Two famous and powerful men of the late Victorian and early
Edwardian era, Joseph Chamberlain (1836-1914) and George Cadbury
(1839-1922), towered over one of the great cities of the British
Empire - Birmingham. Together, they offer a fascinating window into
the rapidly changing world in which they lived and the
preoccupations of their generation. Throughout their lives both men
pursued a common mission - to improve the lives of their fellow
citizens - and zealously pursued a philosophy of social and civic
responsibility rooted in nonconformist religion. However, these
were very different characters sharing a single stage. Having
aggressively built a fortune in engineering as a young man,
Chamberlain entered civic politics and, during three terms as
mayor, he made Birmingham the global model of good civic
governance. But his ambitions stretched beyond Birmingham to
Westminster where he became the first great middle-class statesman
of modern Britain and the leading Radical of the age, although his
career ended in failure and he never achieved the highest office he
craved. Throughout this turbulent career, Birmingham, sometimes
referred to as his "Duchy", remained Chamberlain's political base
and his family home. It was here, after an incapacitating stroke,
that Chamberlain was buried following a funeral where the size of
the crowds brought the whole city to a halt. It was also here in
Birmingham that Cadbury created his fortune and where his
programmes for social improvement caught the attention of the
world. Taking control of the confectionery business established by
his Quaker family, Cadbury built it into one of the first great
global brands. The wealth he created allowed Cadbury to introduce
far-sighted benefits for his workers, including the visionary model
village of Bournville which was his response to the jerry-built
slum housing of his workforce. Then around the houses, schools and
green open spaces of Bournville Cadbury created a distinct
community founded on strict adherence to his Quaker values of
temperance and industrial discipline. Meanwhile, on the national
stage, Cadbury successfully campaigned to improve the lives of men
and women labouring in sweatshops and worked for the introduction
of pioneering social reforms, including non-contributory old age
pensions. Throughout this time, unlike Chamberlain, he abhorred
party politics and his pacifist views brought the two men into
conflict during the Anglo-Boer War which Chamberlain championed. By
his death, Cadbury was lauded as one of the leading philanthropists
of his age. So, both Chamberlain and Cadbury championed political
and social reform based on their experiences in Birmingham and
subsequently became important figures in British life. Yet for all
that they had in common, they were radically different from each
other. Their ambitions and their methods for effecting change took
divergent routes: as a result from time to time they came into
conflict in the arena of national affairs and in Birmingham, where
they were reluctant neighbours. Two Titans: One City is the first
study to explore, compare and contrast the lives of these two very
famous but very different figures. Historian and author Andrew
Reekes uses archives, correspondence and contemporary accounts to
reveal the fascinating lives and rivalries of these two important
figures of their age.
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