Reconsidering Chartism

On reflection, it would perhaps have been better had I written this series of book before my trilogy on colonial rebellion.[1] Having undertaken the research and planned Three Rebellions I decided to delay finishing a further study of Chartism in Britain until it was written, a process that lasted from late 2006 until April 2008. Writing Three Rebellions has, however, led me to revisit the research and drafts of papers I have written over the past three decades with a fresh eye. There was further delay when I decided to extend my consideration of colonial rebellion that led to the research and writing of Famine, Fenians and Freedom and Resistance and Rebellion in the British Empire between late 2008 and May 2012. Yet, in many respects, these books stood in their preliminary drafts as a preamble to that work, the point from which I embarked on a consideration of the impact of Chartism abroad itself a reflection of my dissatisfaction with the national approach I had previously taken to the movement.

This is my sixth excursion into Chartism.[2] My view on the subject has evolved and the way I perceive Chartism today is very different from when I first wrote on it in detail in the late 1970s. Though slightly after the publication of James Epstein’s study of Feargus O’Connor and the seminal paper by Gareth Stedman Jones on rethinking Chartism, neither work figured greatly in the documentary study I co-wrote in 1983, a point made by at least one reviewer. [3] Yet, they represented a major shift in perceptions of Chartism and played an important part in my thinking after the book was finally published in 1985. Dorothy Thompson’s and Malcolm Chase’s excellent studies of Chartism stand at the beginning and conclusion of this process.[4] Thompson’s book reflected the thinking of the mid-1980s especially in its thematic chapters while Chase takes a more traditionally chronological stance though within a revisionist framework. My aim in this series is to combine a narrative and analytical approach that adopts a broader emphasis than Thompson and Chase in giving greater attention to the radical context in which Chartism developed and explaining why it emerged as a widespread political movement in the late 1830s and to its global impact.

The series consists of six volumes covering Chartism from different stances and the books are published in print and Kindle formats:

Volume 1: Before Chartism: Exclusion and Resistance looks at the ways radical action developed in the decades before the emergence of Chartism.

Volume 2: Chartism: Rise and Demise examines the development of Chartism from the late 1830s through to its demise in the late 1850s.

Volume 3: Chartism: Localities, Spaces and Places--The Midlands and the South

Volume 4: Chartism: Localities, Spaces and Places--The North, Scotland, Wales and Ireland

Volume 5: The Chartists, Regions and Economies

Volume 6: Chartism: A Global History

This project took three years to complete.

[1] Brown, Richard, Three Rebellions: Canada 1837-1838, South Wales 1839 and Australia 1854, (Clio Publishing), 2010, Famine, Fenians and Freedom, 1840-1882, (Clio Publishing), 2011, and Resistance and Rebellion in the British Empire, 1600-1980, (Clio Publishing), 2013.

[2] This occurred twice in detailed studies of the subject: Brown, Richard and Daniels, Christopher, The Chartists, (Macmillan), 1985, and Brown, Richard, Chartism, (Cambridge University Press), 1998. On three occasions, Chartism formed part of a book: Brown, Richard, and Daniels, Christopher, Nineteenth Century Britain, (Macmillan), 1980, pp. 41-48, Brown, Richard, Church and State in Modern Britain 1700-1850, (Routledge), 1991, pp. 386-407, and Brown, Richard, Revolution, Radicalism and Reform: England 1780-1846, (Cambridge University Press), 2000, pp. 187-199.

[3] Epstein, James, The Lion of Freedom: Feargus O’Connor and the Chartist Movement 1832-1842, (Croom Helm), 1982. Jones, Gareth Stedman, ‘The Language of Chartism’, Epstein, James, and Thompson, Dorothy, (eds.), The Chartist Experience: Studies in Working Class Radicalism and Culture 1830-1860, (Macmillan), 1982, pp. 3-58, in an extended version as ‘Rethinking Chartism’, in his Languages of class: Studies in English working class history 1832-1982, (Cambridge University Press), 1983, pp. 90-178, and as ‘Repenser le chartisme’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, Vol. 54, (1), (2007), pp. 7-68.

[4] Thompson, Dorothy, The Chartists: Popular Politics in the Industrial Revolution, (Wildwood Press), 1984; Malcolm Chase Chartism: a new history, (Manchester University Press), 2007.