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Showing posts with label Books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Books. Show all posts

Tuesday 28 July 2020

Interview on first edition of my Three Rebellions


This interview was originally published on the Chartist Ancestor blog but, although it is referred to on the revised website, there is no direct link to it.

Mark Crail: Three Rebellions is a monumental work of over 1,100 pages. What inspired you to write it – and how long did it eventually take?

Richard Brown: The inspiration for the book came from a comment made by a sixth form student in 2004 who asked, I think to get me off the subject of the Plug Plugs, ‘I don’t suppose Chartism was exported was it?’  It was one of those off the cuff comments that gets you thinking.  In truth, I didn’t really know the answer but remember saying that as many people emigrated to the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand in the 1840s and 1850s, they would have taken their beliefs with them and that presumably Chartist principles would have been part of their intellectual baggage.  What began as an off-hand remark led me to spend the next four years exploring the question.  I found that, although there was a widely held assumption that Chartism had played a role in the democratising of the Australian colonies, little had been written on the subject from a global perspective.  It was this that led me to explore the issue of rebellion in the colonies to see how far Chartist ideas contributed to the development of colonial reformist and radical thinking.   I did much of the research, drafting ideas and working out the structure for the book in my final two years of teaching when I was increasingly relieved of worrying about the next educational initiative.  Once I retired I was able to focus on the writing that took about eighteen months. 

Mark Crail: Your book deals with events that took place on three separate continents and spread over a period of nearly two decades. What is the common theme or central argument that makes sense of bringing them together in a single book?

Richard Brown: The reasons why I chose to consider three rebellions in different parts of the British Empire fall into two categories.  First, in each of three areas there were tensions between the colonial authorities and the ways in which they wished to govern and reformers who sought a greater say in the ways in which they were governed.  Secondly, it was the abject failure by the authorities to recognise the depth of anger on the part of reformers and its unwillingness to introduce some form of responsible government that led to rebellion.  Violence was born of frustrated dreams turning individuals such as Papineau, Mackenzie, Lalor and John Frost from supporters, even if critical, of the existing system of government into increasingly radical individuals who concluded that ending the existing despotism of the colonial state, if necessary by direct action, was justifiable.  It is this which is central to the book and brings together South Wales, the Canadas and Australia into a common political and constitutional context.  Once I had decided this, then the structure of the remainder of the book fell into place.  Before explaining the causes of the rebellions, they needed to be placed within a chronological context.  After the rebellions had failed, their aftermaths, links and how they were and are remembered needed to be considered.  Finally, I wanted to place the rebellions within some sort of overall framework and this forms the basis of the final chapter.

Mark Crail:  Is this a book aimed squarely at specialist historians, or is it accessible to a wider readership? What would you hope non-specialists would take away from reading it?

Richard Brown: As I see myself as a teacher as well as a historian, I would hope that my book will appeal to both specialist historians and to a more popular readership.  I’ve always believed that a good story is the best way to engage people with the past and this is a great story.  It has its heroes and villains and its martyrs to the cause.  It raises questions about ‘what if the rebellions had succeeded?’  It is also about how people remember the past and how the past is constructed and reconstructed across time.  The events happened but the ways in which we see them today is very different to how they were regarded by contemporaries.    Through reading the book I would hope that non-specialist readers would know about rebellions in Canada and Australia as well as in Newport and that they would recognise that though the rebellions ended in failure they played a critical role in the development of the democratic systems of government that we have today and that people were then as now prepared to stand up and fight for the democratic principles in which they believed against the heavy-handed dictats of the state.

Mark Crail: In closing the book you talk about the tension between heritage and history and to the later interpretations we put on Chartism (and the Canada and Ballarat rebellions), what part do you think the growth of interest in family history has played in that?

Richard Brown: There is no doubt that the growth of interest in family history, especially through the Internet, has played a seminal role in the burgeoning development of interest in and understanding of people’s heritage.  I remember talking to a history lecturer who saw this as a ‘dumbing down’ of his subject and that the heritage of the past was history itself.  Though his second point may be debatable, his view of ‘dumbing down’ missed the point big time.  The study of history has always had its populist dimension and family history is part of this search for understanding where we are now by seeking to understand where we’ve come from.  It was for that reason that I included the chapter on remembrance in the book.  If history is simply what happened without considering how what happened impacts on us today and how our view of events changes, then it is simply a good story but little more.  The key to the development of the subject is establishing the connections between the past and the present, not in a pedagogical sense of learning lessons, but as an essential part of understanding what humanity is and was.

Mark Crail: Finally, as a history teacher, you will doubtless have ended up covering everything from the Romans to the fall of the Berlin Wall. What brings you back time after time to Chartism? Have your students been particularly drawn to the period – or is it just we obsessives?

Richard Brown: My interest in Chartism and those who supported the Charter comes from two sources.  First, I was brought up as a Liberal radical in a family with a long tradition of political activity.  My father had fought, as a teenager in the Spanish Civil War and then against Hitler from 1939 though to 1946 (he always said his war did not end until he had finished the process of denazification in Germany).  His mother, my paternal grandmother came from a very political family.  Her sister was a suffragette; her brother a trade union official.  As I was growing up, I was told stories (fascinating to an eight year old, though rarely fully accurate) about the emergence of the labour movement and of the need to fight injustice wherever and whatever it was.  My own political apprenticeship was served in the student protests against Vietnam in the mid-60s and continued during the next four years at university.  Then teaching rather than politics, a decision I never regretted.  Secondly, I was brought up in a village where there had been major riots in 1816 after which my great-great-great-great uncle had been hanged for sedition.  Weaned on the tales of his sacrifice (in fact it appears he was in the wrong place at the wrong time), I turned both to history and to the question of what motivated people to act in the ways they did.  Was it need, greed or circumstance?  How far were people driven by ideals and principles or was pragmatism the key to understanding people’s experiences? Studying Chartism ticked all the right boxes for me...and if that’s obsessive, then and I’m certain my students would agree, I’m a dyed in the wool obsessive!


Wednesday 6 February 2019

Lincolnshire Lives

Having completed eleven volumes in his series of books on Birmingham, Stephen Roberts has now broadened his horizons into Lincolnshire.  I suggested, flippantly, that he call it Lincolnshire Sausages but he wisely settled on Lincolnshire Lives.


The first volume in the new series, written in conjunction with Mark Acton, looks at Charles Seely, a major figure in Lincoln’s economic and political development. 
 
Seely died at his country house on the Isle of Wight on 21 October 1887 at the age of eighty-four, leaving a personal estate valued at almost £500,000 and a real estate reckoned to be worth £2 million. He owned more land on the Isle of Wight than anyone else. He had been a Member of Parliament for Lincoln for a quarter of a century, a Justice of the Peace in three counties and a Deputy Lieutenant for two. As an entrepreneur and local and national politician he exemplified the enterprise of Victorian Britain. Though not of humble origins, he began life in modest circumstances and, as the result of investment in coal mining and land, ended up in possession of great wealth. This the first biography of Charles Seely. It tells a story of upward mobility that is remarkable even by Victorian standards.

Sunday 11 November 2018

My Books and other publications

Those publications with an asterisk (*) were co-written with C.W. Daniels. This list does not include editorials for Teaching History, book reviews or unpublished papers. Neither does it include the two series of books for which I have been joint-editor: Cambridge Topics in History and Cambridge Perspectives in History. Including these books would increase the length of this appendix by 52 books.

1974-1979

Computer-based data and social and economic history (for the Local History Classroom Project), (1974).

Social and Economic History and the Computer (for LHCP), (1975).

‘Local and National History -- an interrelated response’, in Suffolk History Forum, 1977.

‘Our Future Local Historians’, in The Local Historian, Vol. 13, 1978. *

‘Sixth Form History’, in Teaching History, May 1976. *

‘Sixth Form History’, in The Times Educational Supplement, 3 June 1977. *

‘The new history -- an essential reappraisal’, in The Times Educational Supplement, 2 December 1977. *

‘Interrelated Issues’, in The Times Educational Supplement, 1 December 1978. *

‘The Myth Exposed’, in The Times Educational Supplement, 30 November 1979 * also reprinted in John Fines (ed.) see below.

1980-1984

Nineteenth Century Britain, (Macmillan), 1980. *

‘The Local History Classroom Project’, in Developments in History Teaching, (University of Exeter), 1980. *

‘A Chronic Hysteresis’, in The Times Educational Supplement, 5 December 1980. *

Twentieth Century Europe, (Macmillan), 1981. *

‘Is there still room for History in the secondary curriculum?’, in The Times Educational Supplement, 5 December 1981. *

‘Content considered’, in The Times Educational Supplement, 9 April 1982. *

Twentieth Century Britain, (Macmillan), 1982. *

‘A Level History’, in The Times Educational Supplement, 8 April 1983. *

‘History in danger revisited’, in The Times Educational Supplement,  9 December 1983. *

‘History and study skills’, in John Fines (ed.), Teaching History, (Holmes McDougall), 1983. 

‘History and study skills’, reprinted in School and College, Vol. 4, (4), 1983.

Four scripts for Sussex Tapes, 1983:

People, Land and Trade 1830-1914.

Pre-eminence and Competition 1830-1914.

The Social Impact of the Industrial Revolution.

Lloyd George to Beveridge 1906-1950.

Four computer programs for Sussex Tapes, 1984:

The Industrial Revolution.

Population, Medicine and Agriculture.

Transport: road, canal and railway.

Social Impact of Change.

‘It’s time History Teachers were offensive’, in The Times Educational Supplement, 28 November 1984. *

The Chartists, (Macmillan), 1984. *

1985-1989

‘Using documents with sixth formers’, in The Times Educational Supplement, 29 November 1985. *

Learning History: A Guide to Advanced Study, (Macmillan), 1986. *

GCSE History, (The Historical Association), 1986, revised edition, 1987, as editor and contributor.

‘Training or Survival?’ with M. Booth and G. Shawyer in The Times Educational Supplement, 10 April 1987.

Change and Continuity in British Society 1800-1850, (Cambridge Topics in History, Cambridge University Press), 1987.

‘There are always alternatives: Britain during the Depression’ for BBC Radio, 14 September 1987.

‘Cultural imperialism’, in The Times Educational Supplement, 4 December, 1987.

‘The Training of History Teachers Project’, in Teaching History, 50, January 1988.

‘History’ in Your Choice of A-Levels, (CRAC,) 1988.

‘The Development of Children’s Historical Thinking’ with G. Shawyer and M. Booth, Cambridge Journal of Education, Vol. 18, (2), 1988.

‘The New Demonology’, Teaching History, Vol. 53, October 1988.

The Future of the Past: History in the Curriculum 5-16: A Personal Overview, (The Historical Association), 1988.

‘History Study Skills: Working with Sources’, History Sixth, Vol. 3, October 1988. *

‘A Critique of GCSE History: the results of The Historical Association Survey’, Teaching History, Vol. 55, March 1989.

1990-1999

‘History Textbook Round-up’, Teachers’ Weekly, September 1990.

‘Partnership and the Training of Student History Teachers’, with M. Booth and G. Shawyer, in M. Booth, J. Furlong and M. Wilkin (eds.), Partnership in Initial Teacher Training, (Cassell), 1990.

Economy and Society in Modern Britain 1700-1850 (Routledge), 1991.

Church and State in Modern Britain 1700-1850 (Routledge), 1991.

‘History’ in Your Choice of A-Levels, (CRAC), 1991.

‘Lies, damn lies and statistics’, Teaching History, 63, April 1991.

‘BTEC and History’, in John Fines (ed.), History 16-19, (The Historical Association), 1991.

‘What about the author?’, Hindsight: GCSE Modern History Review, Vol. 2, (1), September 1991.

‘Appeasement: A matter of opinion?’, Hindsight: GCSE Modern History Review, Vol. 2, (2), January 1992.

Economic Revolutions 1750-1850 (Cambridge Topics in History, Cambridge University Press), 1992.

‘Suez: a question of causation’, Hindsight: GCSE Modern History Review, Vol. 4, (1), September 1993.

‘History’ in Your Choice of A-Levels, (CRAC,) 1993.

History and post-16 vocational courses’, in H. Bourdillon (ed.), Teaching History, (Routledge), 1993.

‘Learning effectively at Advanced Level’, pamphlet for PGCE ITT course, (Open University), 1994.

Preparing for Inspection, (The Historical Association), 1994.

Managing the Learning of History, (David Fulton), 1995.

Chartism: People, Events and Ideas (Perspectives in History, Cambridge University Press), 1998.

BBC History File: consultant on five Key Stage 3 programmes on Britain 1750-1900, 1999.

2000-2009

Revolution, Radicalism and Reform: England 1780-1846, (Perspectives in History, Cambridge University Press), 2001.

‘The state in the 1840s’, Modern History Review, September 2003.

‘Chartism and the state’, Modern History Review, November 2003.

‘Chadwick and Simon: the problem of public health reform’, Modern History Review, April 2005.

2010

Three Rebellions: Canada 1837-1838, South Wales 1839, Eureka 1854, (Clio Publishing), 2010.

2011

Three Rebellions: Canada 1837-1838, South Wales 1839, Eureka 1854, (Clio Publishing), 2011 Kindle edition.

Famine, Fenians and Freedom, 1840-1882, (Clio Publishing), 2011.

Economy, Population and Transport (Nineteenth Century British Society), 2011 Kindle edition.

Work, Health and Poverty, (Nineteenth Century British Society), 2011 Kindle edition.

Education, Crime and Leisure, (Nineteenth Century British Society), 2011 Kindle edition.

Class, (Nineteenth Century British Society), 2011 Kindle edition.

2012

Religion and Government, (Nineteenth Century British Society), 2012 Kindle edition.

Society under Pressure: Britain 1830-1914, (Nineteenth Century British Society), 2012 Kindle edition.

Sex, Work and Politics: Women in Britain, 1830-1918, (Authoring History), 2012.

Famine, Fenians and Freedom, 1840-1882, (Clio Publishing), 2012 Kindle edition.

Sex, Work and Politics: Women in Britain 1830-1918, 2012,  Kindle edition.

Rebellion in Canada, 1837-1885 Volume 1: Autocracy, Rebellion and Liberty, (Authoring History), 2012.

Rebellion in Canada, 1837-1885, Volume 2: The Irish, the Fenians and the Metis, (Authoring History), 2012.

2013

Resistance and Rebellion in the British Empire, 1600-1980, Clio Publishing, 2013.

Settler Australia, 1780-1880, Volume 1: Settlement, Protest and Control, (Authoring History), 2013.

Settler Australia, 1780-1880, Volume 2: Eureka and Democracy, (Authoring History), 2013.

Rebellion in Canada, 1837-1885, 2013, Kindle edition.

'A Peaceable Kingdom': Essays on Nineteenth Century Canada, (Authoring History), 2013.

Resistance and Rebellion in the British Empire, 1600-1980, 2013, Kindle edition.

Settler Australia, 1780-1880, 2013, Kindle Edition.

Coping with Change: British Society, 1780-1914, (Authoring History), 2013.

2014

Before Chartism: Exclusion and Resistance, (Authoring History), 2014.

Suger: The Life of Louis VI 'the Fat', (Authoring History), 2014, Kindle edition.

Chartism: Rise and Demise, (Authoring History), 2014.

Sex, Work and Politics: Women in Britain, 1780-1945, (Authoring History), 2014.

Before Chartism: Exclusion and Resistance, (Authoring History), 2014, Kindle edition.

2015

Chartism: Rise and Demise, (Authoring History), 2015, Kindle edition.

'Development of the Professions', in Ross, Alastair, Innovating Professional Services: Transforming Value and Efficiency, (Ashgate), 2015, pp. 271-274.

Chartism: Localities, Spaces and Places, The Midlands and the South, (Authoring History), 2015.

Chartism: Localities, Spaces and Places, The North, Scotland Wales and Ireland, (Authoring History), 2015.

2016

Chartism, Regions and Economies, (Authoring History), 2016.

Breaking the Habit: A Life of History, (Authoring History), 2016.

Chartism: Localities, Spaces and Places, The Midlands and the South, (Authoring History), 2016, Kindle edition.

Chartism: Localities, Spaces and Places, The North, Scotland Wales and Ireland, (Authoring History), 2015, Kindle edition.

Chartism, Regions and Economies, (Authoring History), 2016, Kindle edition.

Suger: The Life of Louis VI 'the Fat', revised edition, (Authoring History), 2016.

Robert Guiscard: Portrait of a Warlord, (Authoring History), 2016.

Chartism: A Global History and other essays, (Authoring History), 2016.

Chartism: A Global History and other essays, (Authoring History), 2016, Kindle edition.

Roger of Sicily: Portrait of a Ruler, (Authoring History), 2016.

Three Rebellions: Canada, South Wales and Australia, (Authoring History), 2016.

2017

Famine, Fenians and Freedom, 1830-1882, (Authoring History), 2017.

Disrupting the British World, 1600-1980, (Authoring History), 2017.

Britain 1780-1850: A Simple Guide, (Authoring History), 2017.

People and Places: Britain 1780-1950, (Authoring History), 2017.

2018

Britain 1780-1945: Society under Pressure, (Authoring History), 2018.

Britain 1780-1945: Reforming Society, (Authoring History), 2018.

Three Rebellions: Canada, South Wales and Australia, (Authoring History), 2018, Kindle edition.

Famine, Fenians and Freedom, 1830-1882, (Authoring History), 2018. Kindle edition.

Disrupting the British World, 1600-1980, (Authoring History), 2018, Kindle edition.

Britain 1780-1945: Society under Pressure, (Authoring History), 2018, Kindle edition.

Britain 1780-1945: Reforming Society, (Authoring History), 2018, Kindle edition.

Robert Guiscard: Portrait of a Warlord, (Authoring History), 2016, 2018, Kindle edition.

Roger of Sicily: Portrait of a Ruler, (Authoring History), 2016,  2018, Kindle edition.

People and Places: Britain 1780-1950, (Authoring History), 2017, 2018, Kindle edition.

Breaking the Habit: A Life of History, (Authoring History), 2016, 2018, Kindle edition.

2019

Radicalism and Chartism 1790-1860, Authoring History), 2019.

Radicalism and Chartism 1790-1860, Authoring History), 2019, Kindle edition.

2020

The Woman Question: Sex, Work and Politics 1780-1945, (Authoring History), 2020.

Canada's 'Wars of Religion', (Authoring History), 2020.

The Woman Question: Sex, Work and Politics 1780-1945, (Authoring History), 2020, Kindle edition.

2021

Canada's 'Wars of Religion', (Authoring History), 2021, Kindle edition.

The Woman Question: Sex, Work and Politics 1780-1945, (Authoring History), 2021, hardback.

Economy, Population and Transport 1780-1945, (Authoring History), 2021, paperback and hardback.
2022
Classes and Cultures 1780-1945, (Authoring History), 2022, Kindle, hardback and paperback.
Work, Health and Poverty 1780-1945, (Authoring History), 2022, Kindle, hardback and paperback.
Education and Crime 1780-1945, (Authoring History), 2022, Kindle, hardback and paperback.
Religion and Government 1780-1945, (Authoring History), 2022, Kindle, hardback and paperback.




Monday 5 November 2018

Published in Kindle

It’s almost a year since I published second editions of my Rebellion Quartet and I’m hoping that I will write the final volume next year.  In the interim I have converted the published volumes into Kindles so that access is broadened.  This proved to be a far simpler process than has been the case in the past and the results look good on my iPads.


Rebellion Quartet 1


Rebellion Quartet21


Rebellion Quartet 3

Monday 20 August 2018

Britain 1780-1945: Reforming Society


NOW PUBLISHED


Britain 1780-1945 Vol 2


Britain 1780-1945: Reforming Society develops the ideas and chronological scope that I put forward in my earlier studies of Britain's social and economic development during the late-eighteenth, nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. The result is a new history of British society between 1780 and 1945. I have taken the opportunity of extending the chronological limits of the book from 1914 to 1945 and have radically restructured my earlier work rewriting each chapter to take account of recent thinking in an attempt to make it less Anglo-centred, white and male in character. The result is an examination of issues ignored in my earlier work, for instance, the ways in which poor relief operated differently in England, Scotland and Ireland and the question of disability. The book begins by examining the critical developments in the transformation of Britain's government, its urbanisation and the problems of housing, the revolution in how people worked and the problems posed by regulation and the problems of the public's health. It then moves on to look at poverty and the state and the nature of voluntary action and the development of a national system of education. The final chapters consider crime, punishment and policing.

Thursday 8 February 2018

Resisting tithes

Tithes were traditional payments that entitled the Church to a tenth of people’s annual income. Usually the payments were made in kind in the form of crops, wool, milk and other produce, to represent a tenth of the yearly production. After the Reformation, much land passed from the Church to lay owners who inherited entitlement to receive tithes, along with the land. This payment was demanded whether or not the parishioner attended Church and they—and church rates--were a bone of contention across the country. In Scotland, a form of commutation of teinds applied from 1633 even though full reform was not carried out until the 1930s.[1] The main difference between tithes in England and teinds in Scotland was that tithes were calculated as a proportion—a tenth—of produce whereas teinds were calculated as a proportion of the rateable value of agricultural land set against the current price of produce. This made Scottish ministers more vulnerable to loss of income than the English clergy particularly after poor harvests. It also meant that tithes were far less contentious in Scotland than elsewhere in Britain and Ireland.[2] Though compulsory church rates were not abolished until 1868, legal judgements made it clear that they could only be collected where authorised by the churchwardens and a majority of the vestry. As Nonconformists were eligible to vote for both, in some towns such as Birmingham the rate lapsed.  This was preferable to Nonconformists than the scheme that the House of Commons seriously considered for repairing all parish churches from public funds.[3] The Tithe Commutation Act 1836 ended tithes in kind in England and Wales replacing them with money payments called tithe rentcharge based on the average prices of corn, oats and barley over the previous seven years. Tithes remained contentious issue in England and Wales for the remainder of the nineteenth and into the twentieth century. Legislation in 1925, 1936 and 1951 reduced payments but it was not until the Finance Act 1977 that tithes were finally abolished.[4]
Tithe_Pig_Group_of_Derby_Porcelain_c_1770
Resistance to paying tithes was common in East Anglia, Sussex and Kent where there had been a long tradition of Nonconformity that in their geographical links to Lollardy pre-dated the Reformation. In Kent for instance, about 3,000 people met at Barham Downs in May 1834[5] to denounce the evils inflicted by tithes while the Sevenoaks Chronicle reported in 1883 that support for tithe protestors was especially strong in the Weald.[6] Tithe disputes intensified in the inter-war years largely because of the major changes in land ownership after the Great War when tenant farmers bought farms, paying ‘over the odds’ and taking out large mortgages. Bailiffs who were sent to distrain farmers’ goods for non-payment of tithes or even to evict non-paying farmers were met with violent resistance and Cosmo Lang, the Archbishop of Canterbury was burned in effigy by a crowd in Ashford in 1935.[7] Feelings ran particularly high in Kent and Norfolk, where the novelist Doreen Wallace was a leading campaigner.[8] In some areas farmers were supported by local members of the British Union of Fascists but during the anti-tithe militancy in Suffolk in 1933, Blackshirts went down from London to join the disturbances.[9] There was also a legacy of tithe payment levels after 1918 that were pegged at what had become unrealistically high levels that was coupled to the centralised collection of tithe through offices at Westminster Abbey. This was exacerbated by agricultural depression of the late 1920s and into the 1930s when prices tumbled making tithe payments increasingly onerous. A national Tithe Payers’ Association was formed in the mid-1920s to campaign for the abolition of Tithe Rent Charge and there were at least six branches in Kent by the mid-1930s, at Ashford, Elham, Paddock Wood, Sandwich, Stansted and the Weald. Across communities there was a common hatred of what people saw as an out-dated system that mercilessly exploited rural communities.[10]
 Tithe2
The Ecclesiastical Commissioners’ policy of seizing goods in lieu of tithe payments required them or their agents to turn the goods into cash, and initially the means used for the latter was to auction them off. Following several very public debacles at Ruckinge and Stelling Minnis in September 1931 where those sympathetic to those refusing to pay tithes put up ridiculously high bids and otherwise disrupted the auction process, the authorities turned to alternative methods--public tender using the services of possession men. Perhaps the best known incident in the ‘Kentish Tithe War’ was ‘the battle of the ducks’, their ‘liberation’ and return to their ‘rightful’ pond at Beechbrook Farm in Westwell.[11] The campaign began when between 70 and a 100 people, mostly young men and some with trucks met at the Half-Way House on the Dover Road. This was not far from Shepherdswell where the ducks had been taken on the orders of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners to their farm called West Court Farm, run by their tenant. The ducks and other livestock had been seized because the farmer at Westwell, the Rev. Roderick Kedward, had refused as a matter of principle to pay the tithes demanded of him. Kedward (1881-1937) was a Methodist minister from a Westwell farming family, Ashford’s only ever Liberal MP from 1929 to 1931 and President of the National Tithe Payers' Association in 1932. The night-time raid in September 1934 was reported in the national press the following day making the Church authorities even more furious. They sent General Dealers their agents to retake the ducks and the other items that had not been collected during the first sequestration, and also persuaded the Police to provide a substantial guard at West Court Farm for the whole of the following week.
Tithe 1
In Wales there was often a deep-seated antipathy between largely English-speaking Anglican landlords and their Nonconformist Welsh-speaking tenants. A government report of 1844 observed that the existence of the Welsh language and a widespread ignorance of English were ‘felt in a practical shape in the obstacles which it presents to the efficient working of many laws and institutions’.[12] Welsh was linked to poverty and a general lack of prosperity: an ignorance of English stated another report of 1846, was ‘one of the great causes of the backward state of the Welsh part of the population’.[13] It was perceived as excluding its speakers from participation in that key element of British imperial identity, economic trade.[14] Nonconformity was mistrusted not only for its strong identification with Welsh culture and language, but also because of its democratic structure, its populist and community orientated appeal. It was considered potentially dangerous and politically destabilising to encourage ordinary working-class people to debate contentious theological issues or participate in the election of their ministers. The growing antagonism between the Established Church and Nonconformity soon developed into a political movement that was rural society’s contribution to Welsh radicalism. In 1836, the Church Rate Abolition Society was formed and branches established in Wales. Irish disestablishment was also a burning issue and the Anglican Y Gwyliedydd condemned this as a symptom of an alliance to destroy church and state.[15] The conflict between church and chapel generated an aggressive religious radicalism among some Nonconformists and in 1837, a Baptist periodical called on its readers in the following terms: ‘Christians! Use your vote as those in the service of God, not man’.[16] The accusation of atheism fired Nonconformists to a more determined effort to break the connection between church and state.
Constabular and lancers in Denbigh
Police and lancers in Denbighshire in 1888
Despite the introduction of cash payment instead of payment in kind after 1836, there was persistent unhappiness among Welsh farmers, most of whom were Nonconformists while the agricultural depression in the 1870s further aggravated tensions.[17] Many farmers refused to pay the tithe and during the 1880s enforced sales of possessions were made by the authorities in order to collect the taxes owed. This led to confrontation between farmers and the authorities across the country. There were disturbances in Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion and other rural areas. The people who suffered most from suspension of paying tithes were the clergy who relied on tithes for the bulk of their stipend. One clergyman who was supposed to received £200, actually got £8 in 1887. A Clergy Defence Association was established in Cardigan to protect their interests and took charge of the legal process of enforcing payment of tithes. When distraining goods for non-payment, collectors were faced with large crowds that jostled and verbally abused bailiffs and attempts to sell the distrained goods at auctions often saw crowd violence. ‘Tithe Horns’ were sounded to summon the scattered population to farms where sales were to be held.
1894
Police in a ‘Tithe train’, Denbigh 1894
The confrontation was most pronounced in Denbighshire.[18] Denbigh was the headquarters of the Welsh National Land League--modelled on the Irish Land League—that lobbied against tithe payment. Denbighshire farmers were not necessarily any more resentful than those in the country but the presence of the League’s headquarters and the influence of Thomas Gee meant that tensions were particularly high in the area. Gee was the owner of the local Welsh-language newspaper Baner ac Amserau Cymru and was active in the anti-Tithe campaign. During the late 1880s many farmers took direct action refusing to pay tithes. This led to further enforced sales of land and property and violent protests took place in Llangwm in May 1887, Mochdre in June 1887[19] and Llanefydd in May 1888.  Following the incident at Llangwm, 31 protesters were sent to court and at Mochdre 84 people, including 35 police officers were injured. Dubbed the ‘Tithe Wars’, the protestors’ actions were praised by Gee’s newspaper as the campaign’s momentum reached its peak when troops were deployed to the Denbighshire area in May and June 1888 and August 1890 to control the discontent and protect the tithe collectors in carrying out their unpopular duties.[20]   The disturbances largely ended in 1891 when the Tithe Recovery Act transferred responsibility for the payment of the tithe from the tenant to the landlord. This made the payment of tithes easier to enforce and the unpopularity of the tithe-owners rapidly declined. Protests and violent action continued to the mid-1890s and surfaced again in 1913 but they lacked the intensity of those in the 1880s. The struggle brought Welsh issues to the forefront of the British political agenda especially its links to the campaign for the disestablishment of the Welsh Church. Individuals such as David Lloyd George and particularly T. E. Ellis seized the opportunity to strengthen the case for disestablishment that was eventually achieved in 1920 with the passing of the Welsh Church Act. As the Church in Wales became independent of the state, tithes were no longer available leaving the church it without a major source of income.

In Ireland, Catholic peasants had to pay tithes to maintain the Anglican Church of Ireland and demands for their abolition was the most pressing Irish problem facing Whig governments in the 1830s.[21] The 22 Protestant bishops were paid £150,000 a year while the rest of the Established Church received £600,000 more, largely from Roman Catholics who were supporting their own church as well. Resistance to tithes was seen as a prelude to resistance on the payment of rent, a far greater threat to public order and institutional stability. Parliamentary investigations into the rampant abuses and severe structural problems of the Church of Ireland left it with few defenders, while the ranks of tithe opponents swelled with the addition of large farmers and graziers after legislation in 1823 extended tithes to their previously exempt grasslands.[22] The existing protest against tithes but this took on a more organised dimension after 1830 first in the southern provinces of Leinster and Munster spreading quickly to Connacht and Ulster.[23] Protest soon became violent and in 1832 there were 242 murders, 300 attempted murders and 560 cases of arson. Initially responsive to tithe owners’ demand for protection during tithe collection, Dublin Castle’s willingness to provide police escorts waned after the murder of 12 constables at Carrickshock in late 1831.[24] Tithes were of less concern to either smallholders or landless labourers than middling and large farmers. Tithe owners were instead encouraged to accept the money offered to them in 1832 and 1833 while more substantial legislation was under consideration. Unfortunately, parliamentary action was delayed for the next five years, leaving tithe owners free to continue collecting payments with its unchecked potential for violence, such as the murderous affray at Rathcormac in December 1834, when 12 men were killed.[25] The tithe war finally quieted down after the spring of 1835 when the new Whig government and especially Thomas Drummond, the Irish Under-Secretary refused to allow police escorts for tithe business. Tithe opponents resorted to holding meetings to petition Parliament to abolish tithes until the 1838 Tithe Rent Charge Act effectively ended hostilities by transferring responsibility of paying tithes from the Catholic peasantry to Protestant landlords.[26] With the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland by the Irish Church Act 1869, tithes were abolished.



[1] Black, William G., What are Teinds? An Account of the History of Tithes in Scotland, (William Green & Sons), 1893, pp. 66-91.[2] ‘History and Settlement of Tithes in Scotland’, The Edinburgh Review, Vol. 75, (February 1823), pp. 1-26[3] Brent, Richard, ‘The Whigs and Protestant dissent in the decade of reform: the case of church rates, 1833-1841’, English Historical Review, Vol. 102, (1987), pp. 887-910.[4] Evans, E. J., The Contentious Tithe: The Tithe Problem and English Agriculture 1750-1830, (Routledge), 1976, pp. 163-168, considers developments after 1836.[5] ‘Meeting on Barham Downs’, Kentish Gazette, 20 May 1834, p. 3, an extensive report on the meeting.[6] ‘The Extraordinary Tithes’, Sevenoaks Chronicle and Kentish Advertiser, 14 September 1883, p. 5. [7] ‘Sir W. Wayland and Tithes’, Folkestone, Hythe, Sandgate & Cheriton Herald, 13 April 1935, p. 16.[8] For instance, ‘Intensive Campaign in Kent and Sussex’, Kent & Sussex Courier, 13 October 1933, p. 19. [9] ‘Fascists’ Retort’, Bury Free Post, 12 August 1933, p. 8, ‘Week-end Tithe Scenes’, Bury Free Post, 13 August 1933, p. 8. See also, Mitchell, Andre M., Facism in East Anglia: The British Union of Fascists in Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex, 1933-1940, D,Phil., Thesis, University of Sheffield, 1999.[10] Twinch, Carol, Tithe War, 1918-1939: The Countryside in Revolt, (Media Associates), 2001), Griffiths, Clare, Labour and the Countryside: The Politics of Rural Britain 1918-1939, (Oxford University Press), 2007, provides context.[11] ‘Sixty Ducks Seized’, Kent & Sussex Courier, 7 September 1934, p. 2, ‘Excitement in East Kent Tithe War, Dover Express, 7 September 1934, p. 8.[12] Roberts, Gwyneth Tyson, The Language of the Blue Books: The Perfect Instrument of Empire, (University of Wales Press), 1998, p. 20.[13] Jones, Ieuan Gwynedd, Mid-Victorian Wales: The Observers and the Observed, (University of Wales Press), 1992, p. 123. [14] Jenkins, Geraint H., Language and Community in the Nineteenth Century, (University opf Wales Press), 1998, and Jenkins, Geraint H., Welsh Language and its Social Domains: A Social History of the Welsh Language, (University of Wales Press), 2000.[15] Y Gwyliedydd, 1836, pp. 172, 267.[16] Greal y Bedyddwyr, 1837, p. 225.[17] Thomas, Revd D., The Anti-Tithe Movement in Wales, (Llanelli), 1891, pp. 4-5, attached great importance to the depression in farming as a cause of the anti-tithe demonstrations.[18] Davies, Russell, Secret Sins. Sin, Violence & Society in Carmarthenshire 1870-1920, (University of Wales Press), 1996, pp. 135-139, Jones, Tim, Rioting in North East Wales 1536-1918, (Bridge Books), 1997, pp. 56-74, Edwards, E. R., The Tithe Wars in North-East Wales, (Coelion Publications), 1989, Dunbabin, J. P. D., Rural Discontent in Nineteenth Century Britain, (Faber), 1974, pp. 211-231, 282-296. .[19] ‘The Tithe Riots in Wales’, The Spectator, 4 June 1887, pp. 7-8.[20] ‘The Anti-Tithe Agitation in Wales’, The Spectator, 4 January 1890, pp. 26-27, review of work by R. E. Prothero published in London the previous year.[21] O’Donoghue, Patrick, ‘Causes of the Opposition to Tithes, 1830-38’, Studia Hibernica, Vol. 5, (1965), pp. 7-28.[22] See, for instance, Select Committee concerning Tithes in Ireland, First and Second Report, 1831.[23] For the tithe war from a local perspective, see O’Hanrahan, M., ‘The Tithe War in County Kilkenny 1830-1834’, in Nolan, William, and Whelan, Kevin, (eds.), Kilkenny: History and Society: Interdisciplinary Essays on the History of an Irish County, (Geography Publications), 1990, pp. 481-505, Higgins, N., Tipperary’s tithe war 1830-1838 : parish accounts of resistance against a church tax, (St. Helena Press), 2002, and Tierney, Mark, ‘The Tithe War in Munroe, 1831-8’, Irish Ecclesiastical Record, Vol. 103, (1965), pp. 209-221.[24] Owens, G., ‘The Carrickshock Incident, 1831: Social Memory and an Irish cause célèbre’, Cultural and Social History, Vol. 1, (1), (2004), pp. 36-64.[25] Garner, Edward, Massacre at Rathcormac, (Eigse Books), 1984. See also, McMahon, R., ‘‘A violent society’? Homicide rates in Ireland, 1831-1850’, Irish Economic and Social History, Vol. 36, (1), (2009), pp. 1-20, places the violence in Irish society before 1837 in a European context. [26] In 1832, the Tithe Arrears Act allocated £600,000 to the relief of tithe owners and empowered the government to collect arrears for 1831. The Tithe Composition Act also in 1832 converted the tithe into a money payment and made landlords responsible for payment. Tithe bills introduced in 1834, 1835 and 1836 foundered on the question of appropriation.[27] See Article III of the Articles Declaratory contained in the Schedule to the Church of Scotland Act 1921.[28] Dominguez, Juan Pablo, ‘Religious toleration in the Age of Enlightenment’, History of European Ideas, Vol. 43 (4), (2017), pp. 273-287, Henriques, Ursula, Religious Toleration in England, 1787-1833, (Routledge), 1961, pp. 18-53.[29] Salbstein, M. C. N., The Emancipation of the Jews in Britain, (Associated University Presses), 1982, pp. 17-55.











































Thursday 27 July 2017

Clerical Errors, Volume 2





Tom Hughes Clerical Errors: A Victorian Series, Volume 2, (Squeaking Chair Books), 2017, £4.65 Kindle edition, £8.99 paperback


There is a supreme irony I think in that just at the time that support for the Church of England waned especially in towns and industrial cities, there was a dramatic increase in the number of its clergymen…a doubling in numbers from Queen Victoria’s accession in 1837 to 28,000 on her death sixty-four years later.  Most lived inconsequential lives ministering to their flocks with varying degrees of success but a few achieved notoriety because of their misconduct, something that was widely reported in the local and national press. In the case of the slander trial of Rev. Turberville Cory-Thomas shared the front pages with news of the Queen’s death. The problem, until the Clergy Discipline Act of 1893 streamlined the process, was that it was extremely difficult to remove a clergyman from his living.  Using obtuse ecclesiastical law and top lawyers, clerics could defy efforts to remove them at immense cost in litigation for the church itself.  The author of this excellent book draws on his unique database of Victorian clerical scandals to examine five cases of clerical conduct that ended before the courts.


Parson Young's Night Out –At the turn of the twentieth century, the Rev. Charles Gordon Young a boisterous Yorkshire man was rector of a posh parish in Chipstead, a quiet Surrey village. He was initially popular in the pulpit and on the cricket ground but his critics suspected that he drank too much. Despite attempts to get the Rev. Young to moderate his drinking, he steadfastly refused to  do so denying that he had any problems with alcohol.  Matters came to a head when the local ‘swells’ of Chipstead found their clergyman in a notorious London club with a lady of the evening upon his knee.  The result was a legal case in which he was found guilty of being drunk on ‘divers occasions’ and was defrocked.  This was almost the end of the matter yet many people in Chipstead felt that the rector had been badly treated and regretted the loss of a clergyman of undoubted ability.

A Case of Heartless Villainy - His prospects blighted, his health ruined, the Rev. Richard Marsh Watson made a living in a clerical agency and selling sermons and he also went in for blackmail. Having seduced his wife's sister, Watson required her to purchase his silence. When she, at last, refused to pay, the ensuing trial that saw Watson sentenced to 12 years penal servitude, shocked all Britain. Still, as one newspaper wondered, ‘What are we to think of the young women who yielded to the advances of a scrofulous parson with one leg?’

A Clerical Lothario - The Rev. Turberville Cory-Thomas, complimented frequently on his ‘dagger moustache’, was quite popular with the church ladies in the rapidly growing parish of Acton Green in West London. His vicar, Mr Spink, praised him regularly until Mr. Cory-Thomas, who was a widower, was accused of attempting to seduce two sisters--one over lunch at Gatti’s, the other in a grim bedsit near Euston Station. Cory-Thomas was immediately dismissed by his vicar after an acrimonious meeting of which both parties later gave different accounts.  The ensuing slander trial that Cory-Thomas brought and lost shared the front pages with news of Queen Victoria's death.

I'll Do for Dicky Rodgers - A summer outing on the Broads was under the charge of the Rev. Edward Rodgers, curate of Lowestoft. Too much sun, too much smoke and drink at the ‘after-party’ in the pub and Rodgers was poorly. A local youth offered to help him home. What happened in the darkened lane between the hedgerows? George Rix began telling everyone, ‘He must have thought I was his wife.’ Rumours of what had happened quickly spread throughout Lowestoft and his vicar tried to persuade Rodgers, who said Rix made the whole thing up, to quietly resign. Rodgers won the subsequent slander trial  and though his character was cleared it was several years before he received a new living in Nottinghamshire.

The Irreproachable Mr. Karr-Handsome, sporting and the darling of the raffish set at Berkeley Castle was the Rev. John Seton-Karr. In the town, however, the vicar's suavity may have gone too far. Was Mr. Karr's gift of satin dancing shoes to William Gaisford a local solicitor's wife in any way appropriate? But when Mrs. Gaisford, known for her extraordinary teeth, called upon Mr. Karr at his London hotel, sensational rumours were aroused leading to a series of legal battles initiated by the furious William Gaisford that, literally, worried a Bishop to death. Gaisford’s attempt to prosecute Karr before the ecclesiastical court and the civil court for criminal conversation both failed.  Karr remained as vicar of Berkeley until 1871 outliving the Gaisfords.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.  It  written with verve and is eminently readable.  It’s sometimes difficult to make legal cases interesting but for Tom Hughes this is not a problem.  The five cases are well-chosen and retain the reader’s interest throughout.  I look forward to Volume 3

Friday 6 January 2017

New Review

Richard Brown, Famine, Fenians and Freedom, 1830-1882, Authoring History, second edition, 2017, £20.37, paperback, ISBN 978-1540352231; Richard Brown, Three Rebellions: Canada, South Wales and Australia, Authoring History, second edition, 2016, £19.72, paperback, ISBN 978-1539455707
 
The opportunity to revise and update the original texts as both these publications move into their second editions testifies to the success of previous print and electronic editions in helping to create markets for some of the less well trodden pathways of modern British and world history which have rarely featured so prominently in texts aimed at students in tertiary and higher education. In both instances the significance of the selected themes is succinctly explained in new prefaces. The new edition of Famine Fenians and Freedom, 1830-1882 takes its overall length from 582 to 602 pages and is now offered as the second volume of a quartet on resistance and rebellion in the British Empire. It examines the Irish dimension in Britain’s Empire through attempts especially by Young Ireland and the Fenians to achieve Irish independence through rebellion and by the populist and parliamentarian constitutionalist Repeal association and campaign for Home Rule to the achievement of devolved government. The book looks at the nature and impact of the Great Hunger in its global context in Britain, the United States, Canada and Australia and explains why, how and whither the Irish emigrated and how they settled into their new communities. The cover features Fenians at the Battle of Ridgeway in 1866, a victory, which the accompanying text argues ‘occurred too late to have any significant effect on the Confederation process’ though ‘it did play a major role in emotionally connecting the Canadian public to the idea of Canada’. However, the reader is warned in a cryptic caption that the book’s cover illustration amounts to a far from accurate depiction, though it might have helped some readers had this intriguing caption been elaborated and more of its provenance been revealed.
 
 
By contrast, the riveting cover illustration of the companion volume, focusing upon three rebellions in Canada, South Wales and Australia is extensively contextualised. Unusually, we discover, that it was painted by Katherine Jane Ellice, the daughter-in-law of the local seigneur, a prosperous fur trader, who was taken prisoner by the Patriotes at Beauharnois, near Montreal, in November 1838. Ellice described her captors as ‘the most Robespierre-looking ruffians, all armed with guns, long knives and pikes’. Their expressions and weapons are vividly captured in the watercolour. Moreover, Brown’s gripping account of the action and its significance is characteristically engaging and stimulating. He concludes that the rebellions in the Canadas, South Wales and Victoria were each a failure of popular constitutionalism to deliver political change and the unwillingness of the authorities to concede that change was necessary.
 
As the relationship of the United Kingdom with Europe and the wider world is re-defined post-Brexit, some of the global themes hitherto neglected but explored here with such insight, rigour and enthusiasm may perhaps again appeal to a widening readership.
John A. Hargreaves

Saturday 31 December 2016

Famine, Fenians and Freedom, 1830-1882

First book for 2017


Famine, Fenians and Freedom, 1830-1882 is the second book in the Rebellion Quartet, a series looking at resistance and rebellion in the British Empire.  It examines the Irish dimension in Britain’s Empire, evident in Three Rebellions: Canada, South Wales and Australia, through attempts especially by the Young Ireland and Fenian movements to achieve Ireland’s independence through rebellion between 1830 and 1882 and by the populist and parliamentarian constitutionalist Repeal Association and campaign for Home Rule to achieved devolved government. 

Famine, Fenians and Freedom, 1830-1882 focuses on the nature and impact of the Famine in its global Irish context in Britain, the United States, Canada and Australia. Why, how and where Irish emigrated and how they settled into their new communities. How different approaches to Irish nationalism evolved in Ireland, British colonies in Canada and Australia and in the United States and why it failed to achieve its objectives between 1830 and 1882 and the political character of the Irish diaspora. It also explores the nature and differences in the character of Irish rebellion in Ireland, mainland Britain, Canada and Australia in 1848 and during the 1860s looking especially at its military character and failure. The role played by individuals such as Daniel O’Connell, Thomas Davis, John Mitchel, John O’Mahony, James Stephens, John O’Neill, John Devoy, Michael Davitt, Isaac Butt and Charles Stewart Parnell.

The first edition was well received by reviewers and this edition has given me the opportunity to revisit material originally researched and written between 2005 and 2009 taking account of the most recent research and publications. I have delved further into newspapers from Britain, Ireland and Australia and have added further references to them. I have also extended the starting point for the book back by a decade to 1830.

Monday 10 October 2016

Three Rebellions…a second edition

There have been important change in the Rebellion Trilogy, a series of books that were written between 2004 and 2010 and published in 2010, 2011 and 2013.  The series will become a Quartet with the addition of a fourth volume entitled Ireland, Revolution and Diaspora 1882-1923. This was, in part, the result of a comment from a colleague who suggested that I’d looked at the aperitif and starter but hadn’t really got on to the main course. This echoed my own feeling about the Irish dimension in the series. I had started to tell the story but it had yet to reach the ‘freedom’ in my Famine, Fenians and Freedom, 1840-1882.
 
The first volume in the series is Three Rebellions: Canada, South Wales and Australia that considers the context, causes and consequences of three major popular disturbances in the British Empire during the early years of Queen Victoria’s long reign. In the Canadas during 1837 and 1838, at Newport in South Wales in 1839 and at the Eureka Stockade in Ballarat, Victoria in Australia in 1854 thousands of largely working people took up arms against the forces of colonial rule and oppression. What linked these three events was a popular form of constitutionalism, linked to British radicalism and especially to Chartism that sought constitutional and democratic change but which was denied by colonial oligarchies that sought to retain political power in their own hands. The rebellions each failed when faced by the overwhelming force of the colonial state but, although they were defeated militarily, each played a significant role in the emergence of more responsive and responsible government. Today, the losers are better remembered than those who defeated them in 1837-1838, 1839 and 1854.

The first edition of Three Rebellions was completed in 2008 and finally published in early 2010. In the intervening years I have continued to grapple with the issues raised in the original volume publishing more detailed discussion of the rebellions in Britain, Canada and Australia.The major difference between the first and second editions is that I have significantly reduced the length of the work by taking out the foreword, relevant in 2009 but not today, and the chapters that dealt with the links between the three rebellions and how the rebellions have been remembered and commemorated. My reason for doing this—other than making the work tighter—is that I have included revised versions of these chapters in my Chartism: A Global History and other essays, published earlier this year.

Wednesday 6 July 2016

Breaking the Habit: a review by John A. Hargreaves

Breaking the Habit: A Life of History, Richard Brown, Authoring History, 2016, 175 pp., £7.13, paper, ISBN 9781530295234
 
In this retrospective but far from introspective, autobiographical memoir Richard Brown muses ‘on the nature of History in an increasingly challenging environment’. The author, familiar to readers of online reviews on the Historical Association website as a prolific reviewer of a wide range of historical resources and as a compulsive blogger on his popular blog, The History Zone, which has a diverse following encompassing students in secondary, tertiary and higher education, confesses himself to being addicted to history for almost as long as he can remember. I first encountered Richard as a fellow reviewer for the Historical Association’s flagship journal for secondary school teachers, Teaching History, and utilised many of his textbooks in the classroom in my own teaching, finding them always well-grounded in classroom experience, thoroughly researched and lucidly stimulating in the historical interpretations they offered. But this is more than a handbook for history teachers as the equestrian photograph of the infant author on the cover anticipates and essentially it reveals the extent to which a developing understanding of history interweaves with our life experiences from the cradle to the grave. It is more personal than anything else he has written and particularly moving in its account of how as a registered carer he supported his late wife Margaret, to whose memory the book is dedicated, in his post-retirement years until her death in 2015.
 
 
Its starting point is the affirmation that many would share that ‘being a teacher remains one of the most fulfilling of the professions’ and that ‘there is nothing more enjoyable than observing students learning to become critical in their approach to life’. What follows, he continues, is ‘an otiose attempt to make sense of my own life by intermingling autobiography with materials on History, teaching and learning initially written often at speed as part of on-going debates on education and history but now revised in the more cloistered solitude of my study’. It identifies the hybrid influences combining the rural experience of the Fens and the traditions of his mother’s family with the urban experience of his father and his family, mediated initially largely through memories and stories but with an increasing recognition of the importance of historical evidence in creating ‘a narrative to explain the evidence’ and a developing focus on how students learn history throughout his teaching career influenced strongly like so many of us by the Schools History Project.

Chartism: A Global History—a review by John A. Hargreaves

Chartism: A Global History and other essays, Richard Brown, Authoring History, 2016, 324 pp., £10.96, paper, ISBN 1534981438
 
This volume of essays written partly, the author reveals, as a response to a student enquiring in 2003 ‘What impact did Chartism have on the rest of the world brings the word total of the series of six volumes of which it forms part to 850,000 words. Few if any individual historians have ranged so widely and encompassed so many dimensions of the Chartist movement than Richard Brown. Moreover, like so much of Richard Brown’s work it combines a pedagogic enthusiasm with cutting edge research engaging particularly with the global resonance of the movement, an aspect of Chartism that had not previously been ‘the subject of serious consideration’. The author revisits and develops in the opening chapters of this volume of essays his previous consideration of ‘the nature of Chartism as it looked outwards to Britain’s colonies’, exploring how Chartist ideas spread across the globe. It also considers how and to what extent Chartism influenced ‘the critique of Britain’s place in the world and particularly how far Chartists and Chartist ideas influenced the definition of colonial rule within and by white-settler colonies in opposition to colonial rule as seen from the Colonial Office. It provides extended, detailed studies of Chartism and North America and Chartism in Australia, whilst recognising that the three decades after 1830 saw widespread rebellion against British colonial rule from the Canadas to New Zealand and from India to South Africa and Australia where there was ‘an upsurge of anti-colonial protest as indigenous peoples and colonial settlers sought to assert their “rights” against the overweening authority of coercive and largely unaccountable colonial states’.
 
 
In the remainder of the book, Brown provides an up-to-date perspective upon ‘issues that have been persistent themes’ in understanding the genesis and impact of this absorbingly fascinating movement, encompassing ‘historiography, women, radicalism and Chartism’, Chartist leadership, and Chartism and the state, re-affirming the continuing value of the groundwork of F.C. Mather in exploring the reaction of the government to Chartism. He also considers how Chartism has been viewed through ideological prisms ranging from late-nineteenth century socialism to twentieth-first century Welsh nationalism and remembered in memorials, literature, drama, sculpture and public art such as the Newport Mural unveiled for the 150th anniversary of the rising of 1839. In contrast to the centennial discussions in 1939, which had focused upon whether the event should be commemorated at all and the question of whether it was ‘an accidental riot or a rebellion’, in 1989 ‘the Charter was no longer controversial and the emphasis was on the benefits the commemoration brought to the town in terms of the potential economic boost from tourism’. ‘Ironically’, the author concludes ‘the rebellion was being given a capitalist slant by generating civil pride’.
 
Finally, the cover, like all the preceding volumes in the series features a distinctively atmospheric painting by the romantic artist J.M.W. Turner, though its particular relevance here is perhaps less self evident than in some of the illustrations selected for the other volumes, most notably the Welsh sunset of 1838 on the cover of one of the companion volumes Chartism: Localities, Spaces and Places, The North, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. The illustration on the cover of the volume under review is Petworth Park with Lord Egremont and his dogs c 1828 and distinctly pre-Chartist. Given that one reviewer of Franny Moyle’s recent biography of Turner has observed that there is ‘no evidence that Turner was ever distracted by politics’ it is perhaps more tenuous in other respects also, though implicitly it may have been chosen because it depicts a representative of an ancien regime landed aristocracy in a world about to change a decade later as a result of the People’s Charter.
 

Tuesday 28 June 2016

Writing Reconsidering Chartism




When I retired it was my intention to write a book on Chartism…one volume that distilled much of my teaching of the subject into a narrative history of the movement. That was ten years ago and it’s only now that I have managed to complete what started as one volume into a series of six books.  The reason for the delay was that I side-tracked myself into other projects that were to inform my later volumes on Chartism.  So a book that looked at rebellions in Canada, South Wales and Australia, my Three Rebellions grew into the Rebellion Trilogy with the addition of Famine, Fenians and Freedom 1840-1882 and Resistance and Rebellion in the British Empire, 1600-1980 that were finished by 2011 though the final volume was not published until early 2013.  These books in turn were in 2012 and 2013 expanded into Rebellion in Canada 1837-1885, ‘A Peaceable Kingdom’: Essays on Nineteenth Century Canada and Settler Australia, 1780-1880. Parallel to this I had been working on six Kindle books on Nineteenth Century British Society and a synoptic volume Coping with Change: British Society, 1780-1914 and Sex, Work and Politics: Women in Britain, 1830-1914 and a second edition covering 1780-1945, on translations and commentaries of some medieval texts and Breaking the Habit: A Life of History, a book combining some autobiographical musing with essays on history in education.  Never one to use one word when I can use a paragraph—according to one of my students—these are substantial pieces of work;  Coping with Change, for instance, comes in at over 700 pages.   Some of this work represented a break from Chartism, an interlude in a project that lasted nearly four years from beginning to end. 

The delay in getting down to the Chartism series actually proved to be advantageous.  Researching and writing the other series meant that I allowed myself time to think about how best to approach the movement.  My conclusion was that it needed four volumes.  One of my major concerns about existing books on Chartism was that its context was, at best, condensed into an opening, often short, chapter.  So, yes there needed to be a contextual volume.  Since I had been involved in the early 1970s in the Local History Classroom project, an innovative and very early project on using computers in the classroom, I had developed a view of history as a continuum from local to national to global—what I called ‘a micro-macro approach’ and this view called for three volumes on Chartism from local, national and global perspectives.  That was the plan which, for a variety of reasons, was modified as the research and writing progressed.  Four volumes became six and 850,000 words.

31 December 2013:
100,339 words
22 May 2014: 177,875 words
9 July 2015: 141,158 words
13 December 2015: 143,452 words
10 January 2016: 241,015 words
1 July 2016: 134,879 words

Having worked out what I planned to do, the next step was to make decisions about research approaches.  Getting to research libraries and archives proved an impossibility as I was the sole carer 24/7 for my wife.  This meant that I had to rely on material on the Internet that I could access at home such as the British Newspaper Archives, the National Archives online, EthOS, Google Books and so on.  Fortunately, I have an extensive collection of material on Chartism that I have accumulated over several decades. 

I started writing the first volume in May 2013 so it has taken just over three years to complete.  There was little problem with the first two volumes but it was the volume on Chartism from a local perspective that proved most challenging.  My decision to include discussion of the nature of radical politics in the decades before Chartism was established in each chapter meant that a single volume would have been too long.  So I divided the subject into two--the first dealing with London and the South; the second on The North, Scotland, Wales and Ireland—and then produced an abridged version The Chartists, Regions and Economies.  The final volume effectively examines the global impact of Chartism and also considers some of the themes than run through the remainder of the series—the historiography of the movement, Chartist leadership, women, radicalism and Chartism, the state and Chartism and how Chartism has been memorialised. 

This volume completes the Reconsidering Chartism series. What began as a plan for four books—context, national narrative, local narrative and global history—expanded into six volumes . While these books, in their printed and Kindle manifestations, form my most considered examination of Chartism, whether they are my last word on the subject is possible but I suspect unlikely. I keep being drawn back to the issues raised by O’Connor, Lovett and the like and by the political challenges faced by the working-classes in the decades round the mid-nineteenth century.