British Jewry Since Emancipation

In 1987 Oxford University Press commissioned Alderman to write a history of the Jews of the United Kingdom since emancipation - effectively the story of British Jewry since the mid-nineteenth century. The volume (published in 1992) was conceived as a sequel to the History of the Jews in England which, written by the late Dr Cecil Roth, was first published in 1941, and which had virtually ended with the granting of full political equality in 1858. This work - of which a second edition was published in 1998 - is designed to take the story forward, but also to avoid some of the limitations that had characterized the Roth volume, especially its preoccupation with what I called, in 1992, 'public relations history,' its superficial treatment of certain topics then perceived as sensitive (such as the anti-Jewish prejudice that had accompanied the great immigration of Jews from eastern Europe at the end of the 19th century) and its reluctance to address what we would call nowadays 'contemporary history.' The text of this volume is based, on the 1998 history bringing that up to date. The opportunity has been taken to correct some errors, and to expand the narrative and its attendant footnotes to take account of recent research. The final chapter is substantially an original essay, based to some extent on materials made available to the author on a non-attributable basis.