National Distress

Le résumé fourni par la source

Abstract Explaining the reform crisis that developed quickly in 1830 entails an understanding of the social and material conditions that underpinned it. Distress was real and widespread in 1830 and this chapter interrogates some of its principal causes as these were discussed and debated by contemporaries. It also examines some of the manifestations of distress in 1830. It may have been most obvious amongst the pauperized agricultural labourers of southern England, but distress was keenly felt much more widely, both among different social groups and in different parts of Great Britain and Ireland. The chapter then examines the ways in which distress came to be successfully politicized in 1830. This was encapsulated in two narratives that became prevalent in the first half of the year and that would underpin the rapid development of crisis in its second half. The first was that distress was universal or national in scope. This was a frame of mind which set the nation or the people against ministers as the authors or abettors of a national injustice. The second narrative insisted that the solutions to this widespread distress were political. Amelioration was in the gift of legislators, specifically in the shape of parliamentary reform.

Ce résumé expose les affirmations des auteurs. BNTIC ne l’interprète pas comme une validation indépendante des résultats.