' (University of Warwick, 2008)
Kevin Bradley, 'The Development of the London Underground 1840-1933: The Transformation of the London Metropolis and the Role of Laissez-Faire in Urban Growth' (Emory University, 2006)
Paul Menair, 'Bohemianism in Victorian London' (Emory University, 2003)
Alexander Auerbach, ' "In the Courts and Alleys": Public Authority and the Laws of Children's Education and Labor in Britain, 1870-1904' (Emory University, 2001)
Sarah Hudson, 'Attitudes to Investment Risk amongst West Midland Canal and Railway Company Investors 1700-1850' (University of Warwick, 2001; co-supervised)
Jeffrey Reznick, 'Rest, Recovery and Rehabilitation: Healing and Identity in Great Britain in the First World War' (Emory University, 1999)
