Radicalism and Chartism 1790-1860

Radicalism and Chartism 1790-1860 brings together the first two books in the Reconsidering Chartism series--Before Chartism: Exclusion and Resistance, and Chartism: Rise and Demise, both published in 2014—in a substantially revised second edition.

The prologue examines the nature of economic networks in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century. The first chapter explores the ways in which society changed in the decades leading up to the 1830s and considers the ways in which working people responded to economic change. Chapter 2 looks at the ways in which working- and middle-class radicals confronting the question of reform from the 1790s through to 1830. The politics of inclusion and exclusion and the role of repression by the Whig governments in the 1830s and the specific economic conditions from the mid-1830s are examined in Chapter 3.

The remainder of the book explores the development of Chartism chronologically from its beginnings in the mid-1830s to its demise in the 1850s and divides this into four phases explored in Chapters 4 to 7 The first phase covers the years between 1838 and 1841 and revolves round the critical events of 1839, the first Convention, the First Petition and the Newport Rising. The second phase lasts from 1841 to 1843 and focuses on the emergence of the so-called Chartist ‘new move’, the creation of the National Charter Association, the relationship between Chartists and the middle-classes and the strikes of 1842. The third phase covers the years between 1843 and 1850 during which there were attempts to reposition the movement, the Land Plan and the seminal events of 1848. The final phase considers the ways in which the movement developed during the 1850s when leadership shifted away from Feargus O’Connor to Ernest Jones. The book ends with a chapter on the radical dilemma.