Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Boxes, Figures, and Tables
- Preface
- Contentious Performances
- 1 CLAIMS AS PERFORMANCES
- 2 HOW TO DETECT AND DESCRIBE PERFORMANCES AND REPERTOIRES
- 3 HOW PERFORMANCES FORM, CHANGE, AND DISAPPEAR
- 4 FROM CAMPAIGN TO CAMPAIGN
- 5 INVENTION OF THE SOCIAL MOVEMENT
- 6 REPERTOIRES AND REGIMES
- 7 CONTENTION IN SPACE AND TIME
- 8 CONCLUSIONS
- References
- Index
1 - CLAIMS AS PERFORMANCES
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Boxes, Figures, and Tables
- Preface
- Contentious Performances
- 1 CLAIMS AS PERFORMANCES
- 2 HOW TO DETECT AND DESCRIBE PERFORMANCES AND REPERTOIRES
- 3 HOW PERFORMANCES FORM, CHANGE, AND DISAPPEAR
- 4 FROM CAMPAIGN TO CAMPAIGN
- 5 INVENTION OF THE SOCIAL MOVEMENT
- 6 REPERTOIRES AND REGIMES
- 7 CONTENTION IN SPACE AND TIME
- 8 CONCLUSIONS
- References
- Index
Summary
In London, magazines, newspapers, and pamphlets proliferated during the middle decades of the 18th century. For an increasingly literate urban population, they mixed together vital visions of world affairs, national politics, news of high society, and everyday events. The Gentleman's Magazine, edited by “Sylvanus Urban, Gent.,” began publication in 1731. Among other features, each monthly issue of the magazine contained a miscellaneous chronicle of events likely to interest its cosmopolitan readers. The events often concerned contacts of ordinary people – workers and others who had no particular connections to power at a national scale – with genuine wielders of power.
For Monday the 9th of May, 1768, the chronicle reported these items from the London streets:
A numerous body of watermen assembled before the mansion house, and laid their complaint before the lord-mayor, who advised them, to appoint proper persons to draw up a petition to parliament, which his lordship promised them he would present; upon which they gave him three huzzas and went quietly home.
The same night a large mob of another kind assembled before the mansion-house, carrying a gallows with a boot hanging to it, and a red cap; but on some of the ringleaders being secured by the peace-officers, the rest dispersed.
This day the hatters struck, and refused to work till their wages are raised.
What should 21st-century readers make of these 18th-century reports? Today's readers need some essential background.
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- Contentious Performances , pp. 1 - 30Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008
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