A nation of petitioners : petitions and petitioning in the United Kingdom, 1780-1918 / Henry J. Miller, Durham University.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Miller, Henry James, 1981- author.

Series:

Modern British histories

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Petition of right--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Petition of right.

Petition, Right of--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Petition, Right of.

Petitions--Political aspects--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Petitions.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiv, 298 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2023.

Summary:

Between 1780 and 1918, over one million petitions from across the four nations were sent to the House of Commons. A Nation of Petitioners is the first study of this nineteenth-century heyday of petitioning in the United Kingdom. It explores how ordinary men and women engaged with politics in an era of democratisation, but not democracy, and restores their voices and actions to the story of UK political culture. Drawing on more than a million petitions, as well as archives of leading politicians, institutions, and pressure groups, Henry J. Miller demonstrates the centrality of petitions and petitioning to mass campaigning, representation, collective action, and forging collective identities at the local and national level. From the early nineteenth century, the massive growth of petitions underpinned and reshaped the popular authority of the UK state, including Parliament, the monarchy, and government. Challenging accounts that have stressed disciplinary or exclusionary processes in the evolution of popular politics, A Nation of Petitioners conclusively establishes the importance of the mass participation of ordinary people through petitions.

Contents:

Introduction

Petitions to the House of Commons I : scale and trends

Petitions to the House of Commons II : issues

Subscriptional cultures and petitionary documents

The right to petition

Petitioners I : collective identities

Petitioners II : petitioning communities

The practice of petitioning

Mass petitioning

Petitioning and representation

Petitioning and political culture in an age of democratisation

Conclusion.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 02 Feb 2023).

Other Format:

Print version:

ISBN:

9781009053631 (ebook)

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.