The Origin of the Welfare State in England and Germany, 1850-1914

A comparative study of the origins of the welfare state in England and Germany from 1850 to 1914. Peter Hennock analyses policies on social security and the public provision of medical care, dealing with public poor relief, industrial injury, with sickness, invalidity and old age, and with unemployment. He demonstrates that national insurance has played a larger role in Germany than in Britain from the beginning. The book will appeal to students and scholars of British and European political history, social policy and the welfare state.

E. P. Hennock is Emeritus Professor of Modern History at the University of Liverpool. He has written Fit and Proper Persons: Ideal and Reality in Nineteenth Century Urban Government (1968), and British Social Reform and German Precedents: The Case of Social Insurance, 1880–1914 (1987).