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Joseph Chamberlain (8 July 1836 – 2 July 1914) was a British politician and statesman, who was first a radical Liberal then a leading imperialist. Chamberlain made his career in Birmingham, first as a manufacturer of screws and then as a notable Mayor of the city. During his early adulthood he was a radical Liberal Party member and a campaigner for educational reform. As a self-made businessman who never attended university, he had contempt for the aristocracy. He entered the House of Commons at thirty-nine years of age, relatively late in life for a front-rank politician. Rising to power through his influence with the Liberal grassroots organisation, he served as President of the Board of Trade in Gladstone's Second Government (1880–85). At the time, Chamberlain was notable for his attacks on the Conservative leader Lord Salisbury, and in the 1885 general election he proposed the "Unauthorised Programme" of benefits for newly enfranchised agricultural labourers. Chamberlain resigned from Gladstone's Third Government in 1886 in opposition to Irish Home Rule, and after the Liberal Party split he became a Liberal Unionist, a party which included a bloc of MPs based in and around Birmingham. From the 1895 general election the Liberal Unionists were in coalition with the Conservative Party, under Chamberlain's former opponent Lord Salisbury. Chamberlain accepted the post of Secretary of State for the Colonies, declining other positions. In this job, he presided over the Second Boer War and was the dominant figure in the Unionist Government's re-election at the "Khaki Election" in 1900. In 1903, he resigned from the Cabinet to campaign for tariff reform (i.e. taxes to be included in the price of imported goods instead of free trade). He obtained the support of most Unionist MPs for this stance, but the split contributed to the landslide Unionist defeat at the 1906 general election. Some months later, shortly after turning seventy, he was disabled by a stroke. Despite never becoming Prime Minister, he is regarded as one of the most important British politicians of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as a renowned orator and an interesting character who split and helped to derail the political prospects of both main parties.〔Keith Layborn, ''Fifty Key Figures in Twentieth Century British Politics'' (2002) p. 75〕 Winston Churchill later wrote of him that he was the man "who made the weather". Chamberlain was the father, by different marriages, of Sir Austen Chamberlain and Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. ==Early life, business career and marriage== Chamberlain was born in Camberwell in London to a successful shoemaker and manufacturer who became Master of the Cordwainers' Company in 1803,〔Notes on the families of Chamberlain and Harben, Joseph Austen Chamberlain, 1915, privately printed, pg 16〕 also named Joseph (1796–1874), and his wife Caroline Harben, daughter of Henry Harben. His younger brother was Richard Chamberlain, later also a Liberal politician. He was educated at University College School (then still in Euston) between 1850 and 1852, excelling academically and gaining prizes in French and mathematics. The elder Chamberlain was not able to provide advanced education for all his children, and at the age of 16 Joseph was apprenticed to the Worshipful Company of Cordwainers and worked for the family business making quality leather shoes. At 18 he joined his uncle's screwmaking business, Nettlefolds (later part of Guest, Keen and Nettlefolds) of Birmingham, in which his father had invested. The company became known as Nettlefold and Chamberlain when Chamberlain became a partner with Joseph Nettlefold. During the business's most prosperous period, it produced approximately two-thirds of all metal screws made in England, and by the time of Chamberlain's retirement from business in 1874 it was exporting to the USA, Europe, India, Japan, Canada and Australia. Chamberlain married Harriet Kenrick, the daughter of Archibald Kenrick,〔 member of a Unitarian family from Birmingham who originally occupied Wynn Hall in Ruabon, Wrexham, Wales, in July 1861 (they had met the previous year); her brother William also a Liberal politician in Birmingham, married Mary Chamberlain, Joseph's sister, the following year.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Rt. Hon. William Kenrick )〕 Joseph and Harriet's daughter Beatrice Mary Chamberlain (1862–1918) was born in May 1862. Harriet, who had had a premonition that she would die in childbirth, became ill two days after the birth of their son Joseph Austen in October 1863, and died three days later. Chamberlain devoted himself to business, while bringing up Beatrice and Austen with the Kenrick parents-in-law. In 1868, Chamberlain married for the second time, to Harriet's cousin, Florence Kenrick, daughter of Timothy Kenrick. Florence's sister Emily married solicitor Sir Thomas Martineau, who, like Chamberlain, was both a Unitarian and Mayor of Birmingham. Records of parliamentary debates show that Chamberlain was instrumental in pushing through the Birmingham Corporation Water Bill in 1892, which had been initiated by his brother-in-law.〔 Chamberlain and Florence had four children: Arthur Neville in 1869, Ida in 1870, Hilda in 1871 and Ethel in 1873. On 13 February 1875, Florence gave birth to their fifth child, but she and the child died within a day. Another of Florence's sisters, Louisa, married Joseph's brother, Arthur Chamberlain; their granddaughter was the author Elizabeth Pakenham, Countess of Longford, née Harman, and their great-granddaughter is the Labour politician Harriet Harman. In 1888 Chamberlain married for the third time in Washington, D.C. His bride was Mary Crowninshield Endicott, daughter of the US Secretary of War, William Crowninshield Endicott. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Joseph Chamberlain」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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