Radicalism and the Victorian Working Class: the Case of Samuel Bamford

1991 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 873-892 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Hewitt
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Victorian Literature ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Labour History

Samuel Bamford has an ambivalent status in the canon of nineteenth-century labour history. The unparalleled view of working-class life at the turn of the nineteenth century provided by his autobiographical volumes Early days and Passages in the life of a radical, have made him, according to E. P. Thompson, ‘the greatest chronicler of 19th century radicalism’, and ‘essential reading for any Englishman’ These books have been described as two of ‘the minor classics of Victorian literature’ All modern studies of the radicalism of the first two decades of the nineteenth century rely to some degree on his colourful reminiscences of the period. Yet after his prominent role in the events leading up to Peterloo, Bamford's career, not least its virulent anti-chartism, have tainted him with reformism, and left him to be invoked as an example of the weaknesses and limitations of early nineteenth-century working-class political assertion. Hence, in contrast to Thompson, John Belchem has talked about ‘the well-thumbed autobiographies of certain “respectable” and unrepresentative working class radicals’ and the ‘apostasy’ of the ‘renegade Samuel Bamford’. In the context of the 1840s John Walton describes him as a ‘former radical’, and Martha Vicinus has portrayed him as one of a group whose ‘works are largely inoffensive portrayals of established values’.

Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 297-300
Author(s):  
Hannah Smith
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Radical Politics ◽  
Napoleonic Wars ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century

This book ends in 1750 but its preoccupations can be traced into the early nineteenth century. The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars against France between 1793 and 1815 saw two decades of warfare. Fears of popular revolution dominated the 1790s and 1800s, with radical groups being fiercely suppressed. The government’s concern over radical politics and the politics of class extended to the army. It was remarked that military service abroad had led to soldiers becoming vehement democrats; troops were even alleged to have been reading that working-class radical text ...

scholarly journals Narrativity, Narrative Identity, and Social Action: Rethinking English Working-Class Formation

1992 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 591-630 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret R. Somers
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Narrative Identity ◽  
Class Struggle ◽  
Class Conflict ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Working People ◽  
History Of

The nineteenth-century English working class bears a most peculiar burden and embodies a most peculiar paradox. Like Auden’s academic warriors who spar with “smiles and Christian names,” historians, economists, and sociologists have pushed and prodded early nineteenth-century English working people into procrustean political positions to support or disconfirm Marx’s predictions of revolutionary class conflict erupting from the contradictions of capitalism. A Manichaean concern locks the debate into an impasse. Were early nineteenth-century workers revolutionary or reformist? Was there a class struggle in the industrial revolution? The questions remain unresolved. Yet, surely it is the history of English working peoples that has suffered from this burden of praising or burying Marxism through competing interpretations of their early stories?

Renaissance Enameled Jewelry and 19th century Renaissance Revival: Characterization of Enamel Compositions

2002 ◽  
Vol 712 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark T. Wypyski
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Energy Dispersive ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
X Ray ◽  
Gold Jewelry ◽  
Renaissance Period ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
European Renaissance

ABSTRACTEnamels from European Renaissance enameled gold jewelry and other objects dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and Renaissance style and other objects from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were quantitatively analyzed using energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry. Differences were observed in the overall compositions, as well as the colorants and opacifiers used, of the Renaissance period and most of the later enamels. Some enamels from as late as the early nineteenth century, however, appeared to be essentially the same as those used during the Renaissance. The differences found in the enamel compositions can provide a set of objective compositional criteria to help distinguish between authentic Renaissance period enameled objects and some later enamels done in the style of the Renaissance.

scholarly journals Melodrama and the ‘art of government’: Jewish Emancipation and Elizabeth Polack’s Esther, the Royal Jewess; or The Death of Haman!

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 144-163
Author(s):  
Jo Carruthers
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Political Freedom ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Low Expectations ◽  
Political Value

This article challenges historians’ representations of working-class Jewish attitudes to emancipation in the early nineteenth century through a reading of Elizabeth Polack’s 1835 melodrama, Esther, the Royal Jewess, or the Death of Haman! Low expectations of working-class political engagement and the working-class genre of the melodrama are challenged by the astute political content of Polack’s play. Its historical and political value is revealed by placing the play within the tradition of the purimspiel, the Jewish genre that traditionally explores Jewish life under hostile government. Reading the play alongside Walter Benjamin’s writings on the disparaged German melodramatic genre of the trauerspiel enables a finely articulated reading of its complex exploration of issues of sovereignty, law, and religious and political freedom.

The “Chiliasm of Despair” Reconsidered: Revivalism and Working-Class Agitation in County Durham

1989 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. Jaffe
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social History ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Wide Acceptance ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Political Radicalism

The role of evangelical religion in the social history of the English working class has been an area of both bewildering theories and un-founded generalizations. The problem, of course, was given a degree of notoriety by Elie Halévy who, according to the received interpretation, claimed that the revolutionary fervor characteristic of the Continental working class in the first half of the nineteenth century was drained from its British counterpart because of the latter's acceptance of Evangelicalism, namely, Methodism.It was revived most notably by E. P. Thompson, who accepted the counterrevolutionary effect of Methodism but claimed that the evangelical message was really an agent of capitalist domination acting to subordinate the industrial working class to the dominion of factory time and work discipline. Furthermore, Thompson argued, the English working class only accepted Methodism reluctantly and in the aftermath of actual political defeats that marked their social and economic subordination to capital. This view has gained a wide acceptance among many of the most prominent labor historians, including E. J. Hobsbawm and George Rudé who believe that Evangelicalism was the working-class's “chiliasm of despair” that “offered the one-time labour militant … compensation for temporal defeats.”There could hardly be a starker contrast between the interpretation of these labor historians and the views of those who have examined the social and political history of religion in early industrial Britain. Among the most important of these, W. R. Ward has claimed that Methodism was popular among the laboring classes of the early nineteenth century precisely because it complemented political radicalism.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document