1. Tilly, Charles, “How Protest Modernized in France, 1845-1855,” in The Dimensions of Quantitative Research in History, ed. by Aydelotte, William, Bogue, Allan, and Fogel, Robert William (Princeton, 1972), 192–255.Google ScholarSee also Tilly's comments on France in Tilly, Charles, Tilly, Louise, and Tilly, Richard, The Rebellious Certury: 1830-1930 (Cambridge, Mass., 1975).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. The references here are to E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York, 1966) and to Hobsbawm, E.J., Primitive Rebels (New York, 1965) respectively. Probably it is unnecessary to add that these investigators, among others, have contributed enormously to what scholars know about the lower classes in this period.Google Scholar

3. It seems impossible to point even in a general way to a date after which politics was, in the main, “modern”. Efforts, however, have been made. CfTilly, , “How Protest Modernized”, and two French studies: Maurice Agulhon, La République au village (Paris, 1970)Google Scholar and Phillippe Vigier, La Second République dans la Region Alpine, étude politique et social, 2 vols. (Paris, 1963).Google Scholar Thompson sees the period 1811-1813 as the crucial period for England. There do exist several studies which indicate ways in which protest modernized in various situations. In addition to Thompson, see Bezucha, Robert, The Lyon Uprising of 1834 (Cambridge, Mass., 1974);CrossRefGoogle ScholarFoster, John, Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution: Early Industrial Capitalism in Three English Towns (London, 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Moss, Bernard, The Origins of the French Labor Movement: the Socialism of Skilled Workers (Berkeley, 1976)Google Scholar; and Sewell, William Jr., “Social Change and the r Rise of Working-Cla rss Politics in Nineteenth-Century Marseille,” Past and Present, 65(November, 1974), 75–109. Possibly enough studies have now been done to make possible some generalizations that will go beyond the suggestions of Tilly about modernization.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. Cf. Tilly, Tilly, Tilly, 289-90, where Hobsbawm and George Rudeé are criticized for labeling as “pre-political” many activities that were in fact the best efforts of groups excluded from more formal politics to have their say and defend their interests.

5. On these events, see Merriman, John, “The Demoiselles of the Ariège, 1829-1831,” in Merriman, , ed., 1830 in France (New York, 1975), 87–118Google Scholar, and Reaney, Bernard, The Class Struggle in 19th Century Oxfordshire; the Social and Communal Background to the Otmoor Disturbances of 1830 to 1835 (Oxford, n.d.). The classic formulation of the idea of lower class visions of an ecceptable order which they would defendGoogle Scholaris Thompson, E.P., “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present, 50(1971), 76–136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. Naturally encroachments on rights or the appearance of difficulties did not always result in protest. In many cases, dissatisfactions or frustrations were vented indirectly through such means as drunkedness, wife-beating, violent sports, and bloody brawls between villages or groups of apprentices. And, at times, even when conditions seemed to warrant a response, there often was none.

7. CfReid, Douglas, “The Decline of Saint Monday 1766-1876,” Past and Present, 70 (May, 1976), 76–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. Many examples could be cited from George Rude's book, The Crowd in History (New York, 1964).Google Scholar See also Thompson, , The Making of the English Working Class, 521–602Google Scholar (on Luddism); Reaney, The Class Struggle in 19th Century Oxfordshire; and Merriman, John, “The Norman Fires of 1830: Incendiaries and Fear in Rural France,” French Historical Studies, IX, No. 3 (Spring, 1976), 451–466.Google Scholar A great many of the destructive activities taking place in a given period were personal and petty. Nonetheless destruction of property was a weapon that could be employed effectively and on a large scale.

9. On threatening letters, see Thompson, E.P., “The Crime of Anonymity” and “Appendix: a Sampler of Letters” in Thompson, et al, Albion's Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England (New York, 1975), 255–308 and 309–344, respectively.Google Scholar

10. On food riots, see Tilly, Louise, “The Food Riot as a Form of Political Conflict in France,” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, II, 1 (summer, 1971), 23–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rose, R.B., “Eighteenth Century Price Riots and Public Policy in England,” International Review of Social History, 6:2 (1971), 277–292; numerous chapters in RudéCrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Cobb, R.C., The Police and the People (London, 1970), 215–324.Google Scholar

11. CfNewman, Edgar, “What the Crowd Wanted in the French Revolution of 1830,” in Merriman, , ed., 1830 in France, 17–40.Google Scholar The lower classes responded not only to stress but also to new opportunity. A change of regime might offer a chance to improve one's situation. Elements of the lower classes clearly demonstrated a sense of timing and pushed hardest when if appeared their opponents were most vulnerable. On this see Rule, James and Tilly, Charles, “Political Process in Revolutionary France, 1830-1832,” in Merriman, , ed., 1830 in France, 41–85.Google Scholar

12. For example, Stearns, Peter, “Patterns of Industrial Strike Activity in France during the July Monarchy,” American Historical Review, 70:2 (01, 1965), 371–394.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13. See the description of the efforts of the inhabitants of the Otmoor area to get leading citizens and the authorities to prevent enclosure; Reaney, The Class Struggle in 19th Century Oxfordshire. The pattern of requesting help from authorities and rioting only when help was denied was repeated over and over in accounts of food riots. See also Walter, John and Wrightson, Keith, “Dearth and the Social Order in Early Modern England,” Past and Present, 71 (05, 1976), 22–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar One of the problems was the decline of patronage and deferrence in the early 19th century. On this, see Thompson, E.P., “Patrician Society, Plebian Culture,” Journal of Social History, 7:4 (summer, 1974), 382–405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14. Newman, , “What the Crowd Wanted in the French Revolution of 1830” and other essays in Merriman, , ed., 1830 in FranceGoogle Scholar. See also Bezucha, , The Lyon Uprising, 49, 87, 90–1, and 169. Similar evidence could be drawn from the activities of the sans-culottes in the French Revolution. A full-scale re-examination of Thompson's arguments in light of suggestions advanced in this paper is needed.Google Scholar

15. On this point, see the important review of Foster's, John Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution by Jones, Gareth Stedman in the New Left Review, 90 (03–04 1975), 35–69.Google Scholar

16. Interesting discussions bearing on the making, unmaking, and remaking of the English working class will be found in Foster, John, Class Struggle and the Industrial RevolutionCrossRefGoogle Scholar and Jones, Gareth Stedman, “Working-Class Culture and Working-Class Politics in London, 1870-1900: Notes on the Remaking of a Working Class”, Journal of Social History, 7:4 (summer, 1974), 460–508.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17. An essential aid to efforts to better understand the period in which working class politics began to develop would be bibliographical essays surveying the work done to date on each country in Europe. Newman, Edgar, “American Historians and Post-Revolutionary France,” International Labor and Working Class History, 9 (05, 1976), 23–27, offers a first installment on such a bibliographical series. His essay would, of course, need to be expanded to include the numerous non-American scholars who have made significant contributions to the history of the French working class between 1789 and 1848.CrossRefGoogle Scholar