Insurrection

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Insurrection

24.95

On the 16 November 1802 a posse of Bow Street Runners raided the Oakley Arms, a working class pub in Lambeth, on the orders of the Home Office. Over thirty men were arrested, among them, and the only one of any social rank, Colonel Edward Marcus Despard. Despard and twelve of his associates were subsequently tried for high treason before a Special Commission, and Despard and six others were executed on 21 February 1803. It was alleged that they had planned to kill the King, seize London and overturn the government and constitution. The first coherent reappraisal of the Despard affair was provided by E. P. Thompson, in his magnificent work, The Making of the English Working Class. An integral part of Thompson’s thesis hinges on his analysis of what happened to one seminal political development in the 1790s, namely the first primarily English working-class movement for democracy. E. P. Thompson’s claim that determined physical force revolutionary groupings originated after the suppression of the Popular Democratic Movement in 1795 has been seriously challenged by conventional British historians. This book offers a reinterpretation of Thompson’s evidence, through a detailed overall study of post-1795 British politics. It throws new light on the organisation of government intelligence sources, Pitt’s repressive policies and machinery, and oscillating popular responses; all developments, including recrudescences of the open Democratic Movement, and notably the emergence of insurrectionary conspiracies, are firmly related to both events in the critical Irish theatre, and the course of the war against France. Insurrection is a companion volume to Wretched Faces: Famine in Wartime England 1793-1801

SKU: 36473 Category: Tag:
Subtitle: The British Experience 1795-1803
Author: Wells, Roger
Year: 0
ISBN: 9780956482730
Pages: 372
Language: English
Publisher: Breviary Stuff
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