Volume 6: Chartism: A Global History and other essays

The idea for this book predates not only my trilogy on colonial rebellion but my decision to produce the Reconsidering Chartism series.[1] Its gestation began in 2003 with an off-hand comment by a student during a session on European influences on Chartism in the 1840s. She asked: ‘what impact did Chartism have on the rest of the world?’ I have spent the years since trying to find an answer and this has taken me in directions I could not have anticipated when it all began. Although much has been written about Chartism in Britain, though considerably less on Ireland, when I started work on this problem I quickly found that, apart from articles considering European influences on Chartism and on Chartism in Australia and a book on Chartists in the United States, this was not a question that had been the subject of serious consideration. The opening chapters address this issue. The first examines the internationalism of Chartism something that was evident from the beginnings of the movement. Chapter 2 looks at the relationship between Chartism and events in Canada during the 1830s that led to the rebellions in the Canadas in 1837 and 1838 and the ways in which Scottish Chartism, in particular, had an impact on the politics of the Clear Grits of the early 1850s. This is followed by a chapter that explores Chartism and the Australian colonies especially NSW and Victoria during the 1840s and 1850s when, what were previously penal colonies, made the transition from rule by governors to democratic constitutions in which the People’s Charter played an influential part. Chapter 4 draws this discussion together by asking just how far Chartism was a ‘global force’ in the mid-nineteenth century.

The remainder of the book brings together issues that have been a frequent feature throughout the series. The ways in which historians have regarded Chartism have, since Gammage first wrote about it, been matters of disagreement and is considered in Chapters 5 and 6. There was persistent tension in working-class political movements in the first half of the nineteenth century over the relationship between familial and political concerns as ideas of masculinity and femininity shifted. The precise extent of women’s participation in movements of protest is difficult to quantify and there is little sign of any formal involvement in politics before radical political reform revived, in London and provincial cities and in the northern textile districts after 1815. Women were not only part of the crowd but from the Queen Caroline affair in 1820 through to the 1850s had a particular role in radical politics, the subject of Chapter 7.Many of those who have commented on Chartism have pointed to leadership, or rather lack of it, as one of the reasons why it ultimately failed. Chapter 8 considers the nature of Chartist leadership and suggests that the traditional view of its ineffectiveness reflects an O’Connor focussed view and fails to consider the importance of local leadership or recognise the different sorts of ‘leader’ within the movement. Chapter 9 is an extensive revision of a paper on Chartism and the State originally composed in 2003. Chartists had little political muscle and, despite their mass support, were powerless when faced by the coercive power of the local and national states. The final chapter looks at how Chartism has been remembered and memorialised. For radicals, monuments were often less about consensus and more about building permanent symbols of defiance and opposition.

[1] Brown, Richard, Three Rebellions: Canada 1837-1838, South Wales 1839 and Victoria, Australia 1854, (Clio Publishing), Famine, Fenians and Freedom 1840-1882, (Clio Publishing), 2011, and Resistance and Rebellion in the British Empire, 1600-1980, (Clio Publishing), 2012.