The Gordon Riots: Politics, Culture and Insurrection in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain

by Edited by Ian Haywood , John Seed

• ISBN13: 9780521195423
• ISBN10: 052119542X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-04-09
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The Gordon riots of June 1780 were the most devastating outbreak of urban violence in British history. For almost a week large parts of central London were ablaze, prisons were destroyed and the Bank of England attacked. Hundreds of rioters were shot dead by troops and for many observers it seemed that England was on the verge of a revolution. The first scholarly study in a generation, this book brings together leading scholars from historical and literary studies to provide new perspectives on these momentous events. The essays include new archival work on the religious, political and international contexts of the riots and new interpretations of contemporary literary and artistic sources. For too long the significance of the Gordon riots has been overshadowed by the impact of the French revolution on British society and culture: this book restores the riots to their central position in late eighteenth-century Britain.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	p. vii
Notes on contributors	p. ix
Acknowledgements	p. xii
List of abbreviations	p. xiii
Introduction	p. 1
The Political Moment of 1780	p. 19
The Gordon riots and the politics of war	p. 21
The 1780 Protestant petitions and the culture of petitioning	p. 46
æThe Fall of Romish Babylon Anticipated': plebeian Dissenters and anti-popery in the Gordon riots	p. 69
Imperial disruptions: city, nation and empire in the Gordon riots	p. 93
Representing the Unrepresentable	p. 115
'A metropolis in flames and a nation in ruins': the Gordon riots as sublime spectacle	p. 117
æThe worse than Negro barbarity of the populace': Ignatius Sancho witnesses the Gordon riots	p. 144
Thomas Holcroft and the Gordon riots: Romantic revisionings	p. 162
The Aftermath: Politics, Social Order and Cultural Memory	p. 183
Re-negotiating the bloody code: the Gordon riots and the transformation of popular attitudes to the criminal justice system	p. 185
'For the safety of the city': the geography and social politics of public execution after the Gordon riots	p. 204
'Mad misrule': the Gordon riots and conservative memory	p. 226
Afterword	p. 243
George Gordon: a biographical reassessment	p. 245
Select bibliography	p. 265
Index	p. 269
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