Research Catalog

Title

Popular contention in Great Britain, 1758-1834 / Charles Tilly.

Author

Tilly, Charles.

Publication

Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1995.

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Holdings

Details

Description

xvi, 476 pages : illustrations; 25 cm

Summary

• Between 1750 and 1840 ordinary British people abandoned such time-honored forms of protest as collective seizures of grain, the sacking of buildings, public humiliation, and physical abuse in favor of marches, petition drives, public meetings, and other sanctioned routines of social movement politics. The change created - perhaps for the first time anywhere - mass participation in national politics.
• Charles Tilly is the first to address the depth and significance of the transmutations in popular collective action during this period. As he unravels the story of thousands of popular struggles and their consequences, he illuminates the dynamic relationships among an industrializing, capitalizing, proletarianizing economy; a war-making, growing, increasingly interventionist state; and the internal history of contention that spawned such political entrepreneurs as Francis Place and Henry Hunt.
• Tilly's research rests on a catalog of more than 8,000 "contentious gatherings" described in British periodicals, plus ample documentation from British archives and historical monographs.
• The author elucidates four distinct phases in the transformation to mass political participation, and identifies the forms and occasions for collective action that characterized and dominated each. He provides rich descriptions not only of a wide variety of popular protests but also of such influential figures as John Wilkes, Lord George Gordon, William Cobbett, and Daniel O'Connell. This engaging study offers a vivid picture of Great Britain during a pivotal era.

Subject

• Working class > History > Great Britain > 18th century
• Working class > History > Great Britain > 19th century
• Popular culture > Great Britain > History > 18th century
• Popular culture > Great Britain > History > 19th century
• Dissenters > Great Britain > History > 18th century
• Dissenters > Great Britain > History > 19th century

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [423]-463) and index.

Contents

1. From Mutiny to Mass Mobilization -- 2. Contention Under a Magnifying Glass -- 3. Capital, State, and Class in Britain, 1750-1840 -- 4. Wilkes, Gordon, and Popular Vengeance, 1758-1788 -- 5. Revolution, War, and Other Struggles, 1789-1815 -- 6. State, Class, and Contention, 1816-1827 -- 7. Struggle and Reform, 1828-1834 -- 8. From Donkeying to Demonstrating -- Appendix 2. Major Acts by the British Government Directly Affecting Popular Association and Collective Action, 1750-1834.

ISBN

0674689801

LCCN

94048325

OCLC

ocm31815018

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries