The World Wide Web of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge: On the Global Circulation of Broughamite Educational Literature, 1826–1848

The World Wide Web of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge:On the Global Circulation of Broughamite Educational Literature, 1826–1848 Thomas Palmelund Johansen (bio) The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (SDUK) was a central agent in the development of the British market for popular educational literature in the 1830s and '40s. This London-based philanthropic society of middle-class gentlemen was well known for its publications on science, history, biography, and other useful subjects. Between 1826 and 1848, these tracts were printed in series such as the Library of Useful Knowledge, the Library of Entertaining Knowledge, and the Working Man's Companion. The society also published the Penny Cyclopaedia, the British Almanac, and most famously, the Penny Magazine. Most scholarly work on the SDUK has concentrated on the domestic British context.1 While some studies have acknowledged a connection between foreign settings and the SDUK in London, they have not investigated the character and function of these connections or located the SDUK in the wider context of worldwide developments in adult education.2 In her now classic (though unpublished) 1933 thesis on the SDUK, Monica C. Grobel devoted the final chapter to an overview of the connections between the society in London and a multitude of institutions and individuals across the globe. Her preliminary findings suggest that the SDUK not only made a significant contribution to British debates on popular instruction, science, and cheap print but also played a role in global educational reform movements and the associated markets for cheap periodicals. Grobel concludes her thesis with the following call to future historians: "How far [the SDUK] was instrumental in shaping the whole course of educational theory and practice not only within the British Isles, but also throughout the civilized world in the nineteenth century is for the [End Page 703] twentieth century to ascertain."3 Grobel's ambition of writing a singular world history was replaced by an even more ambitious objective in the last decades of the twenthieth century: to excavate contextualised histories of education, science, political thought, or religion in places located outside the "civilized world" that were free of Western or imperial narratives. But lately historians have begun to posit more synthetic narratives in the fields of science and educational history.4 This article builds upon Grobel's work by investigating the diverse functions of the SDUK's periodical publications in a global context. I argue that the SDUK played an instrumental role in the early nineteenth-century global educational movement. The secular nature of these publications enabled them to serve very different and sometimes conflicting ends. The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge The SDUK was established in 1826 by the Whig lawyer, politician, and champion of educational reform Henry Brougham, in collaboration with a group of scientists, attorneys, and leading industrialists with liberal Whig and utilitarian convictions. In his widely read pamphlet Practical Observations upon the Education of the People (1825), Brougham expressed his support for the mechanics' institute movement.5 Brougham furthermore called for the establishment of a society that would provide cheap periodical literature to meet the demands of a rapidly expanding reading public. Several SDUK members were deeply involved in the popular education movement, serving as founding members of the University of London (1826). Brougham, James Mill, and William Allen also played a role in the establishment of the British and Foreign School Society (1808), a key promoter of the Lancasterian monitorial system of education, which was arguably the first attempt to internationalize educational theory and pedagogy.6 The SDUK was one of the most ambitious educational initiatives of its time. By exploiting the newest technologies in printing to further its popular education aims, it became a model for initiatives in countries with radically different educational agendas. One of the society's objectives was to steer its publications clear of any religious or political controversy. Its secular focus distinguished it from its rivals, such as the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge and the evangelical Religious Tract Society, on the one side, and the cheap, seditious unstamped political papers on the other. High Church and evangelical advocates widely perceived the SDUK to be dangerously...

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