Popular Politics and Protest
OVERVIEW
For a long time, pre-modern politics was considered an elite prerogative. Kings and nobles ruled, commoners obeyed. Yet historians have increasingly become aware of formal and informal popular influence - in local government, representative assemblies, petitioning or through acts of resistance. In this seminar, we will look at a petition from the Levellers, a radical group that emerged during the civil wars in Britain in the 1640s. The petition set out a series of demands and was part of a series of texts by the group that began to imagine an alternative constitution.
ESSENTIAL READING
Capp, Bernard. 'Riot and Rebellion.' In Beat Kümin (ed.), The European World, 1500-1800: An Introduction to Early Modern History, 4th edn. (Abingdon, 2022).
A Leveller Petition (January 1648).Link opens in a new window In Don M. Wolfe (ed.), Leveller Manifestoes of the Puritan Revolution (London, 1944).
As a guide to the primary source, choose one of these:
EITHER:
Rachel Foxley, ‘John Lilburne and the Citizenship of “Free-Born Englishmen”’, Historical Journal, 47, no. 4 (2004), 849–74
OR:
John Walter, 'Crowds and Popular Politics in the English Revolution' in Michael J. Braddick (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the English Revolution (2015)
PRIMARY-SOURCE QUESTIONS
- how revolutionary are the Levellers' demands?
- what are they derived from or grounded on?
- is this document primarily about political, socio-economic or religious issues?
SEMINAR QUESTIONS
- what role, if any, could the people play in early modern politics?
- did the emergence of print and public sphere increase or decrease popular political involvement?
- were early modern rebellions conservative or radical?
* * *
RECOMMENDED READING
On popular protest more generally:
Head, Randolph,Early Modern Democracy in the Grisons: Social Order and Political Language in a Swiss Mountain Canton, c. 1470-1620(Cambridge, 1995), ch. 1., ‘Communalism and other political models in Europe and in Graubünden’
Scott, J.C.,Domination and the Art of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts(New Haven, 1990), ch. 5: ‘Making Social Space for a Dissident Subculture’
Te Brake, Wayne,Shaping History: Ordinary People in European Politics 1500-1700(Berkeley, 1998), Ch. 5: ‘Popular Politics and the Geography of State Formation’
Thompson, E. P., ‘The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century’, in Past & Present 50 (1971), 76-136
FURTHER READING
On the Levellers and the context of civil war radicalism:
Robert Ashton,Counter-Revolution: The Second Civil War and its Origins, 1646–8(New Haven, CT, 1994)
The Agreements of the People, the Levellers and the Constitutional Crisis of the English Revolution, Philip Baker and Elliot Vernon, eds. (Basingstoke, 2012)
Rachel Foxley,The Levellers: Radical Political Thought in the English Revolution(Manchester, 2013)
Ian Gentles,The New Model Army in England, Ireland, and Scotland, 1645–1653 (Oxford, 1992)
Michael Mendle, ed., The Putney Debates of 1647 (Cambridge, 2001)
John Rees,The Leveller Revolution: Radical Political Organisation in England, 1640–1650 (2016)
Michael Braddick, The Common Freedom of the People: John Lilburne and the English Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2018).
Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down – Radical Ideas During the English Revolution.
Murray Tolmie, The Triumph of the Saints (1977)
Austin Woolrych, Soldiers and Statesmen (Oxford, 1987)
Jason Peacey, ‘John Lilburne and the Long Parliament’, The Historical Journal, 43:3 (2000), 625-645
More general works:
Black, A., ‘ Communal democracy and its history’, Political Studies 45 (1997)
Blickle, P., The Revolution of 1525: The German Peasants' War from a New Perspective (Baltimore, 1981)
Blickle, Peter, ‘Communalism as an organizational principle between medieval and modern timesLink opens in a new window’, in: idem, From the Communal Reformation to the Revolution of the Common Man (Leiden, 1998), 1-19
Blockmans, Wim, André Holenstein and Jon Mathieu (eds), Empowering Interactions: Political Cultures and the Emergence of the State in Europe 1300-1900 (Aldershot, 2009)
Bercé, Yves-Marie, Revolt and Revolution in Early Modern Europe: An Essay on the History of Political Violence, trans. J. Bergin (Manchester, 1987)
Cohn, Samuel, (ed.), Popular Protest in Late Medieval Europe: Italy, France and Flanders (e-edn, 2013) [Primary Sources]
Elton, G. R., ‘Presidential Address: Tudor Government. The Points of Contact: I. Parliament / II. The Council / III. The Court’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th Series 24 (1974), 183–200; 25 (1975), 195–212; 26 (1976), 211–28
Fletcher, A., and D. MacCulloch, Tudor Rebellions (2005) [with primary sources]
Friedrichs, Christopher R., The Early Modern City 1450-1750 (London, 1995)
Geggus, D. P. (ed.), The Haitian Revolution: A Documentary History (Indianapolis, 2014)
Graves, Michael, The Parliaments of Early Modern Europe (London, 2001)
Habermas, Jürgen, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge MA, 1991)
Kümin, Beat, The Communal Age: Towns, Villages and Parishes in Premodern Society (Basingstoke, 2013)
" , Imperial Villages: Cultures of Political Freedom in the German Lands, c.1300-1800 (Leiden, 2019)
Mackay, Ruth, The Limits of Royal Authority: Resistance and Obedience in Seventeenth-Century Castile (Cambridge, 1999)
Magagna, Victor, Communities of Grain: Rural Rebellion in Comparative Perspective (1991)
Tom Scott (ed.), The Peasantries of Europe: From the Fourteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries (London, 1998), introduction
Scribner, R. W., ‘Communalism: universal category or ideological construct?Link opens in a new window’, in: Historical Journal 37 (1994)
Sharpe, James, Crime in Early Modern England (any edn; 2nd edn, 2013)
Walter, John, Crowds and Popular Politics in Early Modern England (Manchester, 2006)
Wood, Andy, Riot, Rebellion and Popular Politics in Early Modern England (Basingstoke, 2002)
Würgler, Andreas, ‘Voices from among the "Silent Masses": Humble Petitions and Social Conflicts in Early Modern Central Europe’, International Review of Social History, 46 (2001), Supplement, 11-34
An image of John Lilburne after his arrest in 1646
ELECTRONIC RESOURCES:
England
The Proceedings of the Old Bailey 1673-1913 (reports and resources on criminal cases)
English Petitions 1573-1797 (transcriptions on British History Online) & 'Power of Petitioning' research project (17thC)
Holy Roman Empire
A rural commune organizes its own affairs: Ingenried (Bavaria) 1549
Facts and figures relating to the victory of the peasant republic of Dithmarschen at the Battle of Hemmingstedt (1500) - a somewhat clunky but basically accurate WikiVidi documentary (probably best viewed without sound)
SummaryLink opens in a new window and visualizationLink opens in a new window of anti-Jewish elements in the Fettmilch rising at Frankfurt a.M. (1612-16)
Italy
Domenico Gargiulo, ‘Piazza del Mercato [at Naples] during the Revolt of Masaniello [in 1647]‘
Extra-European
Example of a Slave Revolt in Jamaica 1760-1761