Aspects of Chartism: Who were the Chartists?

In late 1851 an article entitled How I Became a Rebel was published in the Christian Socialist[1]. The author of this incomplete autobiography was an anonymous ex-Chartist. It may be unclear whether his narrative is about 1839 or 1848 but he left little doubt about his reasons for becoming a Chartist “And so, Lord John [Russell], I became a Rebel: -- that is to say: -- Hungry in a land of plenty, I began seriously to question for the first time in my life to enquire WHY, WHY – a dangerous question, Lord John, isn’t it, for a poor man to ask? Leading to anarchy and confusion…Politics, my Lord, was with me then, a bread-and-cheese question. Let me not, however, be mistaken; -- I ever loved the idea of freedom -- glorious freedom, and its inevitable consequences – and not only for what it will fetch, but the holy principle…”

The Address of the Female Political Union of Newcastle upon Tyne of early 1839 is also unequivocal[2] “Year after year has passed away and even now our wishes have no prospect of being realised, our husbands are over wrought, our houses half furnished, our families ill-fed and our children uneducated – the fear of want hangs over our heads; the scorn of the rich is pointed towards us; the brand of slavery is on our kindred, and we feel the degradation….Fellow-Countrywomen…we entreat you to join us to help the cause of freedom, justice, honesty and truth, to drive poverty and ignorance from our land and establish happy homes, true religion, righteous government and good laws.”

Both sources make explicit that the reasons for becoming a Chartist were a combination of principle and pragmatism. ‘Want’ may have been the spur to action but behind the harsh realities of poverty, unemployment and depression lay an important belief in freedom and justice. The Charter was the means through which a ‘just’ society could be established, a society in which the economic excesses that afflicted working people could be abolished.

Some general observations

The social, economic and political reasons why people became Chartists in the 1830s and 1840s had existed since the beginning of the century. Yet Chartism was different from earlier radical movements. It had objectives that were shared by all its supporters even if they differed on how those objectives were to be achieved. Its support came from across the country. It was principally a working class movement. It lasted longer. This helps to explain why it is difficult to answer the question ‘who were the Chartists?’ The Chartists of 1838-9 did not correspond to those of 1842 and 1848. At different times, for different reasons and in different parts of the country, different working people found in the Charter a means of improving their lives. Chartism could be strong in one county but weak in neighbouring ones. It is important to recognise that while it is necessary to make some general statements about Chartist support it is at local level that historians must search to find convincing explanations[3].

A geographical dimension

Chartism was much stronger in certain areas than others but its real power-base, lay in the three textiles districts of the East Midlands, the West Riding of Yorkshire and in southern Lancashire. In these industrial areas, the cyclical trade depressions of the late 1830s and 1840s, coupled with the dependence of families in declining handicraft trades on outdoor relief made the Poor Law seem threatening, while community ties and mutual assistance societies such as trade unions and friendly societies were particularly strong, enabled Chartism to colonise a popular associational culture. The threat to trade unions that were increasingly beleaguered in the 1830s gave added impetus to Chartist organisations and these tended also to be in the areas where a tradition of attachment to radical reform had roots that went back two generations to the 1790s. John Belchem specified as follows[4]: ‘The real Chartist strongholds…were not the cities but the surrounding towns and out-townships, the typical industrial communities of the manufacturing districts – the textile towns of Lancashire, Cheshire and the West Riding of Yorkshire; the hosiery, lace and glove-making areas of the east Midlands; the depressed linen-weaving centres of Barnsley and Dundee; and the ‘industrial villages’ of the mining and ironworking districts, the north-east coalfield, the South Wales valets and the Black Country. Here occupational ties were reinforced by other loyalties, by networks of mutual knowledge and trust which facilitated powerful and effective political organisation.’  He could also have added some reference to similar places in the Scottish Lowlands and around Carlisle.

The most consistent Chartist bulwarks were in the Pennine industrial areas of south-east Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire that combined factory production with declining textile crafts and strong trade union and radical political traditions. Within these areas Chartism was stronger in industrial villages and medium-sized towns like Stockport, Bolton, Halifax and Bradford than in the major provincial centres of Manchester and Leeds. Within the north-west, the correlation between the ‘cotton towns’ and Chartism was strong and it extended beyond the immediate Manchester area to embrace outposts at Carlisle (where impoverished hand-loom weavers with a long radical tradition gave particular momentum to the movement) and other textile centres at Kendal (where middle-class support gave Chartism an unusually moderate tone) and Wigton (a market town with a linen-weaving tradition). Manchester was far less of a Chartist stronghold on this evidence with signatories of the 1839 Petition accounting for fewer than one in thirty of the population. However, recent research suggests that the town was more of a centre both of Chartism and the factory industry than was supposed in the 1970s and 1980s by historians who tended to emphasise the economic role of commerce rather than manufacture, the fragmentation of community and the difficulty of sustaining working-class organisations in the cotton metropolis. Manchester’s profile was certainly raised by the radicals of its industrial hinterland, for whom it was an obvious centre for mass meetings and demonstrations but Paul Pickering’s work has shown that it was an important and strong Chartist centre in its own right.

The north-west’s other regional centre was Liverpool and it lacked real radical credentials and, with other seaports that featured casual and sweated labour, did not appear to be a major Chartist centre though one in fourteen of the population signed the 1839 Petition. It was not until 1848 that it played a significant role in the movement. The mining and heavy industry district of south-west Lancashire proved inhospitable to Chartism, just as it lacked the developed self-help and mutual aid traditions that were expressed through trade unions and friendly societies in the north-west’s Chartist strongholds. Further north, the coal-mining areas of West Cumberland say virtually no Chartist activities as the great landed estates that dominated these industrial areas and their seaport towns were able to freeze out all kinds of radical politics and trade unionism. Two points can be made about the evidence on which the distribution of Chartist support within the economically diverse north-west of England:

• Different parts of the region ‘peaked’ at different times. Cotton towns such as Oldham and Preston and their satellite industrial villages were particularly active in the early years of the movement and showed a marked decline after the repression following the strikes of August and September 1842. They failed to revive in the trade depression of 1846-7 or in the last great upsurge during 1848. Reasons for this may be found in the demoralising effects of the repression but also ion the declining importance of the hand-loom weavers who played such a central role in the early development of the movement.
• There was a receding threat from the new poor law in an area where it seemed especially disturbing on paper but its strictest provisions were not carried into practice, coupled with the emergence of a less aggressive stance towards trade unions and other concessions by local elites on such issues as factory reform in the mid-1840s.

But there were other areas, like South Wales, the Black Country and parts of the south west, where there had been little organised radicalism before. In the first National Petition, 19,000 signatures came from London compared to 100,000 from the West Riding and mass metropolitan support for Chartism came only in the 1840s.

In other areas support was limited. In Ireland, cities like Belfast, Cork and Dublin had Chartist organisations but the general suspicion of the Catholic Church that Chartism would undermine society, and from the Young Ireland Movement because Chartism was English, meant that its impact was limited. Chartism gained little support in areas where Wesleyan Methodism was strong. In Cornwall temperance and Methodist leaders combined to minimise Chartist influence. In other areas, by contrast, local nonconformists played a central role in the movement and some national leaders like Henry Vincent sought to give the movement a Christian rationale. More generally, Chartism was weak in largely rural areas where deference and traditional forms of protest remained strong. In East Anglia agricultural labourers in general were not convinced that the vote would remedy their economic plight. In rural Wales, where the gap between rural and urban workers was to some extent bridged by their joint opposition to English dominance and their shared nonconformity, Chartism was accompanied by more traditional protest in the form of the Rebecca riots of 1839 and 1842[5]. Beneath this regional and local diversity of Chartism there was, however, a very real sense of national unity in the movement, especially in the peak years between 1839 and 1842 and in 1848.

An occupational dimension

Occupational support for Chartism was also extensive. A wide range of urban and industrial workers was involved. Economic conditions were only partially responsible for this, though they were of major importance. Of the twenty-three local associations who responded to a questionnaire distributed by the 1839 Convention, only two stressed lack of the vote as a general grievance. The majority complained of low wages, dear food, and scarcity of work and economic hardship. Considerable support came from domestic outworkers. Textile handloom weavers, linen-spinners and wool-combers in Yorkshire and silk workers in Essex were chronically depressed. It is significant that a characteristic of strong Chartist areas was a rising population. This placed additional pressure on occupations in easily learned and labour intensive industries. In Scotland, handloom weavers were the major force behind Chartism. The move to demands for a political answer to their economic grievances was motivated not by the belief that the vote would benefit their conditions but that without it there could be no solution.

Factory workers played a far more active role in Chartism than in previous radical movements. Here too the initial motivation was economic, springing from the widespread unemployment of the late 1830s. Contemporaries like Joseph Rayner Stephens and Cooke Taylor were not alone in noting that Lancashire Chartism was a ‘knife and fork question’. But it was more than this. The early part of the century had seen long hours offset by relatively high levels of wages. This had been weakened by technological change, especially the introduction of the self-acting mule in the cotton textile industry. The economic slump of the late 1830s added to their sense of frustration and despair.

The close association between trade unionism and Chartism in some areas has been regarded as showing unity of action among the working population[6]. Trade unions provided less support than they had earlier in the 1820s and 1830s and many factory workers turned -- temporarily -- to political agitation. Miners had also been insulated from broad popular movements but during the late thirties and early forties large numbers, especially in Wales and the West Midlands, became enmeshed in Chartism. In Staffordshire links with Chartism seem to have been superficial. Chartists did play a prominent role in the organisation of the strike in August 1842 but more importance was attached to the specific local grievances of the miners than to the Charter. By contrast, Chartists in South Wales were able to achieve a genuinely political agitation during 1838 and 1839 among both ironworkers and miners culminating in the abortive Newport rising.

Factory workers and miners occupied an intermediate position between the rank-and-file outworkers and the artisans and small shopkeepers who formed most of the local leadership. In Suffolk and Essex, for example, tailors, shoemakers and building artisans looked to agricultural labourers for mass support. In Bath, artisans provided the leadership and the declining cloth trade the rank and file. In the Bradford Northern Union, wool-combers and weavers supported artisan leadership. In Aberdeen, there was a similar balance between handloom weavers and a small articulate artisan leadership. Craftsmen were prominent partly because of a long tradition of political radicalism. But economic considerations gave artisan leadership an added edge. In the clothing, furniture and building trades their economic position was deteriorating or at least vulnerable. The growing market for relatively low quality goods and downward trend in prices compelled employers to cut their costs. This was responsible for a continuing expansion of a ‘dishonourable’ or non-unionised sector in traditional trades, the employment of unapprenticed and semi-skilled labour and a downward spiral into ‘sweated’ trades. Only a few skilled trades, like bookbinding and watch making, were able to maintain their status and prosperity and remained aloof from Chartism.

Class consciousness?

How far and under what conditions should Chartism be viewed as a class conscious working-class movement? This Marxist perspective highlights the drawing together of wage-labourers under the Chartist umbrella, conscious of their shared interests and injustices in opposition to employers who took an unfair share of the fruits of their labour and landowners whose revenues came from the unjust possession of land that enabled them to manipulate the machinery of the state to the disadvantage and exclusion of the people at large.

Chartism provided a rhetoric and an understanding that could pull working people together across the boundaries of trade and workplace hierarchies that normally divided them enabling them to rise up in pursuit of their common interests and entitlements as workers against a corrupt system. The strongest statement of this position for a particular locality comes from Foster’s book on Oldham[7]. He argues that

• A consciousness of class interests and identity passed beyond the preserve of a committed and convinced minority of agitators in the 1830s and 1840s and spread among the wage-earning people at large.
• This was clearly demonstrated in the great industrial dispute of 1834 that pulled together workers across a number of trades and entailed a local political campaign to rescue the arrested and take control of the town’s police force.
• This politicisation of workers found its highest expression in the great strike of August and September 1842 when campaigners against wage reductions in a severe trade depression voted not the return to work until the Charter became the law of the land. This, argues Foster, was a revolutionary general strike that brought class consciousness to the boil and should have generated a more serious and sustained threat to the established order than it did.

Some of the most convincing evidence in opposition to Foster involves the rapid decline in active and visible mass support for the Charter after the failure of the strike. Any wider political class consciousness the strike generated must have been at best ephemeral and the tortuous ways in which Foster attempted to explain this dissolution suggests that he was pushing his original argument further than the evidence allows. It is certainly harder to find evidence of conviction and commitment below the level of those relatively skilled trades that could afford to collect subscriptions for trade unions, combine and strike. Though Foster’s work was crudely attacked and his view that it is possible to reduce people’s motives to economic terms severely distorted, it is difficult not to conclude that his view of the 1842 strike is romantically overdrawn.

Evidence of class consciousness may be difficult to find but what Chartism did achieve in its strongholds was to pull together whole industrial communities in support of a common cause[8]. There were largely working class in their social structure though a few employers and members of the ‘shopocracy’ can also be found. In places like Sabden, an industrial village in the Pennines near Pendle Hill or Todmorden, where even the leading manufacturers who dominated the local economy were actively sympathetic to the Charter, Chartism represented the fears and aspirations of whole chapel congregations, friendly society lodges, trade union locals and singing-saloon devotees. It built on a thriving associational culture and pulled together ‘a union of the productive classes’. It united the insecure middling class of small shopkeepers and marginal professions with workers in defence against doctrinaire policies that threatened to destabilise their family economies. Feargus O’Connor was well aware that the key division was between the comfortable middle class who had benefited from 1832 and their social inferiors rather than between the working and middle classes in their broader sense. In this scenario, it was community rather than class consciousness that Chartism was able to draw on in the 1830s and 1840s pulling together a range of hopes and fears that had been crystallised more sharply than ever by the post-Reform parliaments and the sense of betrayal keenly felt after the passage of reform in 1832.

Chartist activists were drawn disproportionately from a generation born at the beginning of the nineteenth century, whose formative adult years had seen the reform and trade union campaigns of the post-Waterloo years and was among these experiences, embittered but still hopeful thirty-somethings that Chartism came closest to predominance[9]. As a result, Chartist speakers and the Chartist press spoke the languages of principles opposition to ‘Old Corruption’ and the aristocratic state. Alongside this inherited rhetoric there was a powerful combination of antagonism to middle class abuse of property and power that led to widespread denunciation of economic exploitation, and the denial of workers’ rights. Chartism could be, and sometimes was, about class conflict.

The word ‘class’ is used widely in Chartist speeches and writings though the fault-line usually ran between the lower middle and comfortable middle classes rather than between employers and workers or rich and poor. Whether the predominant critique of current arrangements was political or economic in inspiration and goals, the movement was capable of organising impressively and on a massive scale and of generating a rhetoric that combined the violent and the apocalyptic with appeals for reason and fairness. Consciousness that there was an excluded class in the 1830s and 1840s did not mean that there was class consciousness in the later Marxist sense.

A gender dimension

Women were involved in Chartism to an unprecedented extent[10]. Yet, as Dorothy Thompson wrote “their presence has been virtually ignored by Chartism’s historians”. She identifies three main reasons for this.

• First, she argues that the rank and file of the movement has still not been closely studied in most parts of the country. Where women played a significant role in Chartism it was at a local rather than national level. Historians have tended to concentrate on Chartism as a national movement and not surprising the role of women has tended to be overlooked.
• Secondly, it is difficult to trace individual Chartists and this is a far greater problem for women than men. The majority of the Chartist crowd of both sexes remained anonymous. We simply do not know who most of the Chartists were.
• Finally, there is the preoccupation of historians. The early historians, from Gammage to the Fabians, portrayed Chartism as a serious political movement. Tea parties, social occasions, Sundays Schools, processions and other rituals which belonged to the older radical tradition and in which women played a central role did not fit into this rational mould and were either ignored or contrasted unfavourably with the modernity of Chartism. Historians of women’s movements have been equally dismissive of the role of Chartist women largely because they were not seen as being specifically feminist.

In the early stages of the movement women played an important role, in part motivated by their opposition to the perceived, if not actual, excesses of the New Poor Law. The ‘Sisters in Bondage’ – the female Chartists of Manchester – described theirs as a struggle for “suitable houses, proper clothing and good food”. This concern with economic issues was also evident in references to “pawn-brokers and furniture brokers” and the spectre of unemployment “our husbands wandering the streets, willing to work but unable to procure it, thrown out in consequence of the improvements which have been made in machinery”. This strong female involvement, where up to a third of those who signed the First Petition in 1839 and the petition on behalf of the transported John Frost in 1841 were women, was not motivated primarily by the question of women’s suffrage. Although many Chartists believed in the vote for women, it was never part of the programme of the movement. There is no suggestion that they considered themselves oppressed within their own families and there is no evidence of ‘anti-men’ agitation among the female Chartists. In the same way, they were not concerned with their right to work. Women acted in support of men and their communities concerned that their husbands should earn enough to support them and their children at home. In the early years of the movement there were almost a hundred female radical associations and a general commitment to the inclusion of women’s suffrage and the improvement of women’s education were accepted by many radicals. By the mid-1840s the radical press mentioned women less and women in the crowd seem to have declined in numbers. The reasons for this withdrawal from politics are unclear. Certainly the decline of traditional forms of protest – the procession and the mass demonstration – and the development of the politics of the committee, Thompson argues, limited the role of women. The routine work of running the localities of the National Charter Association was left to men. This did not mean that women dropped out of the movement, though the photograph of the Kennington Common meeting in April 1848 shows very few women. Attitudes to women tended to harden in the 1840s and there was a growing acceptance of the notion of ‘separate spheres’ among many working men in theory if not always in practice. The marginalising of women from the public domain and from skilled employment was an important element of the growing ‘respectability’ of working class politics and life.

A problem with sources

The main difficulty facing historians lies in identifying who the Chartists actually were. John Belchem pointed out that most of the large samples of Chartists considered by historians have been based on the committee members of political organisations and/or those arrested during major crises. In his review of Dorothy Thompson’s The Chartists, he wrote[11] that “the evidence is restricted to the fully committed and/or unlucky”. This applies to the sample of 1,152 Chartists arrested in 1839-40 David Goodway [12] used as a sample in his analysis of London Chartism and Robert Sykes’ examination of the social composition of Chartism in the Greater Manchester area[13].

One of the most comprehensive and neglected sources for later Chartism is the national list of subscribers from 1847-48 to the National Land Company in the Board of Trade Papers. This lists, alphabetically, names, addresses and occupations and is the largest single source of data on rank and file Chartist supporters. There is considerable duplication. Alan Little[14] found that there were 19 obvious duplications in the one hundred and ninety Liverpool names, addresses and occupations but even so the data contains between twenty-five and thirty thousand Land Company subscribers. There are major methodological problems with the Board of Trade list. Malcolm Chase[15] suggests that it probably included less than a third of Land Company subscribers. It is also questionable how far subscribing to the Land Company can be equated with Chartism. Certainly only one of the fifteen National Charter Association committee members in Liverpool in 1841-2 appears on the Land Company’s list. In the Leicester sample[16] of 1,400 subscribers, only about a quarter of Chartists known in 1842 can be identified. Even so Little argues persuasively that the list may give a better picture of the geographical and occupational basis of Chartism as mass movement than the figures for the minority of committed activists on committee lists.

Even if lengthy comparisons are made with census material from 1841 and 1851, providing information on age, marital status and so on, historians are still left with lists of faceless and anonymous individuals.

---

[1] Christian Socialist, volume ii, no. 59, 13 (December 1851), extracts printed in Dorothy Thompson The Early Chartists, London, 1971, pages 82-86.

[2] Northern Star, 2^nd February 1839.

[3] The most extensive general discussion of the question ‘who were the Chartists?’ is to be found in Dorothy Thompson The Chartists: Popular Politics in the Industrial Revolution,  Aldershot , 1984, pages 91-236.

[4] J. Belchem Industrialization and the Working Class, Aldershot, 1990, page 105.

[5] The best examination of the Rebecca riots is David J.V. Jones Rebecca’s Children. A Study of Rural Society, Crime and Protest, Oxford, 1989 though some earlier works, notably Henry Tobit Evans Rebecca and Her Daughters, Cardiff, 1910, should also be consulted.

[6] R. Sykes ‘Early Chartism and Trade Unionism’ in James Epstein and Dorothy Thompson (eds.) The Chartist Experience. Studies in Working-class Radicalism and Culture 1830-1860, London, 1982, pages 152-170, John Rule The Labouring Classes in Early Industrial England 1750-1850, London, 1986, pages 310-342 on craft unionism, miners and Chartism and J. Rule (ed.) British Trade Unionism 1750-1850. The Formative Years, London, 1988, especially the introduction by the editor pages 19-22 and David McNulty on unionism in Bristol pages 220-236 provide a useful starting-point on this contentious issue.

[7] J. Foster Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution, London, 1974. This book provides a controversial Leninist case-study largely of Oldham but it also has some useful things to say about Northampton.

[8] On this issue see, Craig Calhoun The Question of Class Struggle, Oxford, 1982 which includes a case-study of Lancashire.

[9] C. Godfrey ‘The Chartist Prisoners 1839-1841’, International Review of Social History, volume 24, (1978), pages 189-236 is a valuable survey of activists.

[10] D. Thompson The Chartists, 1984, pages 120-151 is invaluable. David Jones ‘Women and Chartism’, History, volume 68, (1983) is less critical. Jutta Schwarzkopf Women in the Chartist Movement, London, 1991 is a more detailed, though not entirely satisfactory, study. The issue is explored in greater detail below in Chapter 3.

[11] English Historical Review, volume 100, (1985), page 137.

[12] David Goodway London Chartism 1838-1848, Cambridge, 1982, pages 16-17.

[13] R.Sykes Popular Politics and Trade Unionism in South-East Lancashire 1829-42, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Manchester, 1982, chapter 12.

[14] Alan Little ‘Liverpool Chartists: Subscribers to the National Land Company, 1847-8’ in John Belchem (ed.) Popular Politics, Riot and Labour. Essays in Liverpool History 1790-1940, Liverpool, 1992, pages 247-251.

[15] Malcolm Chase ‘Chartism 1838-1868: Responses of Two Teeside Towns’, Northern History, volume 24, (1988).

[16] Alan Little Chartism and Liberalism. Popular Politics in Leicestershire 1842-1874, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Manchester, 1989, chapter 1.

The Normans in Southern Italy: Cultural developments

Much of the culture of southern Italy in the Norman period was of monastic origin. The courts of the Norman lords were centres of artistic production, first and foremost the royal court of Palermo. Montecassino, Salerno and Palermo formed the melting-pot in which the four cultural components of Norman Italy (Lombard, Byzantine, Islamic and French) were fused together.

Medicine was particularly advanced: firstly at Montecassino, then, with important results, at the school of medicine in Salerno. The literary output was also notable: in particular, there were numerous translations of scientific texts from Arabic and Greek. There was also a flourishing school of book illumination.
In the field of architecture, Norman patronage led to the construction of a series of ecclesiastical buildings in which the pre-existing traditions (‘Cassinese’, Byzantine and Arabizing) tended to coexist with the imported Benedictine-Cluniac style. Although little attention was paid to painting, the Norman kings commissioned a series of truly outstanding mosaic cycles (Monreale, the Cappella Palatina in Palermo), which today are perhaps the most splendid memorial to their era.

Medicine

Even though it did have universities like Bologna or Paris, medieval southern Italy was of great importance for the study of medicine thanks to its vicinity to the Muslim world. This knowledge was then diffused in Italy through the monasteries. Constantine the African, a translator of Arabic medical texts, was one of the main protagonists; possibly of North African origin, he lived and worked at Montecassino, where he met Alfanus, the archbishop of Salerno, who translated medical texts from Greek into Latin. Together with their pupils, these scholars translated numerous texts, which then constituted the real corpus of knowledge in Western medicine.

It was, however, above all in the city of Salerno that, in the 11^th century, there was an extremely active medical milieu, mainly oriented towards practice and founded on the Western tradition of the early Middle Ages: Gariopontus, Petrellus and other physicians studied anatomy and their encounter with Constantine’s translations gave birth to the so-called school of medicine in Salerno. This was, in fact, the only institution in southern Italy that was comparable to the other centres of learning in the West.

Literature: history-writing

Literature, too, in the Norman period was a mainly monastic phenomenon, as is evident in such an important literary genre as history-writing. In monastic circles, history began to be linked to the search for juridical guarantees for property, so that so that the sub-genre of the chartulary flourished in the large monasteries.

The chartulary was a chronicle in which the historical account and the transcription of justificatory documents were intertwined. This practice was particularly evident in the history-writing of southern Italy in the 12th century: Chronicon Sanctae Sophiae (1119, St Sophia in Benevento); Chronica monasterii Casinensis (Montecassino); the Chronica of St Bartholomew of Carpineto and St Clement of Casauria (in the Abruzzi). Works on the Norman conquest were also produced in monastic circles: thus Geoffrey Malaterra, a monk at St Agatha in Catania, was the author of a biography of Roger I of Sicily, and Amatus of Montecassino wrote his Historia Normannorum (now lost and only preserved in a 14^th century French translation). Alexander, the biographer of Roger II, was the abbot of San Salvatore di Telese (near Benevento).

There was, however, also a certain amount of lay - or, at least, non-monastic - history-writing: apart from Romuald Guarna, archbishop of Salerno, author of a universal chronicle, mention should be made of Chronicon Beneventanum by Falco of Benevento (a history of Benevento from 1102 to 1140) and the celebrated Liber de regno Sicilie by Hugo Falcandus, who continued his account up to 1169.

Literature: scientific prose

The court of Palermo was one of the leading cultural centres of 12^th century Europe. One of those working at Roger II’s court was the Muslim geographer Edrisi, the author of the Book of Roger. The Greek monk Nilos Doxopatrius wrote, also for the king, the Taxis (description) of the five patriarchal sees into which Europe, Asia and Africa was divided. Other court personages, such Maio of Bari, author of a commentary on the Pater, were concerned with literature too. The collection of the homilies of Philogathos de Cerami, one of which was delivered before the king at the inauguration of the Cappella Palatina was an example of Byzantine literature.

Even more important, however, was the activity of translation (from Greek and Arabic) that, at court, pivoted on the figures of Henry Aristippus and the admiral Eugenius. Aristippus translated Plato’s Meno and Phaedo, and Diogenes Laertius’s lives of the philosophers; Eugenius translated Ptolemy’s Optics.

Illuminated manuscripts

The quality and quality of lay books published in southern Italy from the 11^th to the 13^th centuries is very indicative of the cultural project elaborated by the Normans.

The miniature of historical subjects was one of the great contributions of the cultural milieu of southern Italy. In this region, excellent propaganda tools were available to the Normans, who were seeking legitimation: these included the coats of arms, titles, historical writing and the works of art commissioned by the civil authorities. In the Registrum of Sant’Angelo in Formis (Montecassino, early 12^th century) the new princes of Capua have old coats of arms, frozen in the weary formulae of the routine following the period when Desiderius was abbot of Montecassino.

However, the presence in Apulia of a number of manuscripts of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which arrived with the Normans, took concrete form in the Codex Napoletano IV. F. 3., the miniatures in which display the capacity of medieval art to master classical themes (similar to these are the drawings in the borders of Orosius’s Histories against the Pagans in Vat. Lat. 3340, of Neapolitan or Salernitan execution). They are characteristic of the vigorous process of modernization that affected illuminated manuscripts in the period Norman rule.

In the 12^th century, the intervention of Roger II in the field of publishing, with greater emphasis on scientific books, meant that the illuminated manuscript remained in the background. However, the maps by the Muslim geographer Edrisi in the Book of Roger are an expression of the Mozarabic art of Sicily, as are the bizarre figures in an exemplar of the Latin translation of the Liber de locis stellarum by Al-Sufi (Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Paris, ms. 1036), executed in Palermo for William II.

The renewal of the iconographic repertoires, graphic forms and ornamental motifs of the Graeco-Norman book was greatly influenced by the models of Byzantine art, especially thanks to such figures as the admiral Eugenius and Henry Aristippus. The copy of John Scylitzes’ chronicle (the Madrid Codex, Biblioteca Nacional, Vitr. 26-2) is particularly famous. The celebrated manuscript in Bern (Burgerbibliothek 120) dates from the end of the Norman kingdom. The only exemplar of the Liber ad honorem Augusti (an eulogy of Henry VI) by Peter of Eboli is a ‘new book’, where the political illustration and the manifesto takes the place of the colourless, neutral chronicle and where the illustrations are as important as the text.

Religious architecture

In the religious architecture that flourished in southern Italy in the Norman age it is possible to distinguish a number of basic models, which are to be found in a large part of the monumental buildings of the period[1]. The architectural styles may be classified as follows:

• Benedictine-Cassinese group, the most outstanding example of which is the church of San Benedetto at Montecassino, conceived by Abbot Desiderius (other examples : the abbey church of San Liberatore alla Maiella, Capua Cathedral, Caserta Vecchia Cathedral, the church of Sant’Angelo in Formis).
• Franco-Norman group, the typical schema of which is found in Aversa Cathedral (other examples: the abbey church at Venosa, Acerenza Cathedral).
• Apulian group, inspired by the basilica of San Nicola in Bari (other examples: Canosa Cathedral, the church of Santi Cataldo e Niccolò in Lecce).
• Benedictine-Cluniac group, the model for which is the church of the Holy Trinity of Mileto, although it also includes not only Calabrian buildings, but also Sicilian ones (other examples: Mileto Cathedral, Santa Maria della Roccella and San Giovanni Vecchio at Stilo).
• Sicilian group, which, although it had numerous links with the preceding types, had an independent position because it incorporated elements of the most widespread architectural and decoration styles in southern Italy in the 11^th and 12^th centuries, as well as stylistic elements from France (other examples: the Palermo churches of San Giovanni dei Lebbrosi, San Giovanni degli Eremiti, Santa Maria dell’Ammiraglio, the Cappella Palatina; Cefalù Cathedral; the Monreale complex).

Mosaics

The remarkable output of mosaics of Norman Sicily was concentrated in the period between c. 1140 and c. 1190. It originated from the transplant of the traditions of Byzantine figurative art to Sicily by mosaicists brought to the island in successive waves to execute works commissioned by the Hauteville. A summary of the most outstanding works follows.

• Church of Santa Maria dell’Ammiraglio (the Martorana), Palermo (1143 and 1151): the mosaics in this church include the two dedicatory panels representing Christ crowning King Roger II and the admiral George of Antioch prostrate before the Virgin.
• Cappella Palatina, Palermo: the celebrated figure of the Pantocrator adorns the cupola. Roger, with erudite quotations, describes himself as the patron of the chapel. It has recently been hypothesized that the Cappella Palatina was also intended to be the king’s state apartment.
• Cefalù Cathedral: Roger’s favourite building; the king highlights his fondness for it in a series of hexameters inscribed in the mosaic decoration, where he described himself as a structor (builder). The figurative style is, once again, typically Byzantine.
• Monreale Cathedral: a magnificent mosaic cycle (6,400 sq m) commissioned by William II. Monreale itself was built as a ‘royal city’, combining the functions of cathedral and mausoleum.

Painting

Painting is perhaps one of the media least used by the Normans as a vehicle for their political propaganda. It is, therefore, difficult to reconstruct the Hauteville’s commissions in this field with any degree of precision. An emblematic case is Salerno Cathedral: the celebratory inscriptions on the exterior of the building proclaim that it was commissioned by a Norman (Robert Guiscard), but there is a lack of any cycles of painting to back up this statement. The cathedral’s mosaic cycle (little of which now remains) seems to have a purely theological function and is inspired by Roman models. The church of Sant’Angelo in Formis, near Capua, is, from an iconographic point of view, wholly Benedictine (the same applies to the lost mosaics of Capua Cathedral). The Normans’ lack of interest in painting is even more evident in the Abruzzi and Molise.

There are, however, two important exceptions. Roger I exalted his political prowess by having the ‘memorable exploits’ against the Muslims painted on the walls of the church of Ravenosa in Sicily. This cycle has now been lost, but it is considered to be a sort of Mediterranean pendant to the Bayeux Tapestry, a figurative representation of the epic narrated by Geoffrey of Malaterra in his account. Then there is the enamel placed on the front of the ciborium of the basilica of San Nicola in Bari: St Nicholas is depicted crowning King Roger, who is dressed in a tunic and armour, and bears the insignia of power in his hands.

---

[1] Giovanni Coppola ‘Sur quelques techniques de construction dans l’Italie normande’, Les Normands en Méditerraneé, University of Caen, 1994, pages 203-221 provides a good summary of current thinking.

Aspects of Chartism: Did Chartism fail?

Repeated failure sapped the momentum of Chartism. To sustain the mass platform the movement needed to maintain a widespread belief that success was possible and the Chartists never came near to achieving their ‘six points’ in the 1830s and 1840s.. The events of 1839 seriously damaged its capacity to do this. The defeat of the general strike in 1842 and the crushing failure of 1848 completed the process. The mass imprisonment, transportation and successful confrontation of mass demonstrations during the three main phases of the Chartist agitation contributed significantly to the disintegration of the movement. This represented the growing confidence and enhanced efficiency of the coercive powers of the British State[1]. The authorities inflicted the most damaging psychological defeat on the popular reform movement of the century, bankrupting the long tradition of the mass platform. Without the physical assault on the militant sections of the Chartist leadership and of many of the secondary leaders, the aftermath in the 1850s might have been different.

In part, this was a result of the organisational weakness of the movement. Lack of administrative experience was clearly exposed by the ways in which the Conventions were organised and financed. Rejection of the three petitions showed how little parliamentary support the Chartists had. The reforming movement of 1830-32 and the activities of the Anti-Corn Law League, both of which used similar tactics to Chartism to gain support, were successful because they had parliamentary allies. With little parliamentary backing or solid middle class support, the Chartist movement found itself either having to give up or raise and maintain public support or opt for less peaceful methods. This divided leadership and rank and file, creating bitterness and lack of tactical direction. Chartists could agree on the Charter but on little else. To Lancashire cotton workers, Chartism held out the prospect of economic improvement and factory reform. To the London artisan, it pointed the way to political equality. The Chartist leaders also had different objectives. For Lovett the vote was part of a general programme of social improvement; for Ernest Jones Chartism was equated with socialism; and, for O’Connor the franchise was the political counterpart of his schemes at land reform. Loss of momentum within the movement meant that Chartism could not maintain a unity of purpose.

Economic conditions played an important role in failure to maintain unity of purpose. Though there has been a reaction against the simple economic explanations, the fundamental importance of the trade cycle cannot be neglected. The difficulty of maintaining unity, except during economic slumps, was universally recognised by contemporaries. The changes that occurred in the policies and attitudes of government, in part the result of Chartism can be seen as evidence of its partial success. The movement drew attention to social problems and the need to tackle them. There was some liberalisation of state policies in the 1840s. This weakened the Chartist case that only a reformed parliament would improve the conditions of the working population.

A final explanation for the demise of Chartism lies in the consolidation of industrial capitalism that had occurred by 1850. In the previous fifty years, industrial change had created militancy among the working population who believed that political reform alone could arrest or reverse this process. By 1850, this battle had more or less been lost and Chartism remained relevant only in places like Halifax and Bradford where the woollen and worsted trades still fought rearguard actions against mechanisation. Militancy was associated with the traumas of early stages of industrialisation. Chartism was crucial in the shift from older forms of popular protest to the development of new ones, like the general strike and pressure group activity, more effective in a mature industrial urban society.

Chartism was the first organised, mass movement of the working population in British history in terms of its geographical and occupational breadth and the unprecedented involvement of women. Nevertheless, it did not draw on trade unionism in any formal way or bridge the gulf between rural and urban workers. It did not mark a vital stage in the inevitable progress of organised labour. Chartism was motivated by ‘knife and fork’ issues but was also concerned with the dignity of the individual and the ‘rights of man’. It looked back to the campaigns of the 1790s and forward to the emergence of socialism as a political force from the 1880s.

• The main problem was how to achieve a revolutionary goal by constitutional means.
• It failed to obtain parliamentary support for the Charter.
• The middle-classes largely ignored, shunned or condemned Chartism.
• Chartists were divided among themselves. George Julian Harney, a Chartist leader said in 1848, “faction has cut the throat of Chartism”.
• Government handled the movement firmly and calmly.
• Chartist demands were too drastic.
• There was too much diversity in the intellectual and ideological aims of Chartism. This was particularly evident after 1840 though the division between the aspirations of artisans and the working class generally was evident from the outset.
• In 1839, the Chartist detected considerable indifference to the movement among working people. Many people were committed to the daily task of survival. Any serious commitment to political action depended on a conviction that this was relevant to survival. The task of the Chartists was to persuade them of this.
• Other movements like trade unions offering more immediate and tangible benefits attracted Chartists.
• The socio-economic position improved after 1842. Prosperity reduced mass support.
• Chartism and the Chartists were made to look ridiculous after Kennington Common and the failure of the Land Plan.
• The changing sociology of England after railways fragmented the ‘unity’ of the working classes.
• Chartism tore itself apart.

The fact that Chartism did not achieve the ‘six point’ does not mean that it achieved nothing. Chartism was fundamental to the development of a distinctive culture among working people especially in the industrial areas of Lancashire and Yorkshire. Although this culture was complex, certain aspects seem clear:

• There was considerable scepticism and often hostility toward the state that united the interests of the propertied middle and upper classes. For some Chartists, the state was opposed because it continued to represent (though in different ways and in different circumstances) the ‘Old Corruption’ of the pre-1832 period. For others, it was the increased power of the state after 1832 that was the main cause of discontent. Chartism accommodated both views.
• Out of this scepticism emerged a fierce determination on the part of the working classes to pursue interests independently. This involved a number of objectives (educational, moral, temperance, Christian, trade union etc.) that were not always mutually exclusive. Chartism, however, provided the essential focus.
• From Chartism, specific lessons in how to protest, to organise and spread the message of dissent emerged. These lessons were not forgotten whatever the direction that older Chartists took. The many autobiographies from the mid- and late-nineteenth century confirm the importance of Chartism on working class lives.

The variegated approaches to political and social change inherent in Chartism in the 1830s and 1840s continued after 1848. Ex-Chartists moved into socialism or into, or back into trade unionism. Others again agitated for temperance reform as the key to unlock the potential of the working man. Vincent and Lovett remained sturdy working class educators to the end. Many ex-Chartists found the mid-nineteenth century Liberal Party extremely accommodating as its Whig leaders saw the political advantage of encouraging a radical wing that no longer looked to pull down the pillars of the state. ‘Liberal radicalism’ became an increasingly influential force in the 1850s and 1860s and from it came renewed demands for parliamentary reform that was answered (somewhat opportunistically) by Disraeli and the Conservatives in the 1867 Reform Act.

Chartists after 1848 took different routes. In the textile and engineering centre of Oldham, for example, some ex-Chartists who had co-operated with the Tory humanitarian John Fielden during the factory reform campaigns of the mid-1840s grew closer to the Conservative Party because, as the Oldham delegate to the 1848 Convention asserted, the laissez faire ideology of Liberals and Peelites was “the most heartless and destructive doctrine ever taught in any country”. Others moved happily into Liberal radicalism. The records of the weaver-dominated Chartist branch of the National Charter Association in Great Horton (Bradford) survive from 1840 to 1866 and clearly show that it evolved into a very different organisation. In the 1860s and 1870s, it embraced the co-operative movement and Liberal radicalism.

The history of Chartism after 1850 showed that individuals had their own order of priorities, their own definitions of freedom and their own views of the relationship between power and knowledge and between the individual and the state. For this reason, Chartists reacted differently to the economic and political progress of the mid-Victorian period. Some became Liberal radicals; some moved into independent Labour politics while others retired in confusion and bitterness. However, they all retained that tough and independent spirits that had made them ‘irreconcilables’ in the 1830s and 1840s. The legacy of Chartism lay in a growing acceptance that accommodation was better than revolution as a means of extending direct working class involvement in the political process through the intensely symbolic right to vote and as a necessity for a state that recognised that change could not be resisted and that an individual’s ‘worth’ could not simply be defined in terms of property.

---

[1] John Saville 1848: The British State and the Chartist Movement, Cambridge, 1987 considers the development of the coercive powers of the state. It is also considered in volume 2: chapter 4.

Aspects of Chartism: The Final Phase 4

It is possible to consider the development of Chartism after 1848 in several ways. Some historians, notably Dorothy Thompson and John Saville, argue that the defeat of Chartism left popular politics polarised between middle class radicalism and an increasingly apolitical working class. Others, for example Margot Finn and Gregory Claeys, suggest that the later Chartist leadership became increasingly influenced by republican and socialist ideas that were hostile to mainstream radicalism. A third approach, argued by Miles Taylor, maintains that the Chartist leadership responded to the defeat of the movement and the loss of mass support, by being reconciled to the mainstream of radical and liberal politics. Historians face major problems in assessing the geography and significance of Chartism after 1848. As Harney wrote in 1851[1] “The Chartism of ’51 is not that of 1839 or 1848…The outward and visible form of Chartism perished in 1848…Defeated, disappointed of the political victory they had hoped for in 1848, the hard-working thinkers turned their attention to social questions.”

There are few studies of later Chartism at local level. Many contemporary writers ended their detailed accounts of the movement in 1848 and newspapers often ignored radical activities in the later period. David Jones[2] cites research on Wales and the Black Country suggesting that the resilience of Chartism has been underestimated. In North Wales and in parts of the West Country the movement may have entered a new phase. Chartists like A.W. Blacker of Torquay, Thomas Clewes of Stockport, Joseph Alderson of Bradford and Walter Pringle in Edinburgh campaigned with traditional vigour. Halifax was a particularly vibrant centre of later Chartism. The NCA, revived in 1849, never had more than 4,000-5,000 members during the following decade and perhaps many fewer. The executive and district councils lacked financial resources. The movement disintegrated further.

In April 1848, Lovett formed the People’s League supported by Miall, Vincent and Lowery. Two days later Cooper, Hetherington and Holyoake[3] founded a rival People’s Charter Union. Both were moderate organisations reflecting the great pains some Chartists took after 1848 to recast reform politics in a favourable light. The People’s League planned to align Chartism with an overhaul of the tax system but soon foundered. The Union was soon involved in reviving the agitation against the remaining stamp duty especially after March 1849 when the Newspaper Stamp Abolition Committee was formed. The NSAC gained support from several prominent radicals including Place and Holyoake. In February 1851, it became the Association for the Repeal of the Taxes on Knowledge, essentially a middle class pressure group. The original Union had already disappeared with the failure of Cooper’s plan to organise individual petitions.

Continuing newspaper taxes were of particular interest to Chartists after 1848 largely because of the large number of Chartist and radical journals. Chartist literacy flourished. Gammage drew attention to the variety of publications, many often short-lived[4]. O’Brien ran The Reformer and then The Power of the Pence in which he put forward his individualistic socialist views. Others edited ultra-radical journals generally with a republican slant. Harney produced the Red Republican in 1850, the Democratic Review between 1849 and 1851, the Friend of the People in 1850-51 and again in 1852 and The English Republic between 1851 and 1855. Jones edited Notes to the People between 1851 and 1852 and the People’s Paper for six years after 1852. Passmore Edwards’ Public Good had a pacifist slant. Local journals also flourished like the Voice in the East in Wisbech and the Progressionist in Buckingham edited by Gammage himself. These publications reflect the intellectual maelstrom that Chartism had become with ever-increasing diversity of views among the declining Chartist ranks.

This diversity continued to weaken the NCA and O’Connor found his supremacy in the movement under considerable pressure. He became increasingly inconsistent and this was reflected in his frequent changes of mind[5]. He continued to be vindictive towards real and imagined enemies. He also vacillated over middle class alliances. In May 1849, Joseph Hume again called for household suffrage or ‘Little Charter’ movement and was roundly condemned by O’Connor. Yet, the following month he unsuccessfully asked Hume to adopt the Charter. Neither Hume’s proposal in June nor O’Connor’s own motion for the Charter the following month met with widespread support in the Commons. O’Connor then proceeded to collaborate with the middle class Household Suffrage Association. Such links disgusted some Chartists loyalists and further exacerbated divisions in the movement. In December 1849, a metropolitan conference of twenty-eight delegates met without national representation. It elected a provisional executive and then proceeded to argue over O’Connor’s middle class links. Harney joined O’Connor’s opponents and was dismissed from the Star. The following month, he formed his own organisation, the National Reform League for the Peaceful Regeneration of Society. Divisions widened further and O’Connor’s remaining allies finally lost control of the NCA. In March 1850, the short-lived rival National Charter League, which favoured links with middle class organisations, was formed. O’Connor sought to keep a foot in both camps. When, on 11^th July he again unsuccessfully raised the Charter in the Commons his preamble contained clear socialist overtones. This was the last time the Commons debated the issue.

The gulf between the Chartist leaders was now scarcely disguised. Attempts to weld the NCA, NRL, Fraternal Democrats, trade unions and the Social Reform League into the National Charter and Social Reform Union in 1850 failed. The major reason for this was the growing importance of socialism. Jones believed that a new unity could be achieved on socialist lines. He saw Charter Socialism as an organisation on strictly class lines against capitalism. Over optimistic as usual, he opposed any deviation. Co-operatives, trade unions, Christian Socialists, teetotal Chartists and republicans were all viewed as ‘Sham Radicals’. O’Connor was, however, not yet prepared to relinquish control of the movement and held a conference in Manchester to organise a ‘perfect union’. This provoked further division. Jones and the executive of the NCA were opposed but O’Connor pressed ahead gaining the support of a Manchester rally on 17^th November. The division was now clear. O’Connor and his allies stood for ‘the Charter pure and simple’ while Jones and his supporters argued for ‘the Charter and something more’.

The Manchester conference met on 26^th January 1851 and consisted of only eight delegates. It achieved nothing though both O’Connor and Jones attended to make their case. The intellectual debate had, however, left its mark. At the Chartist Convention in the spring of 1851 the Charter Socialists scored a substantial victory. The Convention began to assemble on 31^st March in London. Many districts could not afford to send delegates and the NCA was weakened by a number of secessions. Only thirty of the planned forty-nine delegates turned up and many lacked political experience. They rejected the ‘nothing but the Charter’ approach, opposed any middle class collaboration, planned a new petition and agreed that Chartists candidates would contest the next elections and that the organisation would be extended among trade unions, various working groups and the Irish. These proposals were nothing new. However, the Convention went on to adopt a new social programme. This sought to combine campaigning for the Charter with Poor Law reform, calls for state education, price controls, currency and taxation reform and nationalisation of land and the mines. The Convention dissolved on 10^th April 1851 leaving the executive to re-state its policies. But, as Ward states[6], “The brave new world was not to be.” The NCA only had around 4,000 members and they were divided. It was not in a position to revivify the increasingly moribund movement.

Ernest Jones was the dominant Chartist figure of the 1850s. However, he never achieved the supremacy over the movement that O’Connor had achieved in the 1840s. Many found it difficult to accept Jones’ innate optimism. This was already evident in the National Convention of 1848 and became more obvious in the following years. Jones inherited a movement already fatally flawed. Death and emigration had decimated the local Chartist leadership. Some members dropped out of formal Chartist completely and turned to other movements. In the North and Midlands there were rival attractions, like the revival of agitation for factory reform that seemed to offer improvements for working people. Local politics provided a worthwhile substitute for success on the national stage. Chartist methods and energies were injected into the council chamber and parliamentary elections. In his fight to retain a separate Chartist identity Jones faced considerable opposition from those who were prepared to ‘go for less’ but also from those opposed to his personal vision or Chartist politics.

Jones headed the poll in the winter elections to the NCA executive in 1851. His increasingly dictatorial manner alienated supporters like Harney. Even the ‘left’ within Chartism was divided. Jones now fought to dominate the movement. He backed a call for a convention to reorganise the movement, which met in Manchester from 17^th to 21^st May 1852. The end of the movement was protracted. Jones urged working class unity in support of the Preston cotton strikers in the winter of 1853 and called for a labour parliament to lead an allegedly reviving Chartism. The parliament, with some forty members, met in Manchester between 6^th and 18^th March 1854. A ‘Mass Movement’ was planned but, by August, it was pointed out that as far as the mass of the population was concerned that this had been another failure. Elections to the executive that year appear to have been fixed. Several districts refused to recognise the executive as a result and what remained of Chartism was further divided. Chartist audiences declined. Jones’ approach became increasingly dictatorial, explicitly so in early 1856. A last convention was held in 1858 with forty-one delegates. Jones renewed his demands for the six points but circumstances and his supporters induced him to take his stand on manhood suffrage alone. The convention saw the birth of the Political Reform League and the practical end of the Chartist movement. The NCA staggered on for two more years. By 1860 Chartism was, finally, dead[7].

---

[1] Friend of the People, volume 19, 1851.

[2] David Jones Chartism and the Chartists, pages 168-9.

[3] J. Bellamy and John Saville (eds.) Dictionary of Labour Biography, volume i, Macmillan, 1972, pages 182-189 for biography.

[4] R.G. Gammage The History of the Chartist Movement, from its Commencement Down to the Present Times, 1^st ed., 1855, 2^nd ed., Newcastle, 1894, pages 345-46.

[5] The growing inconsistency in O’Connor’s actions may well reflect the onset of psychological problems or might have been associated with the onset of syphilis. He was eventually taken into Dr Harrington Tuke’s asylum at Chiswick convinced he was a State prisoner. He died in 1855.

[6] Ward Chartism, page 228.

[7] Ward Chartism, pages 235-244 provides an invaluable discussion of what happened to the leading Chartists after Chartism.

The Normans in Southern Italy: Urban Life

During the Norman period the growth of the urban areas was modest, in no way comparable to what was going on in northern Italy. This was due, above all, to the fact that the Norman lords preferred to reside in rural castles. This meant that, with regard to both their structure and their administrative forms, towns were often no different from large villages. Also from a legislative standpoint, the Norman domination - with rare exceptions - did not allow the cities to have a significant form of autonomy. One of the most outstanding features of the major cities (Naples, Bari, Salerno, Palermo and Messina) was probably the presence of numerous communities of foreigners that vitalised them, especially from a mercantile point of view.

In the Middle Ages, the term ‘city’ was usually applied to towns with a cathedral. However, in southern Italy the conditions in which the network of bishoprics was formed created an ambiguous situation: on the one hand, small towns, such as Teramo, were the centres of dioceses, on the other, true cities were without a bishop (Barletta, Foggia, etc.). The largest cities in the Norman period were those already existing in antiquity, such as Naples and Palermo, then the Lombard and Byzantine capitals: Salerno, Capua, Benevento and Bari. Otherwise there were only minor urban areas that never grew into anything much more than villages. This was the case not only with Robert Guiscard’s capital at Melfi but also Gaeta and Amalfi, which, for a long period, were independent states. The existence of walls was not in itself a distinguishing feature of urbanisation because they were often found in the rural castra (fortified village). In the 12^th century, many cities expanded and suburbs were constructed

In the course of time the cities of southern Italy, the control of which became increasingly rigorous, lost - with a few rare exceptions - any administrative originality. One of the principal causes of this development - which was not, however, linear - was the weakness of the bishopric. In Byzantine Apulia, there was a strong tendency towards self-government, especially in the case of Bari; many Apulian cities negotiated independently with the Norman leaders without the backing of the imperial authorities. In Muslim Sicily the disintegration of the power of the Kalbite dynasty allowed some cities to become virtually independent, as also happened with the duchies on the Tyrrhenian coast of the mainland (Gaeta, Naples and Amalfi). There were independent political movements in Benevento; then, at the end of the 11^th century, it accepted papal lordship.

In the first place, the Norman conquest tended to favour, in contrast to the pre-existing political power, a certain degree of independence for the cities, for example Bari) but the institution of the monarchy led to the increasing subjection of the urban areas. It was only under King Tancred that, in the last years of the Norman kingdom, concessions were made with regard to independence, for example of Gaeta and Naples, but the model of the commune was only applied in the South in very limited circumstances

Social stratification in the Norman cities was very varied; in them, elements of a pre-feudal urban aristocracy survived. In Naples the patronymics pertaining to the upper levels of the urban society for centuries had crystallised; the same phenomenon existed in the Lombard cities (Benevento, Capua and Salerno) and in the Byzantine ones (Bari, Trani). At the end of the 12^th century this urban upper class sometimes allied with elements of the feudal aristocracy. As far as Palermo was concerned, the complexity of the circles from which the palace personnel was chosen is well known.

Another development in the cities was a class of notables in which knights and those who were not coexisted; what they had in common was the fact that they possessed a certain patrimony, usually landed property, and held positions of responsibility in the feudal pyramid or the royal administrative hierarchy (the so-called baiulatio). The ports began to allow communities of foreigners, mainly merchants (Genoese, Venetians, Pisans), to establish themselves and - in contrast with the surrounding rural areas - the presence of a mercantile class was particularly important in them.

Unlike the other regions of Italy, in the Middle Ages southern Italy was characterised by a notable development of agriculture and a lack of the typically urban activities (industry, commerce), with the exception of maritime trade. This phenomenon was linked to the limited autonomy of the southern cities, especially in the Norman period. Nonetheless, the weakness of industry in southern Italy cannot only be explained in economic terms: the region was rich in raw materials (rock salt and sulphur in Sicily, iron and silver-lead in Calabria, sulphur in Sicily and Campania), and wood and stone were plentiful. The most flourishing sector seems to have been textiles, for which the raw materials were readily available. There was also a notable production of pottery and jewellery, both of which were greatly influenced by the techniques and styles introduced by the Byzantines and Arabs.

Little is known about the structure of industry in the cities of southern Italy during the Middle Ages, especially with regard to the organization of the different trades. It appears that in the 12^th century they were, to a certain extent, distributed in certain areas : for instance, in Naples blacksmiths were concentrated in the quarter surrounding the church of San Pietro ad Ferrarios, and in Troia they seem to have founded a guild; in Amalfi there was a platea calzolariorum (shoemakers’ square).  The social status of the craftsmen varied according to their trade. The most highly regarded were the metalworkers; the least esteemed were the textile and building workers. Some trades were marginalised: this was the case with dyeing, completely farmed out to the Jews and controlled by a monopoly under the authority of the cathedral. Other trades regulated for reasons of hygiene were the slaughtering of animals and the sale of meat. With a few rare exceptions - Naples, for example - the craftsmen’s products were never sold outside the area where they were produced, so the output was limited to local needs. In other words, there was a complete lack of trade over long distances.

Aspects of Chartism: The Final Phase 3

The 1850s pose considerable difficulties for historians. The decade after 1848 saw both the principles and practice of Chartism undermined[1]. Radical protest was stifled by the increasing affluence of the economy, the growing importance of self-improvement among working people, especially the skilled artisan and the ineffectiveness of radical organisations largely because of the growing confidence of the middle classes. The move to liberalism, in this scenario, is seen, Taylor argues, “not as a political development but a retrograde step in class-consciousness”. Chartism in the 1850s was an after-thought. For the historians of Gladstonian Liberalism, radical politics of the 1850s has been largely ignored. John Vincent, for example, focuses on an analysis of the party between 1859 and 1874[2]. Studies of Palmerston’s governments in the 1850s and 1860s[3] see his approach as important because it anticipated Gladstone’s style of leadership. Both Angus Hawkins and E. D. Steele accept that there was a significant degree of discontinuity in British politics in the 1850s. Radicalism declined and liberalism emerged because the Anti-Corn Law League was successful in 1846 and Chartism failed in 1848.

Behind this widespread assumption is the Marxist belief that the fundamental feature of change in capitalist society is class struggle. The issue of working class liberalism is explained away as an interlude between the early socialism of the Chartists and the revival of socialism in the late nineteenth century. There has, however, been an alternative viewpoint stressing the continuity of radical politics across the 1850s. Frances Gillespie’s study of the influence of organised labour on the politics of parliamentary reform between 1850 and 1867 was published in 1927. Simon Maccoby recognises continuities in radicalism between the 1760s and 1914[4]. Historians have neglected both. More recently, however, they have recognised they have underestimated the extent of radical continuity between 1832 and 1867. This has occurred because of two major developments in the historiography of early Victorian politics.

Gareth Stedman Jones argues that there were strong links between Chartism and the older radical critique of the political system that can be traced back to the mid-eighteenth century[5]. The issue, he suggests was not the denial of democratic rights or the exploitation associated with industrialisation, but the corruption associated with uncontrolled executive power. This critique of the ‘Old Corruption’ sought to prevent the executive using its “public position for private gain”[6]. The best way to do this, reformers like John Wilkes and James Mill argued, was to extend popular control over the executive. This, it was maintained, would make it accountable to the electorate. Stedman Jones goes further than this and maintains that the success of Chartism in the 1830s lay in the ability of its leaders to extend this analysis to include the unequal tax burdens shouldered by the working population. This gave their cause considerable breadth and appeal. Peel’s reform of indirect taxation in his 1842 and 1845 budgets and major company and banking reforms led to this radical argument losing its attraction and so “the movement fizzled out”[7]. This conclusion, according to Taylor, has two important implications for an examination of the 1850s. First, it suggests that the success of Chartism and the radical movement in general did not depend on their class composition, or on their ability to express the interests of a single social group. Secondly, Stedman Jones has revived interest in a ‘radical tradition’ that remained largely unchanged between the mid-eighteenth century and the outbreak of war in 1914 despite changes in Britain’s economic and social structure. At the heart of this tradition were popular governance and public accountability and responsibility. Stedman Jones and subsequent historians have restored politics to the radical agenda and weakened some of the focus on class found in earlier work. It does not, however, go far enough in rethinking the chronology of mid-nineteenth century radicalism. Stedman Jones, however, still accepts that a major break occurred in radicalism in the 1840s after the critique of the ‘Old Corruption’[8] lost its relevance unlike historians such as Biagini, Joyce[9] and Vernon[10] who, though in different ways, recognise a unbroken continuity in popular politics across the Victorian period.

This tension, Taylor suggests, may be resolved by looking at a second area of historiographical development, new work on liberalism between 1820 and 1850[11]. This suggests that the modern Liberal party did not emerge overnight in the 1850s but developed gradually in the decades after the Reform Act. The amalgamation of Foxite Whig tradition with Peelite or liberal Toryism brought two important strands to liberalism. The Whigs brought a belief in popular government. Liberal Toryism provided a concern for “efficient, cheap government and moral reform”[12]. The 1832 Reform Act may not have greatly increased the electorate but it certainly increased the power of the House of Commons over the executive. The increase in the number of elections, especially in the 1830s, the growing number of contested constituencies, the expansion of parliamentary petitioning and the emergence of pressure groups like Chartism and the Anti-Corn Law League raised people’s expectations of the reformed parliament. This understanding creates a broader context in which to place radicalism between 1830 and the 1860s. The driving force behind radical politics derived not just the radical critique of the state, as Stedman Jones suggests, but from the growing popularity of parliament and the popular desire to control the executive that through the House of Commons.

These two revisionist developments provide a different framework within which to consider the Chartist movement between the 1830s and the 1850s. It is clear that there were continuities in radical ideology. There was also continuity in personnel. The political activists who dominated the Chartist leadership in 1848 were in their early thirties or forties. Many carried their radical politics into the 1850s and 1860s. Pressure group politics also showed considerable continuity. Pressure groups in the 1850s built on the tactics of organisations like the Anti-Slavery Society and the early experience of many mid-century activists lay in campaigns of the 1830s like those for colonial reform and the repeal of the stamp duty. Where there was not continuity was in political strategy. The mass platform disintegrated in 1848. But this was merely one type of political strategy. Alternative strategies were available and perhaps historians need to address the issue of the continuities in strategy between the 1830s and 1850s. The focus on the mass platform and its vigorous defence by O’Connor, however justifiable, may, in some respects, make the break in 1848 appear far greater than in fact it was.

---

[1] For what follows I have relied heavily on M. Taylor The Decline of British Radicalism 1847-1860, Oxford, 1995, pages 2-9.

[2] John Vincent The Formation of the British Liberal Party 1857-1868, London, 1966.

[3] For example, E.D Steele Palmerston and Liberalism 1855-1865, Cambridge, 1991.

[4] S. Maccoby English Radicalism, six volumes, London, 1935-1961 and S. Maccoby (ed.) The Radical Tradition 1763-1914, London, 1952.

[5] Gareth Stedman Jones ‘Rethinking Chartism’ in his Languages of class: Studies in English working class history 1832-1982, Cambridge, 1983.

[6] Taylor The Decline of British Radicalism 1847-1860, page 5.

[7] Taylor The Decline of British Radicalism 1847-1860, page 5.

[8] W.D. Rubenstein ‘The End of the “Old Corruption” in Britain, c.1780-1860’, Past and Present, volume 101, (1983) is a useful survey of the break in the 1840s. It should be supplemented by Philip Harling The Waning of ‘Old Corruption’. The Politics of Economical Reform in Britain 1779-1846, Oxford, 1996.

[9] P. Joyce Visions of the People: Industrial England and the Question of Class 1840-1914, Cambridge, 1991 and P. Joyce Democratic subjects: The self and the social in nineteenth-century England, Cambridge, 1994.

[10] J. Vernon Politics and the People: a Study in English Political Culture 1815-1867, Cambridge, 1993 and J. Vernon (ed.) Re-reading the Constitution: New narratives in the political history of England’s long nineteenth century, Cambridge, 1996.

[11] P. Mandler Aristocratic Government in the Age of Reform: Whigs and Liberals 1830-1852, Oxford, 1990, J. Parry The Rise and Fall of Liberal Government in Victorian Britain, Yale, 1993 and T.A. Jenkins The Liberal Ascendancy 1830-1886, London, 1994 and Parliament, party and politics in Victorian Britain, Manchester, 1996 are valuable summaries of current thinking.

[12] Taylor The Decline of British Radicalism 1847-1860, page 7.

Aspects of Chartism: The Final Phase 2

Soon after the mass meeting held at Kennington Common on 10^th April 1848 Ernest Jones addressed these hopeful words to his Chartist supporters [1]. “Chartists, what is your duty? It is to organise. I tell you we are on the very verge of triumph. The Government are without funds – their expenditure is increasing…the middle class mistrust them – the working class despise them…”  They proved sadly misplaced. In March 1863, Richard Cobden observed, somewhat dispiritedly to his friend William Hargreaves[2] “I suppose it is the reaction from the follies of Chartism which keeps the present generation so quiet.”  In similar vein John Snowden wrote to Ernest Jones about the Halifax area[3] “Many of those that were once active Chartists have emigrated. And others, though residing here as usual, have become so thoroughly disgusted at the indifference and utter inattention of the multitude to their best interests that they too are resolved to make no more sacrifices in a public cause.”

To both government and employers dissatisfied working people posed both a problem and a threat. Repressive laws and vigorous policing could control their activities but it was their political attitudes that had been confronted, and defeated, in 1848. Yet their presence in British society after the 1840s could not be ignored. Constraining working class aspirations was possible but it proved more effective to gain their consent to what was, after 1850, a remarkably conservative establishment. The result was an unquestionable change in the nature of working class action so fundamental that it gave the labour movement a reformist character of some permanence[4]. What was the character of this change and why did it occur? How did it affect Chartism?

The growing prosperity of the economy played a central role in this development[5]. In the early 1840s economic depression had been exceptionally severe. It was, however, succeeded by high levels of investment, a boom in railway building and banking and commercial reforms. These led to a vigorous upswing in the economy. Unemployment increased significantly in the last quarter of 1847 and the first half of 1848 as the economy was hit by a quite serious economic crisis. Had it not been for the European revolutions the return to upward growth would have occurred earlier. Business and commercial activity ran more smoothly in the third quarter of the century than earlier. Employment generally improved though full employment was only achieved in exceptional years. William Gladstone in his 1863 Budget indicated the scale of growth. He stated that the national income had increased by twenty per cent between 1853 and 1861 and that the real wealth of the working class had grown to an extent previously unparalleled in Britain or abroad.

It would be economic determinism to suggest that changes in the political attitudes of working people were brought about solely because of greater regularity of work and rising living standards. While there may be something in the oft-quoted words of William Cobbett, ‘I defy you to agitate a fellow with a full stomach’, as John Saville says[6] “These were without doubt important contributory factors, but there is no simple causative analysis that can be offered for the historic fracture in working-class political consciousness which followed 1848.”

Many of the features of working class reformism that dominated the decades after 1848 can be seen before the mid-century. Before 1850 there was already a significant growth of working class organisations that Saville calls defensive’[7]. Friendly societies and trade unions found an increasing role among skilled workers. Co-operative activity developed after 1844. Owenite and more fully-fledged Chartists activities did not so much relinquish their ideals in the 1850s and 1860s they found themselves increasingly less applicable to the personal situations of working people. Class conflict did not suddenly become a thing of the past as the 1852 lockout in the engineering industry and the Preston textile strike in 1854 demonstrated. However, the political and social reforms of the 1830s and 1840s brought the traditional ruling class and the owners of capital into different degrees of accommodation with the working class. It was the continued diversity of the working population that played a dominant role in this process. Britain was a long way from having a factory-based proletariat. The skilled artisan in the workshop setting remained the predominant working-class figure. This can be seen, for example, in mid-century Birmingham and Sheffield, both hives of small-scale producers. Such working conditions did not lend themselves to mass movements united in the cause of radical social change. More important were issues of self-respect, individual reliance and self-help. Status within diverse communities was more relevant than social class. Engels[8] was not alone in complaining that ‘the British working class is becoming more and more bourgeois’.

The establishment had some success by using different forms of ‘social control’ for maintaining its dominance over the working population. The influence of Nonconformity tended to encourage quietism in political terms and the influence of religion and moral campaigns like temperance on many groups and occupations in the 1840s and 1850s should not be underestimated. It can be argued that the mid-Victorian working class was subjected to a ceaseless barrage of propaganda from both public and private agencies on behalf of a value system that supported capitalism and the ideas of self-help, laissez-faire, sobriety, respectability and the mutual interests of labour and capital. Recreation became increasingly ‘rational’. Direct action was taken to stamp out gambling, working class blood sports, illicit drinking and overt prostitution. Constant surveillance from the police was normally sufficient to drive social undesirable activities off the streets and into remote rural areas or behind closed doors. Heavy drinking was another activity, which came under attack. More respectable alternatives were developed. When Henry Solly[9], previously a Chartist leader, founded the Club and Institute Union in 1862, he said in his letter of appeal for funds that[10] “It would be as reasonable to expect the heathen world to convert itself to Christianity as to expect the great bulk of the working men to give up the public house and establish private Clubs, without some impulse and guidance from those above them.”

There was considerable middle class support and involvement in Solly’s movement and 1867 he had set some three hundred clubs up, all of them temperance. Mechanics institutes, established as early as 1823, played an important role in educational and recreational activities as well as being a medium for transmitting middle class values. Many of the 1200 institutes that existed by 1860 had significant middle class assistance. The Volunteer Force, founded in 1859 to protect Britain from foreign invasion and with a largely working class membership of 200,000 by the 1870s, was a further form of social control. These organisations inculcated important standards of self-discipline and led, many contemporaries believed, to a moderation of political extremism.

Social control, however, was not simply a matter of channelling working class behaviour as it also involved a fundamental ideological dimension. The growing press, religion and education played a central part in spreading the values of contemporary bourgeois society. Periodicals like Charles Dickens’ Household Words and Chamber’s Journal addressed the elite of the labouring community. They attacked political agitation, immorality and industrial strikes and described the benefits of social co-operation. Literature for adults mirrored what was being read in schools. Their content may have been less overtly religious but their purpose and tone had changed little. The idea of ‘taming the working classes with education’[11] can be traced back to 1842 and the Minutes of the Committee of the Council on Education in 1846 demonstrate a similar concern with social stability[12] “Supervised by its trusty teacher, surrounded by its playground wall, the school was to raise a new race of working people – respectful, cheerful, hard-working, loyal, pacific and religious.”

The evidence presented to the Newcastle Commission on Elementary Education in 1861 stressed the success of schools in transforming working class children into model citizens. Working class radicals like Lovett recognised the importance of education as a means of ultimately achieving the franchise. Victorian religion provided a sober alternative to the public house as a centre of fellowship and general recreational activity. Both church and chapel continued to expound political and social values. People should accept their station in life and submission and obedience to authority were the central Christian duties. Christian hymns certainly stressed the virtues of middle class values.

There are, however, serious objections to the ideas that social harmony after 1850s was the product simply of social control. Whatever the merits of the mechanics’ institutes and the Volunteers, their attraction was strictly limited. Neither appears to have appealed directly to ordinary working men. By the early 1850s, in Lancashire and Cheshire, most members of their thirty-two institutes were either professionals or from the middle classes. There were over two million children on school registers in 1861 but schooling ended relatively young for most children and there was no compulsion to attend. The Religious Census of 1851 revealed the full extent of the churches’ failure to attract the mass of the population. Improving literature also appears to have had limited appeal. The limits of the success of the temperance movement can be gauged by the fact that beer consumption reached an all-time peak in 1876 of 34.4 gallons a head consumed annually. Finally many working men despised bodies like the Lord’s Day Observance Society, the main instrument of Sabbatarianism.

There was working class support for the institutions of social control but it came primarily from the skilled artisans. The attack on the traditional habits and values of the working class is best seen not as an attempt by the middle classes to impose their values on the working class but as a conflict between two distinct value systems. This conflict cut across class boundaries and united working and middle class ‘respectables’ against the idle rich and the undeserving and idle poor. This too has its problems. The respectability of many working men was marked by a considerable amount of calculation and self-interest. Sunday school attendance increased in the months before the annual treat. Attendance at church might be motivated by the possibility of playing football for the church team. In this respect the ‘respectable’ working class was not merely a middle class cipher. ‘Respectability’ did not have one meaning in the 1850s and 1860s[13]. To the middle classes, it implied deference to one’s betters, recognition of their superior virtues and attempts to copy them. To the artisan, however, it entailed a rejection of patronage and an assertion of their independence. This was clearly evident in their support of Chartism in the 1830s and 1840s and general dislike of the poor law and charity. Independence for working people did not mean the self-help philosophy preached by the middle classes and popularised by Samuel Smiles but the mutual assistance of the trade union and the co-operative society.

The extent to which the working class accepted middle class values of respectability is difficult to measure with any degree of accuracy. Neither is it possible to assess the real impact of different methods of social control or of improvements in working and living conditions. In this respect[14] “The stabilisation of social relations was thus many-sided and gradual. It did not signal an end to class conflict or the emergence of untroubled middle-class rule…. The shared economic experiences of workers across a wide range of trades, subjected to threats to their status and security, ensure the presence in the second quarter of the century of a working-class consciousness based on common struggles against excessive competition and the inequalities of capitalist market relations…. The working class did not suddenly become liberalised or reformist…The mid-Victorian consensus represented a process of social stabilisation rather than class harmonisation.”

Perhaps the growing sense of co-operation and harmony in the 1850s and 1860s can best be explained by the passage of time. By the 1860s there were fewer people who had direct experience of the turmoil that characterised the industrial revolution. Urbanisation, industrialisation and technological change had a long way to go but as processes they were familiar to working people[15]. People appear to have accepted that change was there to stay and instead of attempting to turn the clock back came to an uneasy accommodation with it. The strategies of Chartism lost their relevance to the experience of ordinary working people.

---

[1] John Saville Ernest Jones: Chartist, London, 1952, page 106.

[2] F.M. Leventhal Respectable Radical: George Howell and Victorian Working Class Politics, London, 1974, page 43.

[3] Saville Ernest Jones: Chartist, page 74.

[4] The literature on the changing or more accommodating attitude of the working class in the 1850s and 1860s is a subject of considerable debate. The following books are worth consulting. The standard text is F.E. Gillespie Labor and Politics in England 1850-67, Durham, 1927. This should be complemented, if not superseded, by Margot Finn After Chartism: Class and Nation in English Radical Politics, 1848-1874, Cambridge, 1993, Neville Kirk The Growth of Working-Class Reformism in Mid-Victorian England, London, 1985, a study based on Lancashire and Trygve Tholfsen Working-Class Radicalism in Mid-Victorian England, London, 1976. E.F. Biagini and A.J. Reid (eds.) Currents of Radicalism: Popular Radicalism, Organised Labour and Party Politics in Britain 1850-1914, Cambridge, 1991 forcibly stresses continuity of attitudes across the 1850 divide.

[5] On the economy of the 1850s and 1860s see R.A. Church The Great Victorian Boom 1850-1873, London, 1975, a valuable bibliographical corrective to the view that these decades were, in some ways, exceptional.

[6] John Saville The Consolidation of the Capitalist State 1800-1850, London, 1994, page 80.

[7] I take ‘defensive’ to mean that these organisations protected the interests of working people within the context of an increasingly capitalist economy.

[8] Engels to Marx, 7^th October 1858, quoted in K. Marx and F. Engels Selected Correspondence, Moscow, 1956, page 133.

[9] Henry Solly (1813-1903) was a Somerset Unitarian minister who supported Chartism and the Complete Suffrage Union. He wrote a great deal including two volumes of interesting memoirs (1893). Owen R. Ashton and Paul A. Pickering Friends of the People, Merlin, 2003, pages 29-54 contains a useful biography

[10] Quoted in J. Taylor ‘From self-help to glamour: the working man’s club 1860-1972’, History Workshop Pamphlet, volume 7, (1972), page 2.

[11] James Kay-Shuttleworth, secretary of the Committee for Education, certainly saw education in the light of social control.

[12] Quoted in R. Johnson ‘Educational policy and social control in the mid-nineteenth century’, Past and Present, volume 73 (1970), page 119.

[13] Adrian Jarvis Samuel Smiles and the Construction of Victorian Values, Stroud, 1997 considers the issue of respectability from a revisionist perspective.

[14] Peter Taylor Popular Politics in Early Industrial Britain. Bolton 1825-1850, Keele, 1995, page 223.

[15] Martin Hewitt The Emergence of Stability in the Industrial City: Manchester 1832-1867, Aldershot, 1996 is a useful case study.

The Normans in Southern Italy: the rural world

In early Middle Ages, and then in the Norman period, agriculture was the most important economic activity in southern Italy. The living conditions of the peasants were no different from the rest of Europe: although they were fairly satisfactory in the early Middle Ages, they tended to worsen with the growth in population from the year 1000 onwards. The main crops in southern Italy were cereals. During the Norman period the area of cultivated land was expanded and the boundaries between the lands belonging to each village and between estates were determined more precisely.

The Normans’ main building schemes consisted essentially of the fortification of pre-existing villages and the creation of new fortified settlements (in addition to the castles on the edges of built-up areas). A typical feature was the development of the casale (hamlet), which was in competition with the towns, also as far as its defensive potential was concerned

Agriculture

The vast majority of the inhabitants of the lands conquered by the Normans worked on the land. This fact helps to explains why southern Italy was only marginally involved in the new activities of an industrial type that developed in a large part of central and northern Italy. The countryside, on the other hand, enjoyed notable economic growth.

After the very difficult period from the 6^th to the 8^th centuries, with the abandonment of the cities and a notable fall in population, in the Norman period there was a considerable increase in the population once again especially in the low-lying areas, where vast tracts of marshland were reclaimed, allowing a revival of agriculture. Despite this, manpower continued to be in short supply in the rural areas. It was only in the 13^th century that there was a problem of overpopulation, as a result of which agricultural produce was insufficient to meet the needs of the inhabitants.

The condition of the peasantry

As is well known, slavery had already disappeared from Western Europe in the 8^th and 9^th centuries. In Norman Italy, both in Apulia and Campania, there were both small landowners and livellari (tenants). The latter lived on the land they cultivated and were obliged to provide the owner with corvées (unpaid agricultural labour) and supply him with produce (usually wine). In Sicily, the normal status of the Muslim peasants was that of villani (villeins) - that is, cultivators subject to a lord, with limited freedom. Generally speaking, in the island the corvées were always more burdensome than on the mainland (by contrast, in central Apulia and Calabria only a few peasants were villani). A special case was that of the affidati: these were freemen who, with their descendants, were voluntarily in the employment of a lord (however, little is known about this practice). Their liberty must certainly have been somewhat restricted, and they must have had to do numerous days of corvée.

During the 11^th and 12^th centuries the system of the corvées developed, together with the evolution of the banal lordship and the growth in the population and the economy, which meant that manpower was now more abundant. It appears that work on the seignorial lands became increasingly demanding in the areas where the cultivation of cereals was dominant, totalling twelve or even twenty-four days of corvée every year.

Agricultural produce

Although the region is extremely varied from a geographical and climatic point of view, in southern Italy during the Norman period the most important crops were cereals, especially grain and barley, although millet and oats were also grown. The need to rotate the crops, with the fields left fallow every two or three years, allowed the cultivation of pulses, an invaluable source of nutrition. The second major crop was the vine, which was grown all over the area. A third feature common to the whole region was the cultivation of vegetables; by contrast, arboriculture varied from the area bordering the Tyrrhenian Sea (chestnuts) to that facing the Ionian (olives). In Sicily exotic crops, such as cotton and citrus fruit, were grown; in a number of cases they had been imported by the Arabs. As far as stockbreeding was concerned, there were few changes. It involved, above all, saddle, draught and pack horses, oxen, donkeys, pigs, sheep, goats and poultry. The only innovation was the buffalo, which made its appearance in Campania in the 12^th century.

The rural landscape

During the Norman period one of the changes involving agriculture in southern Italy was the expansion of cultivated land at the expense of the untilled land, which did not disappear, but simply became one of the elements of the landscape. Thus there was a rational organisation of space according to the potential of the land and human geography.

Rational organisation led to a more precise definition of the boundaries of village lands, which were marked by such physical elements as trees and mounds of stones. Generally speaking, mixed crops were grown within these areas, which meant the landscape was relatively homogeneous because many types of crops coexisted on the same holding. However, there were also specialized crops, such as chestnuts, hazels and olives.

The basic unit of the rural landscape was the holding, which was described in a very precise manner in numerous notarial contracts of the period. The shape of the holdings was sometimes a regular quadrilateral, while at other times it was more complex. Their surface area tended to shrink as the population increased. The uncultivated areas were not entirely uninhabited thanks to the presence of forestarii (foresters) and shepherds, with their livestock, as well as game reserves and so on.

The rural settlements

The network of lands belonging to the village centred on the built-up area, which controlled their organisation. At the end of the 12^th century, the majority of the inhabitants lived in permanent settlements, although this was a fairly recent phenomenon. In the early Middle Ages, in the Lombard lands, castra or castella, modest fortified villages, were built by the lords on low hills; in the Byzantine regions, the settlements were generally not fortified.

The Normans fortified pre-existing villages and created new fortified settlements, in addition to the castles on the edges of the built-up areas. Thus, in many uninhabited areas, for instance, in the Abruzzi, northern Calabria, southern Lucania and the Capitanata, they created a new type of settlement known as the casale. This was a small group of houses protected by nothing more than a moat. After they had been surrounded by walls, many of these were subsequently transformed into castra (this was the case with Foggia).

Aspects of Chartism: The Final Phase 1

R.G. Gammage may have been a little premature when travelling around the country in the 1850s lecturing on the movement’s failure. Chartism persisted for a further decade, displaying vigour in some areas like Halifax but it had effectively ceased to be a mass movement. In 1852, Marx observed that the Chartists were[1] “…so completely disorganised and scattered, and at the same time so short of useful people, that they must either fall completely to pieces and degenerate into cliques....or they must be reconstituted.”

Nevertheless, its journals still flourished and Ernest Jones[2] and his Charter Socialism achieved some support, especially in London among craftsmen resentful at the growing influence of trade unionism. Chartists continued to be active in local politics but by 1860, organised Chartism was dead. The last convention gathered in 1858 and two years later the NCA was formally wound up. This view of Chartism in the 1850s is reflected in the writings of historians. For J. T. Ward it was a ‘finale’[3], for A. R. Schoyen, a ‘retreat’[4] and for David Jones the ‘last days’[5]. This material considers three questions. In what ways was the radicalism of the 1850s a continuation of the 1840s? What happened to Chartism in the late 1840s and 1850s? Why did it fail to achieve its objectives?

Why did Chartism decline?

Historians are broadly in agreement that the Chartists did not threaten the authorities after 1848 though the events of that year represented a greater challenge than use to be thought and that some king of organisation was maintained for another decade. However, the fact of sharp overall decline in uncontested. Why this decline occurred is a subject of considerable debate. Eric Evans[6] identifies six arguments that have received particular attention among historians.

Argument

Counter-argument

1
The end of the severe economic depressions that had brought the masses out on to the streets
Certainly severe depressions such as those experienced in 1839 and 1842 did disappear. However, it is difficult to prove that living standards among working people as a whole increased significantly until the 1870s and 1880s

2
Governments wee more conscious of the ‘social question’ than before and there was a ‘softening of the state’ with the passage of legislation designed to reduce social tension and class hostility. The state became increasingly self-confident during a period of economic boom and this helped to further fragment Chartism
The amount of legislation designed to improve conditions was limited and the legislation often had little practical effect until the 1860s and especially the 1870s. The new Poor Law remained a symbol of degradation and disgrace that humiliated those who needed to use it. State confidence was easily over-exaggerated, as the great soul-searching that took place over Britain’s early failures in the Crimean War (1853-56) showed

3
O’Connor’s credibility was shattered by his climb-down in 1848 and this led to further disputes among Chartist leaders

O’Connor’s powers may have been in decline but there were other leaders, especially Ernest James and Bronterre O’Brien who remained vigorous and committed. They also had a clear agenda.

4
Chartism had failed in each of its three phases despite considerable effort by working people. After these reverses, there was no stomach for further mass agitation or revolutionary preparation
Some Chartists, such as the supporters of O’Brien remained committed to the cause and were as revolutionary in their attitudes as any people in the 1830s and 1840s. They joined socialist and extreme radical groups in Europe with the aim of creating a genuinely proletarian international revolution

5
Economically depressed skilled workers, especially hand-loom weavers had always been at the centre of the Chartist agitation. As their numbers declines, with them went the motive force of Chartism
The importance of one working group should not be over-exaggerated as has the speed of its decline. Other skilled workers remained and could have revived Chartism as a mass threat is other conditions had been right

6
Chartism was betrayed by the ‘aristocracy of labour’. Those who had supported Chartism in the 1830s and 1840s were frustrated by the lack of success and looked to other organisations such as trade unions, co-operatives and friendly societies, other self-help groups and even mainstream political parties to advance their interests. Without their active involvement, Chartism was bound to wither.
This exaggerates the importance of one, fairly small group of workers. In any case, many members of this group had not been among the strongest supporters of Chartism in the 1840s. Their defection was, therefore, of limited importance to a working-class organisation

Historians, despite having different political views, nonetheless stress similar factors. Those sympathetic to working-class political organisations stress the power of the state as an important reason why the Chartists did not achieve more. Those who resist class-based analyses also point to a more self-confident government’s adoption of laissez faire policies as the key to long-term economic growth and therefore the decline of protest movements. Similarly, those who want to rehabilitate O’Connor from 1840 onwards recognise that both his own powers and his political authority took a fatal turn in 1848.

---

[1] New York Daily Tribune, 25^th August 1852.

[2] John Saville Ernest Jones: Chartist, London, 1952 is a useful collection of his writings with an incisive introduction. Miles Taylor Ernest Jones, Oxford University Press, 2003 should be regarded as the best study. Joseph O. Baylen and Norbert J. Grossman (eds.) Biographical Dictionary of Modern British Radicals since 1770, volume 2: 1830-1870, Brighton, 1984, pages 263-268 is a useful, brief biography.

[3] J.T. Ward Chartism, London, 1973, pages 220-234.

[4] A.R. Schoyen The Chartist Challenge: a Portrait of George Julian Harney, London, 1958.

[5] David Jones Chartism and the Chartists, London, 1975, pages 171-180.

[6] Eric Evans Chartism Longmans, 2000, pages 116-118.

The Normans in Southern Italy: Lordship and Feudalism

An important aspect of the Norman domination of southern Italy was the strengthening of the military or banal lordship (both lay and ecclesiastic): in other words, those forms of possession of land that also included public duties, such as military service and justice. For a long period, in mainland southern Italy, these powers created a state of tension between the great vassals and the central power (the duke of Apulia or the king).

The way the feudal pyramid functioned required the vassal to supply his superior (count, duke or king) with military contingents and tax revenues. In exchange, he obtained the administration of an area in which the inhabitants were obliged to pay him tribute and provide labour services (corvées). The vassal lived in a different manner from the other citizens, usually in a castle, nearly always outside the towns or in the countryside and he devoted himself mainly to warfare.

An attempt was made to structure relations between the vassals and between the latter and the king in a rigorous manner. The criminal law was reorganised and the distribution of the fiefs was altered by a series of laws issued by Roger II known as the Assizes of Ariano[1] and also by the Catalogus Baronum[2], a record of military obligations.

In the early Middle Ages, feudalism did not appear to be present in Southern Italy (with the exception, in some respects, of the Lombard states). The most important new element introduced by the Normans was lordship, which, however, developed in very different forms in time and in different areas : a lord (a layman or a church) had rights deriving from the ownership of land (rural lordship) and certain public rights, such as the right to collect taxes, administration of justice, military service (banal lordship). He had, therefore, multiform authority over a specific territory and he availed himself of the services of specialised personnel. The most important aspect of this power was the military one; the lord created a corps of professional soldiers (the milites or knights).  The results of the feudal system were many and varied. In Calabria and Sicily, Robert Guiscard and Roger I distributed the fiefs in such a way as to prevent the multiplication of the large domains. However, in Byzantine Apulia and in the former Lombard states, the lordships were born of an anarchical form of appropriation of the land that subsequently caused a continuous state of rebellion of the Norman barons against the central power (whether ducal or royal). The mainly military character of the lordships founded by the Normans had two fundamental consequences:

• The public aspects assumed took on major importance, so that the landed lordship was overshadowed by the banal or military one.
• The Norman lordship was essentially lay in character.

On the other hand, there were not many ecclesiastical lordships (abbeys and dioceses) in southern Italy before the Norman Conquest: Montecassino, St Vincent on Volturno, St Clement of Casauria, Holy Trinity of Cava. The secular Church was always fairly weak during the Norman period, so that its power could not be compared with that of the same institution in northern Italy. Even during the period of the kingdom, the number of titulars of dioceses and archdioceses able to seriously influence the kingdom’s politics and/or economy was insignificant.

The consequence of the mainly military character of the Norman lordship was, on the one hand, the permanent state of war (in which the lords fought between themselves) and, on the other, the actual size of the fiefs. In general, the Normans replaced the pre-existing Lombard political units (principalities, counties, areas governed by gastalds) with their own lordships. In other cases, they created new, much larger ones (the counties of the Principate, Molise, Loritello, etc.). It was in Byzantine Apulia that the largest counties were set up (Monte Sant’Angelo, Conversano, Taranto and Montescaglioso). By contrast, in Sicily and Calabria there were no counties, with the exception of Catanzaro and Squillace in Calabria. After the kingdom had been founded, in order to give greater stability to the central power, Roger II tended to create counties that were fragmented over a large area. Furthermore, he intervened with regard to the size and the title of the counties in order to limit the power of the counts. As far as the recruitment of the feudal class was concerned, with the exception of the areas previously under Lombard control, all the new lords were Normans; the natives were found much more frequently among the lower levels of the nobility, especially the knights.

The functioning of the Norman rural lordships in southern Italy was based on the possession of land. Often the lords divided their land into lots, distributing these among the peasants (the contracts were known as livelli). The rents often took the form of a share of the harvest, which was very high, especially for the produce that was non-essential (wine, etc.).  Despite the fact that their lordship was essentially a banal (i.e. fiscal and military) one, the Normans did not manage to preserve the complex Byzantine system of direct taxation. They made great use, however, of indirect taxation (already applied in the Lombard principalities): an example of this is the tax on the forest paid by the community to the vassals; other taxes included the herbaticum (for pasture) and kalendaticum (paid on the first day of the month). As far as juridical rights are concerned, although the Norman lords administered civil law, only rarely were they responsible for criminal law.

The fortified residence of a lord, the castle was an absolutely new element in the landscape of southern Italian, symbolizing the new seignorial power of a military nature. It is no coincidence that the sources record frequent attacks by the citizens on such buildings. Today all that is left of the Norman castles are a few isolated towers.  The principal function of the castles was that of imposing the new power on the local population; their use for warfare was of secondary importance. In general, they were built immediately after the conquest (the castle of Bari dates from 1075, that of Troia, 1080, and the same applies to Palermo), with the dual purpose of control and defence. Although castles were generally associated with towns or villages, they were located outside them and were often built on mottes, large man-made mounds, for example, San Marco Argentano, in Calabria. On the other hand, very little is known about their interiors. During the period of the kingdom, some castles had a purely military function; in this case they were commanded by a castellan and did not constitute the residence of a lord.

The official members of the aristocracy were milites or knights. In order to serve in the higher ranks of the fighting forces it was, in fact, necessary to be rich enough to pay for the equipment. In the case of the Normans, this comprised a pointed helmet with a nose-guard, a coat of mail down to the knees, an almond-shaped shield (in wood and leather), a sword (90 cm) and a lance (2 m). The most expensive item was the horse, armoured for battle. A knight was admitted to the military career with a ceremony of investiture (adoubement), during which he received a cingulum, the belt to which his arms were attached, and his sword. Radical changes resulted from the advent of the monarchy in the twelfth century. The permanent state of war, typical of the ducal states, disappeared, thanks, above all, to the process of transformation, initiated by Roger II of the vassals themselves into royal officials. War became specifically a royal prerogative; the policy of the Hautevilles provided for a strategy that was, on the whole, defensive. In fact, it was founded, on the one hand, on the castles and, on the other, on military service organized in individual fiefs. Roger meticulously recorded the latter in an important administrative document (corresponding to the Domesday Book in England) known as the Catalogus Baronum.

Before the institution of the monarchy, the lords dispensed justice themselves, employing officials and assistants with a wide range of titles and functions (sometimes these were Byzantine titles, such as protocamerarius, strategos, catepan, etc.). With the advent of the monarchy the lords’ freedom to deal with public law was limited and royal officials, such as justiciars and judges, appeared. Another important activity of the vassals was hunting, mainly of large game, which conferred prestige on those who caught it (bears, deer and wild boar). In the late 12^th century, falconry, an eminently aristocratic form of hunting, first made its appearance.   Other seignorial activities included pastimes about which, however, little is known: games of chance certainly played were dice and aliossi (knucklebones). The chronicler Hugo Falcandus referred to hastiludia, a game that involved breaking lances while running.

The most important legislative act of Norman rule in Italy was unquestionably the body of laws known as the Assizes of Ariano. Having gained political control of his kingdom, Roger II promulgated a series of laws during a general assembly of the barons meeting at Ariano Irpino in 1140. The Assizes constituted a synthesis of different juridical traditions (Lombard and Byzantine) grafted onto Roman law. This represented a sort of constitution for the new kingdom, which was founded on the centrality and quasi-sacredness of the monarchy, and was opposed to any disruptive force, especially the feudal one (thus following the example of Anglo-Norman law). The laws of Ariano broke the principle of the rights of personal status, replacing it with that of territoriality. The privatistic tendencies typical of early medieval criminal law (based on pecuniary settlement) were supplanted by a system of state criminal law. Judges had wide discretionary powers when deciding on punishments. These were of three types: pecuniary, deprivation of freedom and corporal

During their progressive penetration of southern Italy, the Normans adapted themselves to the monetary systems existing in the different areas, in much the same way that they did in England. There were two pre-Norman monetary areas: on the mainland, where Byzantine gold and copper coins were in use and, in Amalfi and Salerno, the tari, imitations of Arabic coins; in Sicily the Arabs had a monetary system based on the gold dinar and the silver dirhem. The first coins minted in Italy by the Normans were a number of anonymous follari struck under Robert Guiscard and Roger I. The latter, after the conquest of Sicily, introduced new types of tari, kharrube and follari to the island, stamped with a tau. However, the true monetary reorganisation took place under Roger II: the king prohibited the circulation of foreign coins and introduced one of his own, the ducat. With the monetary reform of 1140 the Sicilian tari was imposed as the standard coin throughout the kingdom. The striking of coins was limited to just a few mints: Palermo and Messina for the Sicilian tari; Salerno[3] for the follari of the duchy of Apulia; Amalfi for the tari of base gold.

---

[1] Ortensio Zecchino ‘Les Assizes de Roger II (1140)’, Les Normands en Méditerraneé, University of Caen, 1994, pages 143-159 is a useful account.

[2] Evelyn Jamison Catalogus Baronum, Rome, 1972 is the most recent edition of this central source.

[3] Paolo Peduto ‘La monnaie normande a Salerne, de Roger Borsa a Tancrède (1085-1194)’, Les Normands en Méditerraneé, University of Caen, 1994, pages 151-160 is an important paper.