Contentious Gatherings in Britain, 1758-1834

This study records discontinuous, concerted, contentious forms of collective action occurring in the London region from 1758 to 1820 and in Britain as a whole from 1828 to 1834. These contentious gatherings are defined as occasions on which at least ten or more persons assembled in a publicly-accessible place and either by word or deed made claims that would, if realized, affect the interests of some person or group outside their own number. In the world of eighteenth and nineteenth century Britain such gatherings would include almost every event that an observer or historian would label disturbance, disorder, riot, or protest in addition to the numerous meetings, rallies, marches, processions, celebrations, and other sanctioned assemblies during which people made claims. One of the aims of the principal investigators was to study the structure of debate and political action among citizens in a major Western state during a period of transition to the more formal methods of modern popular collective action such as voting, petitioning, and participation in special-interest associations.