Organizing Democracy

Maartje Janse is Lecturer of Dutch History at Leiden University, Netherlands. Her research focuses on popular participation in politics in Europe and the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. She has published books and articles on a range of topics including the origins and political implications of reform movements; abolitionism as a transnational phenomenon; and the development of protest repertoires. Janse has held visiting fellowships at Harvard and at the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Study and coordinates the Global Abolitionisms Network.Henk te Velde is Professor of Dutch History at Leiden University, Netherlands. He has written a number of articles about the transnational study of parliamentary and political culture, published three books on comparative Dutch history, and many edited volumes. His most recent examines the history of British and French parliamentary rhetoric and culture in the nineteenth century, Sprekende politiek:Redenaars en hun publiek in de parlementaire gouden eeuw (2015). He has been visiting fellow and visiting professor in Paris, Oxford and Berlin, and is one of the founders of the international Association for Political History.

• 1. Introduction: Perspectives on Political Organizing; Henk te Velde and Maartje Janse.- 2. ‘Association is a mighty engine’: Mass Organization and the Machine Metaphor, 1825-1840; Maartje Janse.- 3. 'Petition! Petition!! Petition!!!': Petitioning and Political Organization in Britain, c. 1800-1850; Henry Miller.- 4. Can 'The People' Speak?: Popular Meetings and the Ambiguities of Popular Sovereignty in the United States, 1816-1828; Reeve Huston.-  5. Law and Voluntary Association in the Early United States; Kevin Butterfield.- 6. Organizing in a Moment of Madness: Political Meetings & Clubs in 1848; Geerten Waling.- 7. The Democratic Framing of Protest in the Age of Revolution. The Language of Civil Rights and the Organization of Petitions and Demonstrations in Belgium, 1830-1848.- 8. Brilliant Failure: Political Parties under the Republican Era in France (1870-1914); Nicolas Roussellier.- 9. The German National Association 1859-1867: Rise and Fall of a Proto-Party; Andreas Biefang.- 10. Manipulation or Participation? Membership Inclusion in the Party Organizations of the German Social Democratic Workers’ Party and the British National Liberal Federation; Anne Heyer.- 11. Agitate, Educate, Organize: Radical Networks in New York in the Early 1880s; Robert Allen.- 12. Party versus Party: Beatrice Webb and the Ascent of the British Labour Party; Hanneke Hoekstra.- 13. The Domestication of a Machine. The Debate about Political Parties around; Henk te Velde