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Swing, swing redivivus, or something after swing? On the death throes of a protest movement, December 1830–December 1833

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-08, 15:37 authored by Carl GriffinCarl Griffin
Published in 1969, Hobsbawm and Rudé’s Captain Swing remains the sole national account of the so-called “Swing riots” that diffused throughout most of rural southern, central, and eastern England in the autumn and winter of 1830. Whilst much revisionist work has been published since, Hobsbawm and Rudé’s contention that Swing’s brutal judicial repression effectively ended the protests has remained essentially unchallenged. Through an archival re-examination of the resort to protest between the 1830 trials and December 1833, this paper contends that the received understanding that Swing was crushed is too simplistic. In some locales, Swing maintained its momentum, in others it revived. Swing also morphed into different forms, both real and phantasmagorical. But the intensity of protests did decline. By the autumn of 1833, protests were less frequent, now representing a fractured, isolated spatiality instead of a coherent protest campaign.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

International Review of Social History

ISSN

0020-8590

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Issue

03

Volume

54

Page range

459-497

Department affiliated with

  • Geography Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2013-09-06

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