Popular Contention in Great Britain, 1758-1834

Charles Tilly was University Distinguished Professor at the New School for Social Research and Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science at Columbia University.

• Part 1 From mutiny to mass mobilization: contention in 1833; what changed and why?; what's at issue?; contending ideas; common action and shared understanding; repertoires of contention; insistent questions, possible answers; what's to come. Part 2 Contention under a magnifying glass: a change of repertoires; problems, sources, methods; a calendar of contention; numbering the struggles; forms of contention, old and new. Part 3 Capital, state and class in Britain, 1750-1840: proletarians, landlords and others; the growth of industry; urbanization; income and inequality; war and the British state; repression in Britain; popular participation in national politics; social movements and democracy. Part 4 Wilkes, Gordon and popular vengeance, 1758-1788: how Britain was changing; contention's flow; how the repertoire worked; against poorhouses and enclosures; workers' contention; mutations. Part 5 Revolution, war and other struggles, 1789-1815: associations in France and Britain; economy and demography; state, war and parliament; textures of contention; contentious issues; the issue is food; who contended, and how?; revolution and popular sovereignty. Part 6 State, class and contention, 1816-1827: economy and state, 1816-1827; from war to peace to contention; contentious contours; Queen Caroline; contentious actors; workers in action; contending with associations; political entrepreneurs, radicals and reformers. Part 7 Struggle and reform, 1828-1834: spurting population, expanding economy, consolidating state; repertoires for the 1830s; the political crisis of 1828-1834; embattled bobbies; swing; time for reform; workers; glimmers of revolution. Part 8 From donkeying to demonstrating: to retell the story; to meet in public; catholics in politics; toward explanation; social movements and demonstrations; national and international politics; foundations of popular contention; mass national politics and democracy. Appendices: sources and methods; major Acts by the British government directly affecting popular association and collective action, 1750-1834.

Charles Tilly is one of the most important historians of recent years...This [book] is a breath of fresh air in the increasingly dusty room of texts without human agents behind them...It is an important [book]. In its restatement of 'hard' history against cultural studies, many will see it as backward-looking. They would be very foolish...Historians have gone too far down the road with cultural theory and are in danger of negating their own vocation completely. Tilly reminds us, with John Cornford, that 'facts are stubborn things'--and that history without facts is a peculiar discipline indeed.