After the fall: Class and political language in Britain, 1780-1900

Historical Journal

Volumn 39, Issue 3, 1996, Pages 785-806

  Thompson, James ^a  

^a KING'S COLLEGE   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 14844320347     PISSN: 0018246X     EISSN: 14695103     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s0018246x00024572     Document Type: Review

References (134)

1. E. P. Thompson, The making of the English working class (London, 1963).
2. E.J. Hobsbawm, Labouring men (London, 1964), pp. 272-315.
3. See A.J. Reid's review in Historical Journal, xxx (1987), 225-37, 'or a good presentation of such criticisms.
4. The literature on this topic is huge. Perhaps the most authoritative expression of the gradualist case for growth is N. R. Crafts, British economic growth during the industrial revolution (Oxford, 1985).
5. The history of the debate is most painlessly approached through D. Cannadine's elegant, 'The present and the past in the English industrial revolution 1880-1980', Past and Present, CIII (1984), 139-67.
6. M. Berg and P. Hudson, 'Rehabilitating the industrial revolution', Economic History Review, 2nd ser., XLV (1992), 24-50.
7. A flawed attempt at establishing the common working class identity of the second pair can be found in P. Lindebaugh and M. Rediker, 'The multi-headed hydra: sailors, slaves and the Atlantic working class in the eighteenth-century', Journal of Historical Sociology, III (1990), 225-52.
8. P.Joyce (ed.), The historical meanings of work (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 1-30 summarizes much of this material.
9. 'The fall of class' was Patrick Joyce's original title for what became Democratic subjects: The self and the social in nineteenth-century England (Cambridge, 1994).
10. See Democratic subjects, p. 2 for this.
11. D. Cannadine, 'Cutting classes', New York Review of Books, 17 Dec. 1992.
12. E. A. Wrigley, Continuity, chance and change: The character of the industrial revolution in England (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 12-17, 34-46.
13. and N. McKendrick, J. H. Plumb and J. Brewer, The birth of consumer society (London, 1982), pp. 1-9, 21-2, and 1-34 more generally.
14. H. Perkin, The origins of modern English society: 1780-1880 (London, 1969).
15. E. P. Thompson, 'Patrician society, plebeian culture', Journal of Social History, VII (1974), 382-405 and.
16. 'Eighteenth-century English society: class struggle without class?', Social History, III (1978), 133-65.
17. L. Colley, Britons: forging the nation 1707-1837 (New Haven, 1992), p. 86.
18. N. McKendrick, J. H. Plumb and J. Brewer, The birth of consumer society (London, 1982), pp. 1-34, esp. 1-9 and passim.
19. J. Brewer, Party politics and ideology on the accession of George III (Cambridge, 1976), pp. 19, 197-8, 267-9.
20. and' The sinews of power: war, money and the English state 1688-1788 (London, 1989), pp. 180-2.
21. P. Langford, A polite and commercial people: England 1727-1783 (Oxford, 1989), p. XI.
22. and passim and Public life and the propertied Englishman 1689-1798 (Oxford, 1991).
23. More evidence of this trend is to be found in qualified form in P. Borsay, The English urban renaissance: culture and society in the provincial town 1660-1770 (Oxford, 1989), pp. 222, 318.
24. and in less qualified form in P. Earle, The making of the English middle class: business, society, and family life in London, 1660-1730, pp. 3-16, 328-37.
25. E. P. Thompson, Customs in common (London, 1991), pp. 87-90.
26. L. Colley, Britons, pp. 147-94.
27. D. Wahrman, 'National society, communal culture: an argument about the recent historiography of eighteenth-century Britain', Social History, XVII (1992), 43-72.
28. This problem is exacerbated by the paucity of dialogue between eighteenth and nineteenth century historians, which is in turn reinforced by the existence of 1790s studies as almost a sub-discipline in its own right. Consequently, eighteenth-century historians generally take the presence of class society in the nineteenth century for granted, while their nineteenth-century counterparts start by assuming its absence in the eighteenth century.
29. A.J. Vickery, 'Golden age to separate spheres? A review of the categories and chronology of English women's history', Historical Journal, XXXVI (1993), esp. 383-401.
30. T. Koditschek, Class formation and urban industrial society: Bradford, 1750-1850 (Cambridge, 1990).
31. R.J.Morris, Class, sect and party: The making of the British middle class, Leeds 1820-1850 (Manchester, 1990).
32. E.J. Hobsbawm, 'The malting of the English working class 1870-1914', in Worlds of labour (London, 1984), pp. 194-213.
33. This phrase recurs in P.Joyce, Visions of the people: industrial England and the question of class, 1840-1914 (Cambridge, 1991), e.g. p. 15.
34. Dror Wahrman, Imagining the middle class: The political representation of class c. 1780-1840 (Cambridge, 1995). I would like to thank Dr Wahrman for kindly allowing me to read his important study in manuscript.
35. For the first view, see J. Lawrence and M. Taylor, 'The poverty of protest: Gareth Stedman Jones and the politics of language - a reply', Social History, XVII (1993), 15.
36. And for the second, P.Joyce, 'The imaginary discontents of social history: a note of response...', .
37. P.Joyce, 'The imaginary discontents of social history: a note of response, ibid. p. 84.
38. Joyce, Visions, p. 11.
39. N. Rogers, Whigs and citits: popular politics in the age of Walpole and Pitt (Oxford, 1989), p. 128 where he talks of'a sense of class' informing London politics, though he is circumspect about attributing class consciousness in his conclusion on p. 304. In questioning Langford's concentration on middle class life in A polite and commercial people, Rogers bemoans the absence of plebeians from Langford's account, but does not seek to overturn his emphasis on the vitality and visibility of the middling sort.
40. See Rogers, 'Paul Langford's "Age of improvements'", Past and Present, CXLVIII (1991), 201-9, esP' 207.
41. K. Wilson, 'Empire, trade and popular politics in mid-Hanoverian Britain: The case of Admiral Vernon', Past and Present, CXXI (1988), 76, 92-3, 101-2.
42. See also her 'Empire of virtue' in Lawrence Stone (ed.), An imperial stale at war (1994), pp. 128-64, esp. 131, 142.
43. Her recent monograph, however, eschews totalizing accounts of class in favour of an emphasis on the instability of identity, and the role of politics in the construction of subjectivities. Nonetheless, she continues to talk of'class' and the rise of middling consciousness. See K. Wilson, The sense of the people: politics, culture and empire in eighteenth-century England (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 11, 17 n. 27.
44. Joyce, Visions, pp. 7-8.
45. G. StedmanJones, 'Working class culture and working class politics in London, 1870-1900: notes on the remaking of a working class', in Languages of class: studies in English working class history 1832-1982 (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 179-238;.
46. R. McKibbin, The ideologies of class: social relations in Britain 1880-1950 (Oxford, 1991), pp. 35-6, 294-7, .
47. and' P. Joyce. Work, society and politics: The culture of the factory in late Victorian England (Brighton, 1980), pp. xiv, xvi, xx.
48. B. Anderson, Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism (London, 2nd edn, 1991).
49. P. Clarke, Lancashire and the New Liberalism (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 15-18.
50. and 'The electoral sociology of modern Britain', History, LVII (1972), 31-55.
51. P.J. Corfield, 'Class by name and number in eighteenth-century England', in Corfield (ed.), Language, history and class (Oxford, 1991), pp. 101-30, particularly 128-9;.
52. R.Williams, Keywords (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 60-9.
53. and A. Briggs, 'The language of "class" in the early nineteenth century', in A. Briggs and J. Saville, Essays in labour history (1960), pp. 43-73.
54. But see Wahrman, Imagining the middle class, pp. 14-15, 258-9 for a different view.
55. It is true, however, that philosophical arguments about meaning and holism can only be applied to a signifying system of a certain complexity and centrality to selfhood. Language seems unique in these respects. Perhaps the most coherent statement of the case for taking the' linguistic turn' has been offered by Joan Wallach Scott. See Gender and the politics of history (New York, 1988), pp. 1-14, 28-67.
56. and 'The evidence of experience', Critical Inquiry, XVII (1991), 773-97.
57. D. Mayfield and S. Thome, 'Social history and its discontents: Gareth Stedman Jones and the politics of language', Social History, XVII (1992), 165-88;.
58. J. Lawrence and M. Taylor, 'The poverty of protest: Gareth Stedman Jones and the politics of language- a reply', Social History, XVIII (1993), 1-15;.
59. P.Joyce, 'The imaginary discontents of social history: a note of response...', .
60. P.Joyce, 'The imaginary discontents of social history: a note of response, ibid. 81-5;.
61. D. Mayfield and S. Thome, 'Reply', Social History, XVII (1993), 219-33;.
62. J. Vernon, 'Who's afraid of the linguistic turn? The politics of social history and its discontents', Social History, XIX (1994), 81-97.
63. In Past and Present, L. Stone, 'History and post-modernism', Past and Present, CXXXI (1991), 217-18;.
64. P.Joyce, 'History and post-modernism I'.
65. and C. Kelly, 'History and post-modernism II', Past and Present, CXXXIII (1991), 204-9, 209-13;.
66. L.Stone, 'History and post-modernism III'.
67. and G. M. Spiegel, 'History and post-modernism IV, Past and Present, CXXXV (1992). 189-94. 194-208.
68. P.Joyce, Democratic subjects, pp. 192-204.
69. also Visions (Cambridge, 1991), p. 329.
70. This is echoed in J. Vernon, Politics and the people: a study in English political culture 1815-1867 (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 295-6.
71. J. Vernon, Politics and the people, p. 1.
72. Famously bemoaned in G. Eley and K. Nields, 'Why does social history ignore politics?', Social History, v (1980), 249-71.
73. This process was, of course, far more theoretically informed in the French case. It gained much momentum from F. Furet's Penser la revolution françaisc (Paris, 1978).
74. L. Hunt, Politics, culture, and class in the French revolution (Berkeley, 1984) was, and is, a key text.
75. J. Morrill's The revolt of the provinces (London, 1976) was crucial in the English case, along with the work of Conrad Russell.
76. The work of W. Sewell and K. M. Baker has done much to encourage such an approach. W. Sewell, Work and revolution in France: The language of labour from the old regime to 1848 (Cambridge, 1980).
77. and K. M. Baker, Inventing the French revolution: essays on political culture in the eighteenth century (Cambridge, 1990).
78. G. Stedman Jones, 'Rethinking chartism', in his Languages of class, pp. 90-178.
79. See Joyce, Visions, p. 10.
80. and Vernon, Politics, p. 4 for this line.
81. On Stedman Jones's neglect of visual sources see especially J. A. Epstein, Radical expression: political language, ritual, and symbol in England, 1790-1850 (Oxford, 1994), pp. 70-1.
82. and P. A. Pickering, 'Class without words: symbolic communication in the chartist movement', Past and Present, CXII (1986), 144-62.
83. J. A. Epstein, ' Understanding the cap of liberty: symbolic practice and social conflict in early nineteenth century England', Past and Present, CXXII (1989), pp. 75-119 and chapter 3 of Radical expression.
84. In Radical expression, see pp. vii, 4-5, II-28, 71.
85. J. A. Epstein, 'The populist turn', Journal of British Studies, XXXII (1993), 177-89.
86. Wahrman, Imagining, pp. 14-15, 258-9.
87. Wahrman, Imagining, pp. 16, 41-9 and passim.
88. Briggs, 'The language of "class".'.
89. E.J. Hobsbawm, 'The example of the English middle class 1870-1914', .
90. in J. Kocka and A. Mitchell, Bourgeois society in nineteenth-century Europe (Oxford, 1993), pp. 127-8.
91. Wahrman, Imagining, pp. 14-15, 258-9.
92. and Briggs, 'The language of "class"', pp. 43-73, passim.
93. G. Crossick, 'From gentlemen to the residuum: languages of social description in Victorian Britain', in Corfield (ed.), language, history and class, pp. 150-78.
94. Wahrman, Imagining, pp. 175, 213-14, 322, 347, 352 n. 51.
95. Wahrman argues that radical publications generally employed dichotomous models of society to emphasize the distance between rich and poor, people and aristocracy. There is also evidence in his account of the use of terms like 'lower orders'. He does, however, provide many citations referring to the 'working' and 'labouring' classes and these tend to come from more demotic sources. It is perhaps just such plebeian organs, rather than the more elevated periodicals Wahrman focuses on in his search for the 'middle class', that we would expect to display the transition from 'rank' to 'class' most clearly. Without wishing to construct an argument on the basis of a book's index, it is perhaps worth suggesting that the direction of Wahrman's efforts are revealed by the entry for 'working classes': it reads 'see "middle classes'".
96. Consult Wahrman, Imagining, p. 12 for a clear statement that 'political language' should 'be given its due as a key site for the shaping of the social consciousness of large groups of people'. It is perhaps the case that Wahrman makes 'political language1 not merely 'a' key site, but the key site for the shaping of social consciousness.
97. Wahrman, Imagining, pp. 6-7, 9.
98. Wahrman, Imagining, pp. 226-35, 241-50.
99. Wahrman, Imagining, p. 16.
100. Wahrman, Imagining, pp. 55-6.
101. See Wahrman, Imagining, p. 142 for the argument that the popularity of talk of the 'middle class' in response to the triple assessment was partly due to its being an indirect tax on consumption which thus fell on the middling orders.
102. See Wahrman, Imagining, p. 356 for an example of this account of the English past which Wahrman argues originated in the 1820s.
103. Wahrman, Imagining, p. 6.
104. D. Wahrman, 'Virtual representation: parliamentary reporting and the language of class in the 1790s', Past and Present, cxxxv (1992), 83-113, especially go and 109.
105. See Vickery, 'Golden age to separate spheres', pp. 385-6, 390-1, 407, 413-14 for evidence supporting this characterization of such literature.
106. J. Parry, The rise and fall of liberal government in Victorian Britain (New Haven, 1993), pp. 81-7.
107. See Joyce, Visions, p. 329.
108. and Democratic subjects, pp. 131, 163.
109. And also see Vernon, Politics, pp. 290-1, 297, 309-10 and 324-6. Vernon is careful to argue that identity should be seen as unstable and that no choice need, or should, be made between class or populism. It is clear, however, that for him populism provides the most potent prism through which people view society.
110. E. F. Biagini, Liberty, retrenchment and reform (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 6-8.
111. and E. Biagini and A.J. Reid, Currents of radicalism (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 1-9, esp. 5-6.
112. It has been previously argued by Miles Taylor that Stcdman Jones's emphasis on the declining resonance of radicalism in the 1840s does not sit easily with Biagini and Joyce's emphasis on its robust survival into the late nineteenth century. The point is well made and in accord with my concern for better contextualizing popular political language, but does not detract from the claim that a stress on the enduring appeal of radicalism has often been accompanied by a reference to ' Rethinking chartism'. See M. Taylor, The decline of British radicalism, 1847-1860 (Oxford, 1995), p. 6 for this argument.
113. For instance, Epstein, 'The populist turn', 180, .
114. and Cannadine, 'Cutting classes', p. 56.
115. R. McKibbin, The ideologies of class, pp. 35-6, 294-7.
116. See J. Harris, Private Ikes, public spirit: a social history of Britain 1870-1914 (Oxford, 1993), p. 8.
117. B. Harrison, Peaceable kingdom (Oxford, 1982), pp. 157-60, 191-216.
118. On character see S. Collini, 'The idea of character in Victorian political thought', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., xxxv (1985), 26-50.
119. For property much can be gleaned from A. Offer, Property and politics 1870-1914: landowner ship, law, ideology and urban development in England (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 1-7, 41-2, 340-2.
120. Samuel Smiles, Self-help (1859), .
121. Samuel Smiles, Character (1871), .
122. and Samuel Smiles, Duty (1880).
123. S. Collini, 'The idea of character', p. 38.
124. Harris, Private lives, public spirit, pp. 121-2 makes this point well.
125. Harris, Private lives, public spirit, p. 13.
126. J. Harris, 'Political thought and the welfare state: an intellectual framework for social policy 1880-1940', Past and Present, cxxxv (1992), 116-41, see particularly 140-1.
127. A. Briggs, 'The language of "class"', .
128. A. Briggs and J. Saville, Essays in social history (1960), p. 70.
129. Consult R. Williams Keywords (London, 2nd cdn, 1983), p. 65.
130. On 'masses' and 'mass' sec Briggs, 'The language of "mass" and "masses" in nineteenth-century England', .
131. in D. E. Martin and D. Rubinstein, Ideology and the labour movement: essays presented to John Saville (1979), pp. 62-83 now reprinted in the Collected essays.
132. Also Williams, Keywords, pp. 192-7.
133. E.J. Hobsbawm, 'The making of the English working class 1870-1914', in Worlds of labour (1984), pp. 204-5.
134. Visions of the people has an entry for sociolinguistics in the index but none for soccer or football.