Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Miscellaneous Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 Bristol: Prospects and Profiles
- 2 Voices in the Crowd
- 3 Authority, Class and Clientage in Bristol Politics
- 4 Wreckers from Without: Weavers, Colliers, Arsonists and Sodomites, 1729–34
- 5 Popular Jacobitism and the Politics of Provocation
- 6 Anger and Reprisals: The Struggle against Turnpikes and their Projectors, 1727–53
- 7 ‘It is better to stand like men than to starve in the land of plenty’: Food Riots and Market Regulation in Bristol
- 8 Naval Impressment in Bristol, 1738–1815
- 9 Bristol and the War of American Independence
- 10 A Loyal City? The Diversity of Dissent in Bristol in the 1790s
- 11 Hunt and Liberty: Popular Politics in Bristol, 1800–20
- 12 ‘This is the blaze of Liberty!’ The burning of Bristol in 1831
- Postscript
- Bibliography
- Index
- Studies in Early Modern Cultural, Political and Social History
1 - Bristol: Prospects and Profiles
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 May 2018
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Miscellaneous Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 Bristol: Prospects and Profiles
- 2 Voices in the Crowd
- 3 Authority, Class and Clientage in Bristol Politics
- 4 Wreckers from Without: Weavers, Colliers, Arsonists and Sodomites, 1729–34
- 5 Popular Jacobitism and the Politics of Provocation
- 6 Anger and Reprisals: The Struggle against Turnpikes and their Projectors, 1727–53
- 7 ‘It is better to stand like men than to starve in the land of plenty’: Food Riots and Market Regulation in Bristol
- 8 Naval Impressment in Bristol, 1738–1815
- 9 Bristol and the War of American Independence
- 10 A Loyal City? The Diversity of Dissent in Bristol in the 1790s
- 11 Hunt and Liberty: Popular Politics in Bristol, 1800–20
- 12 ‘This is the blaze of Liberty!’ The burning of Bristol in 1831
- Postscript
- Bibliography
- Index
- Studies in Early Modern Cultural, Political and Social History
Summary
In 1725 Daniel Defoe completed the second volume of his Tour, in which he took his readers down the Great West Road to Bristol. He had been to Bristol before and had contacts in the city, so his literary visit was not something he simply cobbled together from histories and travel books. Defoe was well aware of Bristol's reputation: ‘the greatest, richest, and the best port of Trade in Great Britain’, he declared, ‘London only excepted’. This was a pretty accurate assessment. Bristol had just surpassed Norwich in the provincial league tables, and was certainly the leading western port. With its expanding commerce to North America and the Caribbean it had surged ahead of other prominent early modern cities, such as York and Exeter, and remained the foremost provincial centre in England for the next half-century. The statistics for transatlantic trade also reveal that Bristol was well ahead of its rival ports. At the time Defoe was writing, Bristol's tonnage from mainland America was conspicuously higher than Liverpool and Glasgow. In 1725 fifty-five ships entered Bristol carrying 4417 tons of merchandise. The corresponding figures for Liverpool were fifteen and 1175, and for Glasgow, which was making strong inroads into the Chesapeake tobacco trade, twenty-six ships carrying 1625 tons. Bristol's trade in the Caribbean was even more impressive. Its cargoes of rum, sugar, indigo and logwood were greater than Liverpool, Whitehaven and Glasgow combined. And in the slave trade Bristol had outpaced London as the premier slave-trading port, sending forty-eight ships annually to Africa and delivering over 10,000 slaves to the West Indies. In the 1740s, Bristol's ships delivered 36,700 slaves to the plantations compared to Liverpool's 21,500 and London's 4800.
Visitors to Bristol were very aware of the hive of activity on the streets and quays. When Alexander Pope approached the city on his way to take the waters at Hotwell, he noted
the River winding at the bottom of the steeper banks to the Town, where you see twenty odd Pyramids smoking over the Town (which are Glasshouses) and a vast Extent of Houses red and white. You come first to the Old Walls, and over a bridge built on both sides like London bridge, and as much crowded with a strange mixture of Seamen, women, children, loaded Horses, Asses, Sledges with Goods dragging along, without posts to separate them.
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- Information
- Bristol from BelowLaw, Authority and Protest in a Georgian City, pp. 7 - 36Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2017