The Lancashire “Rising” of 1826

1994 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 601-621
Author(s):  
David Walsh

In early April 1826, William Huskisson, President of the Board of Trade, wrote to the Home Secretary, Robert Peel, a gloomy picture of the state of essential foodstuffs in the domestic market: “there is a very serious deficiency in every article of produce even in Great Britain. Unfortunately, that deficiency is most alarming in those crops which are the food of the lowest classes—potatoes and oats. It is further unfortunate that the falling off is likely to be greatest in the parts where the lowest classes most abound…my opinion, founded on these and other considerations, is that some immediate measures ought to be taken.” In the industrial north west this dearth of essential foodstuffs coincided with one of the sharpest downturns in the trade cycle seen thus far in the nineteenth century. What Huskisson sought was some lessening in the application of the Corn Laws “immediately,” and that the question be given priority in Cabinet discussions. But his warning was ignored, the government failed to act, and the result was one of the most serious industrial disturbances of the early nineteenth century.This article recounts the details of the disturbances themselves, but it also attempts to locate the context of the disputes in a wider historical framework than a traditional one offered by historians, namely, the imposition of new machinery. Although scholars have noted the deteriorating conditions facing industrial workers at this time their narratives have focused on the destruction of machinery. John Stevenson, for example, concedes that the disturbances were not the “blind violence they have been painted,” however, it is implicit in his approach that he views the machines as the weavers' sole target, for he ends by saying that the riots were “ineffective” as the manufacturers quickly brought in new looms. It is important to show that this episode was not mere mindless violence; it was linked to a wider set of circumstances that affected the lives of working people. Although the power looms were the physical representation of the plight of the weavers, and thus rife for attack, their targets were not only the employers and governors of their locality.

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-158
Author(s):  
Piotr Miłosz Pilarczyk

One of the aspects of the principle of separation of powers in the state is control of the executive by the legislature. As regards the Polish lands in the early nineteenth century, we can speak about Polish parliamentarism only in the Duchy of Warsaw, the Kingdom of Poland and the Republic of Cracow. Although these states did not recognize the principle of parliamentary accountability, their parliaments voiced criticism of the authorities and there occurred the problem of controlling the executive. Parliament of the Duchy of Warsaw tried to usurp this right itself. Parliament of the Kingdom of Poland claimed the right to charge a civil officer of the government with crimes committed while in office. In that state the ability to control emerged during the November Uprising. In the Republic of Cracow all attempts at obtaining the right of control encountered the objection on the part of three supervising neighbours (Russia, Prussia, and Austria).  


2000 ◽  
pp. 20-25
Author(s):  
O. O. Romanovsky

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the nature of the national policy of Russia is significantly changing. After the events of 1863 in Poland (the Second Polish uprising), the government of Alexander II gradually abandoned the dominant idea of ​​anathematizing, whose essence is expressed in the domination of the principle of serving the state, the greatness of the empire. The tsar-reformer deliberately changes the policy of etatamism into the policy of state ethnocentrism. The manifestation of such a change is a ban on teaching in Polish (1869) and the temporary closure of the University of Warsaw. At the end of the 60s, the state's policy towards a five million Russian Jewry was radically revised. The process of abolition of restrictions on travel, education, place of residence initiated by Nicholas I, was provided reverse.


Author(s):  
Bill Jenkins

The introduction sets the scene by exploring the role of Edinburgh as a centre for the development and propagation of pre-Darwinian evolutionary theories. It gives essential background on natural history in the Scottish capital in early nineteenth century and the history of evolutionary thought and outlines the aims and objectives of the book. In addition, it explores some of the historiographical issues raised by earlier historians of science who have discussed the role of Edinburgh in the development of evolutionary thought in Great Britain.


Author(s):  
Theodore M. Porter

This chapter discusses statistics as social science. The systematic study of social numbers in the spirit of natural philosophy was pioneered during the 1660s, and was known for about a century and a half as political arithmetic. Its purpose, when not confined to the calculation of insurance or annuity rates, was the promotion of sound, well-informed state policy. Political arithmetic was, according to William Petty, the application of Baconian principles to the art of government. Implicit in the use by political arithmeticians of social numbers was the belief that the wealth and strength of the state depended strongly on the number and character of its subjects. Political arithmetic was supplanted by statistics in France and Great Britain around the beginning of the nineteenth century. The shift in terminology was accompanied by a subtle mutation of concepts that can be seen as one of the most important in the history of statistical thinking.


Author(s):  
Paul Stock

Chapter 6 discusses late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century geography books’ sustained focus on the political states of Europe. The books present states both as organic communities with multi-faceted jurisdictions, and as increasingly centralized governmental authorities. They usually specify that monarchy is the definitive form of European government, and that European states share a propensity for ‘liberty’, broadly defined as respect for law and property, and the maintenance of the balance of power in Europe. Some geographical texts talk about ‘nations’, but ideas about European polities remain reliant on established notions of governmental structures.


2019 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-42
Author(s):  
Soni

AbstractTo this day, the history of indigenous orphans in colonial India remains surprisingly understudied. Unlike the orphans of Britain or European and Eurasian orphans in the colony, who have been widely documented, Indian orphans are largely absent in the existing historiography. This article argues that a study of “native” orphans in India helps us transcend the binary of state power and poor children that has hitherto structured the limited extant research on child “rescue” in colonial India. The essay further argues that by shifting the gaze away from the state, we can vividly see how non-state actors juxtaposed labour and education. I assert that the deployment of child labour by these actors, in their endeavour to educate and make orphans self-sufficient, did not always follow the profitable trajectory of the state-led formal labour regime (seen in the Indian indenture system or early nineteenth-century prison labour). It was often couched in terms of charity and philanthropy and exhibited a convergence of moral and economic concerns.


1998 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul R. Deslandes

The Oxford and Cambridge man has long inspired fascination both in Great Britain and abroad. Many have, in fact, acquired an illusory understanding of these enigmatic university students through various caricatures and representations created in literature and film. Yet, despite an apparent level of popular interest, relatively few attempts have been made to understand the culture of male undergraduates at Oxford and Cambridge in a systematic and scholarly way. With the exception of Sheldon Rothblatt's work on student life in the early nineteenth century, J. A. Mangan's skillful exploration of the cult of athleticism's impact on the ancient universities, and some select studies of individual student societies and organizations, we know very little about the ways in which undergraduates lived their lives, saw their worlds, and viewed those who were traditionally excluded from these milieus. We know even less perhaps, despite the existence of Richard Symonds's examination of the relationship between Oxford and empire, about the ways “Oxbridge” undergraduates saw themselves as Britons and leaders of an imperial and “superior” English race. The conflation of English and British is intentional here. Applying English attributes to Britons did not generally present many problems for university men, even those from Scottish, Welsh, and Anglo-Irish backgrounds. “Britishness” and “Englishness” were often applied interchangeably by Oxford and Cambridge undergraduates although, as others have observed, uses of the term “English” tended most often to refer to the admired attributes or “personal” and “communal” traits of Britons, particularly those among the elite.


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