Reflections on the Bicentenary of the 1819 Massacre of Reformers in Manchester Two hundred years after the massacre of protestors in Manchester, known as Peterloo, distinguished scholars of Romantic-era literature join together in this commemorative volume to assess the implications of the violence. Contributors explore how attitudes toward violence and the claims of people to participate in government were reflected and revised in the verbal and visual culture of the time. Their analyses provide fresh insights into cultural engagement as a means of resisting oppression and a sign of the resilience of humanity in facing threats and force.Key FeaturesProvides a multi-perspectival, historical revaluation of the violence of Peterloo Draws on contemporary theorizations of violence by Judith Butler, Slavoj Zizek and Rob Nixon to account for the cultural factors leading to PeterlooSupplements treatments of Peterloo centering on English history with attention to the significance of that event from Scottish, Irish and North American perspectives

Integrating in detail the experiences of both Britain and Ireland, 1820 provides a compelling narrative and analysis of the United Kingdom in a year of European revolution. It charts the events and forces that tested the government almost to its limits, and the processes and mechanisms through which order was maintained. This book will be required reading for everyone interested in late-Georgian and early nineteenth-century Britain or Ireland. 1820 is about much more than a single year. Locating the Queen Caroline divorce crisis within a broader analysis of the challenges confronting the government, it places that much-investigated episode in a new light. It illuminates both the pivotal Tory Ministry under Lord Liverpool and the Whigs (by turns febrile and feeble) who opposed it. It is also a major contribution to our understanding of popular radicalism and its political containment.

Pentland's study has 3 aims: to place the uprising in a wider context by exploring the modes of extra-parliamentary politics between 1815 and1820 as well as the situation outside Scotland; (ii) to provide the first full account of the rising itself; and (iii) to examine the legacies of both the politics of 1815-20 and the Radical War.