The Violent Captain Swing
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4162802 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Carl J Griffin (0000-0001-6585-7329, Queen's University Belfast, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2010 |
| Volume | 209 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 149-180 |
| Publication date | 2010-11-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Past & Present (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0031-2746 • E-ISSN: 1477-464X |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/pastj/gtq035 |
| OpenAlex | W2138545700 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 7 |
‘The mob threatened to attack the house during the night + set fire to the premises and have blood for supper’ (Revd George Matthews, 1831)1 ‘Revolt, when it came, in 1830, [was] curiously indecisive and unbloodthirsty’ (E. P. Thompson, 1963)2 Beginning with the destruction of threshing machines in the Elham Valley area of East Kent in the summer of 1830, the so-called ‘Swing Riots’ had by early December spread throughout the whole of southern England and East Anglia. Attacks on the popularly hated, labour-displacing, threshing machines remained the iconic feature of Swing; but incendiarism, wage and tithe ‘riots’, attempts to gain better poor relief entitlements, and dole levying all featured prominently. In total, claimed Hobsbawm and Rudé, authors of the only systematic study of the movement, there were 1,475 protest incidents in thirty-six English counties.3 And, according to John and Barbara Hammond’s classic Village Labourer, Swing was the ‘Last Labourers’ Revolt’.4 Although the validity of that description has been called into question, not least in view of the widespread uptake of agricultural trade unionism in the 1870s,5 Swing’s central place in nineteenth-century British history remains assured. It was not just a short-lived mass outpouring of discontent, but also a historical pivot that was partly responsible for politicizing many rural workers, for the creation of the workhouse-focused New Poor Law, and for the formation of County Constabularies.
Archaeology · Economic history · Political science · Poor relief · Poverty · Supper · Swing · Engineering · Historical Economic and Social Studies · History · Labor Movements and Unions · Law
The Dorchester Labourers and Swing's Aftermath in Dorset, 1830-8
Making and Breaking Property
De la sauvagerie à la violence créatrice
One For the (Farm) Workers? Perpetrator Risk and Victim Risk Transfer During the ‘Sevenoaks Fires’ of 1830
Animal maiming, intimacy and the politics of shared life
The Impact of Sturges Bourne's Poor Law Reforms in Rural England
The Culture of Combination
| Unique citing works | 7 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,47 |
| Citation span | 2011 - 2017 (7) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 7 |