The corruption of the law and popular violence: the crisis of order in Dublin, 1729

2014 ◽  
Vol 39 (153) ◽  
pp. 1-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy D. Watt
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Spring ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Considerable Degree ◽  
The Political ◽  
Personal Safety ◽  
Popular Protest ◽  
Secretary Of State ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
The City

Even though violent popular protest was a common feature of life in early eighteenth-century Dublin, the riots that broke out in 1729 were exceptionally severe and long-lasting and resulted in the worst disorder to occur in the capital in decades. Over a ten-month period rival gangs rioted against each other or against government forces, causing a considerable degree of destruction, injury and death. At the height of the disorder, in late spring and summer, ‘vast numbers’ of people were reportedly beaten and abused by rioters, and residents of the city became fearful for their personal safety. According to the Dublin Intelligence citizens moved ‘mostly in a kind of hurry’ on account of the riots; parts of the city became no-go areas, and gangs of ‘reprobates’ gathered on the outskirts of the city to rob travellers and rape women. The political elite voiced their concerns too, in particular at the length of time the disorder was lasting. The archbishop of Armagh, Hugh Boulter, wrote to the secretary of state, the duke of Newcastle, from Dublin in March 1730 complaining that they had ‘suffered very much from riots and tumults in this town last summer and even during the present sitting of the parliament’.

Communication: The Political Patronage of Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales

1958 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. N. Newman
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Considerable Degree ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Future ◽  
Political Patronage ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
Politically Active ◽  
Concrete Reality ◽  
The Way

An association between the prince of Wales and various opposition leaders is a recurrent feature of eighteenth-century politics. A politically active prince found little difficulty in securing a following among the politicians of the day; the glittering prospects of the ‘reversionary’ interest1 were an obvious lure, and an obvious basis for such a connexion. But this is not a complete explanation. The prince had also a considerable degree of patronage at his disposal, and could add a more immediate and concrete reality to promises for the future. A study of this patronage, its extent and its disposal, and more particularly the way in which it was exercised by Frederick, ‘Poor Fred’, throws much light on the connexion between the prince and his political friends, and contributes to an understanding of the place of Leicester House in the politics of the early eighteenth century.

RIOT ACTS, POPULAR PROTEST, AND PROTESTANT MENTALITIES IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY IRELAND

2006 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 403-423 ◽  
Author(s):  
NEAL GARNHAM
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Systems ◽  
Legislative Action ◽  
Popular Protest ◽  
Self Confidence ◽  
Civil Disorder ◽  
Popular Movements

The condition of the Anglican elite in eighteenth-century Ireland has been the focus of some debate by historians. Members of the Protestant Ascendancy class have been variously cast as a community under constant threat, or as a self-confident group secure in their control of the country's political and economic systems. Various contributions to this dialogue have been made through the study of popular movements and civil disorder. Rather than further comment on such phenomena this article seeks to examine the reactions of the Irish political elite to them. Although the country had no general Riot Act on the English model until 1787, legislative initiatives were made on several occasions prior to this. While these initially tended to be unsuccessful in parliament, local in their application, and to impose relatively lenient punishments, attitudes began to change in the 1770s. The political elite then moved comparatively rapidly to general legislation that created riot as a felony. Such developments suggest that prior to the last quarter of the eighteenth century civil disorder was not seen as a real threat to Protestant ascendancy, though Protestant fears finally culminated in legislative action in 1787. Arguably it was this event that marked the first great nadir in Anglican self-confidence in eighteenth-century Ireland.

The Abolition of Slavery

2020 ◽  
pp. 195-203
Author(s):  
Sophia Khadraoui-Fortune
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Public Space ◽  
The Political ◽  
French History ◽  
Political Body ◽  
High Iron ◽  
Official Discourse ◽  
Power Strategies ◽  
Culture Of Silence ◽  
The City

April 24th 1998, a two-meter-high iron statue of a slave, arms raised towards the sky, breaking free from his/her chains, was erected clandestinely in Nantes, the primary French slave port of the eighteenth century. Faced with the local government’s refusal to erect a statue commemorating the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery, the Mémoire de l’Outre-Mer association decided, in secret, to commission a sculpture. Following the organization’s initial success of hijacking the inauguration, the statue was vandalized. It soon became a performative monument, a memorial palimpsest, and a centre stage of a symbolic combat where opponents and supporters clashed. This essay reveals the democratic praxis at the heart of this commemoration debate. With both the pressure of citizens on the political body, and the triple practice of diversion, subversion, and taking hostage of (public) space, the association thwarts the writing and power strategies of the city of Nantes and its culture of silence. Mémoire de l’Outre-Mer not only resists official discourse but subsequently imposes its own version of French history on the whitened pages of France’s colonial narrative, thus reclaiming a past, a story, an identity, by bringing to light existences and testimonies, and defining new lieux de parole.

scholarly journals The Parthenon, Pericles and King Solomon: a case study of Ottoman archaeological imagination in Greece

2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-274
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Key Fowden
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
The City

What made Athens different from other multi-layered cities absorbed into the Ottoman Empire was the strength of its ancient reputation for learning that echoed across the Arabic and Ottoman worlds. But not only sages were remembered and Islamized in Athens; sometimes political figures were too. In the early eighteenth century a mufti of Athens, Mahmud Efendi, wrote a rarely studiedHistory of the City of Sages (Tarih-i Medinetü’l-Hukema)in which he transformed Pericles into a wise leader on a par with the Qur'anic King Solomon and linked the Parthenon mosque to Solomon's temple in Jerusalem.

‘Like amphibious animals’: Irish protestants, ancient Britons, 1691–1707

1993 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 785-797 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jim Smyth
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
The People ◽  
Parliamentary Sovereignty ◽  
Inferior Status ◽  
The Face ◽  
Religion And Ethnicity ◽  
Two Kingdoms

ABSTRACTIreland in the 1690s was a protestant state with a majority catholic population. These protestants sometimes described themselves as ‘the king's Irish subjects’ or ‘the people of Ireland’, but rarely as ‘the Irish’, a label which they usually reserved for the catholics. In constitutional and political terms their still evolving sense of identity expressed itself in the assertion of Irish parliamentary sovereignty, most notably in William Molyneux's 1698 pamphlet, The case of Ireland's being bound by acts of parliament in England, stated. In practice, however, the Irish parliament did not enjoy legislative independence, and the political elite was powerless in the face of laws promulgated at Westminster, such as the i6gg woollen act, which were detrimental to its interests. One possible solution to the problem of inferior status lay in legislative union with England or Great Britain. Increasingly in the years before 1707 certain Irish protestant politicians elaborated the economic, constitutional and practical advantages to be gained from a union, but they also based their case upon an appeal to the shared religion and ethnicity of the sovereign's loyal subjects in the two kingdoms. In short the protestants insisted that they were English. This unionist episode thus illustrates the profoundly ambivalent character of protestant identity in late seventeenthand early eighteenth-century Ireland.

Violence and Defiance of Authority in Mughal India: A Study of the Shoe Sellers’ Riot of Shahjahanabad

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-177
Author(s):  
Najaf Haider
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Community Support ◽  
Civilian Population ◽  
Group Violence ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
Role Of Religion ◽  
The City

In March 1729 ad, the city of Shahjahanabad (Mughal Delhi) was brought to a standstill following a conflict between shoe sellers and state officials. The conflict led to a violent showdown during the Friday congregational prayer in the central mosque of the city (Jami Masjid). The shoe sellers’ riot exposed fissures based on religion, class and politics and posed a challenge to the authority of the Mughal state during the twilight of the Empire. The article is a study of the riot and the riot narratives preserved in three unpublished contemporary works. Together with a discussion of the Ahmedabad riot of 1714 ad, the article examines the nature of conflicts involving civilian population in the cities of Mughal India in the early eighteenth century and the response of political and religious authorities. An important aspect of the incidents studied in the article is the role of religion in organizing group violence even when the cause of the conflict was not necessarily religious. Conversely, cross-community support arising from patronage, class and notions of pride and honour demonstrated that religion was one among many possible forms of identity in Mughal India.

The transformation of an urban political elite: oligarchy and aristocracy in sixteenth-century Ghent

Urban History ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 632-647
Author(s):  
Jelten Baguet
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Urban Politics ◽  
Economic Recession ◽  
City Council ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
Institutional Reforms ◽  
Elite Group ◽  
Craft Guilds ◽  
The City

AbstractThe composition of the political elites in sixteenth-century Ghent, one of the political and economic centres of the county of Flanders, changed from a relatively open elite group that included representatives from the craft guilds into a compact, aristocratic class. This article analyses the reasons for this transformation. First, the number of office-holders in the city council declined and power was increasingly concentrated in the hands of a smaller political elite because of interventions in the urban political framework by the Habsburg authorities in the wake of a fiscal rebellion (1537–40) and a Calvinist takeover of power (1578–84). Secondly, the once dominant position of the craft guilds on Ghent's two benches of aldermen was weakened by institutional reforms, a Catholic backlash against Calvinism and an economic recession. Thirdly, the growing wealth gap between rulers and the ruled, coupled with an influx of noblemen into Ghent City Council, gave urban politics a more aristocratic character. Consequently, a series of interconnected changes gave rise to a trend towards oligarchy and aristocracy on the city's benches of aldermen.

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