Crods, Culture, and Politics in Georgian Britain [Hardcover]

Crowds have long been a telling feature of the historical landscape. Here, Rogers examines the changing role and character of crowds in Georgian politics through an investigation of some of the major crowd interventions in the years 1714 to 1821. He shows how the topsy-turvy interventions of the Jacobite era gave way to the more disciplined parades of Hanoverian England, a transition shaped by the effects of war, revolution, and the expansion of the state and the market. These changes unsettled the existing relationship between crowds and authority, raising issues of citizenship, class, and gender that fostered the emergence of a progressive mass platform. On this platform, radical men (and, more ambiguously, women) staked out new demands for political power and recognition. This is an original, fascinating study that shows us how and why Hanoverian crowds were more than dissonant voices on the margins--they were an integral part of 18th-century politics.

Introduction: Crowds in History
Seditions Words, Subversive Laughter: Popular Jacobitism in Hanovarian England
The Politics of War and Dearth, 1756-57
Liberty Road: The Opposition to Impressment During the Mid-Georgian Era
The Trial of Admiral Keppel
The Gordon Riots
Crowds, Festival, and Revolution, 1788-95
Crowds, Gender, and Public Space in Hanoverian Politics
Caroline's Crowds
Conclusion
Index

Nicholas Rogers's new book has a significance beyond the study of crowds. Although Robers begins his monograph with an illunimating look at the historiography of crowds, his analysis ultimately challenges the conservative consensus in the historiography of eighteenth-century politics and society....[It] is an important intervention in eighteenth-century studies, combining an archivally based close reading of specific incidents, attentive to the eighteenth-century crowd on its own terms, with a broader perspective that integrates radical history and high politics to refute the hl³4