Crowds and History: Mass Phenomena in English Towns, 1790-1835In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, urbanisation 'revolutionised' English society as much as industrialisation. Central to this urbanising process, and the civic culture it inspired, was the bringing together of people in large numbers - to celebrate, commemorate, vilify or validate. Contemporary observers found the power and potential of urban crowds both awesome and alarming. They witnessed the capacity of the masses to confer honour and prestige upon a proud city elite or, by turning hostile, to bring civic ruin. Yet this ambivalent relationship between the individual and the crowd, which resonates through not only the nineteenth century but all human history, has remained generally ignored by historians. They have regarded crowds almost exclusively as a riotous, disruptive and protesting force. This book, which is the first systematic historical study of mass phenomena, challenges such preconceptions and re-defines the place of the crowd in history. |
Contents
The crowd and History problems of historiography | 3 |
The crowd in history problems of definition and method | 32 |
PATTERNS PROCEDURES AND POWER | 47 |
Introduction the ordering of the urban environment | 49 |
Contexts for crowds in four towns Bristol Liverpool Norwich and Manchester | 57 |
Time work and the occurrence of crowds | 102 |
Symbolism ritual and the location of crowds | 140 |
Masses and masses the language of crowd description | 168 |
CASES CAUSES AND CONTINGENCIES | 193 |
Common terms and phrases
aldermen Asa Briggs attendance BMBJ Brandon Hill Bristol Bridge Bristol Bridge riot Bristol Gazette Bristol Mercury Bristol Mirror Bristol riots Bristolians candidates celebrations ceremonial city of Bristol civic collective behaviour consensus constables contemporaries context coronation Corporation crowd activity crowd events crowd occurrences David Cannadine E.P. Thompson early nineteenth century economic eighteenth century election crowds England English Farley's Bristol Journal FFBJ Gareth Stedman Jones gatherings George George Rudé Henry Hunt historians Hobsbawm Ibid industrial John July June large number LB/BRO Liverpool Mercury LMP/BRO Box London magistrates Manchester mass phenomena mayor military Monday newspapers Norwich Norwich Mercury occasions Office organisation Past and Present Pinney political procession prominent protest Protheroe public order Queen Square radical reform meeting reported rioters ritual Rudé Sept Seyer MSS Social History Society spectators Street tory town trade violence whig William