The social portrait of the Peelites

Identificator

EDN: MMVTBQ ; УДК: 94(410)

Authors

Rakhmanova Alexandra Evgenevna, master's student, Saint Petersburg State University. Russia, Saint Petersburg. E-mail: aleksandrarahmanowa@yandex.ru

Journal

HERALD OF HUMANITARIAN EDUCATION №4 (40), 2025

Section

GENERAL HISTORY

Pages

69-73

Abstract

The article attempts to consider the social portrait of the Peelite faction through the prism of the prosopographic analysis using such metrics as constituency, age and occupation in order to choose the key voting factor. The author used the quantitative approach to make three charts and analyze the resulting scales of the Peelites. Additionally, the article considers the letters of gentry form Sir R. Peel's Memoirs to prove the existence of a special gentry's ethos and to understand, why the landed interest prevailed in the Faction instead of trading one as it had been previously supposed. The author comes to the following conclusion of the prosopographic analysis: the interests of constituencies were the key voting factor in 1846, instead of the social or generational ones. The most of the Peelites belonged to the gentry class but was elected from different developing industrial cities which required the abandonment of the protection. Therefore, the issue of constitutional advantages mattered more than partial or personal due to the "Tamworth trend" which had been started by Sir Robert Peel himself in 1834. Overall, this strategy meant a national policy despite all partial and personal interests and had an impact on the formation of Sir Robert Peel's pragmatic style of government, known as "liberal conservatism".

Keywords

the Peelite faction conservatism Great Britain Free Trade Sir Robert Peel

Recieved

26.08.2025

Published

19.02.2026

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