Luddism, Machine-Breaking and the Swing Riots
If the eighteenth century in England was the age of the riot, the early decades of the nineteenth century might usefully be labelled as the age of machine breaking. Between 1811 and 1830, several extraordinarily intensive waves of machine breaking swept both rural and urban England alike. Against po...
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| Pubblicato in: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/rfcb, |
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| Autore principale: | |
| Natura: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Lingua: | Anglais |
| Pubblicazione: |
Revue française de civilisation britannique
2025
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| Soggetti: | |
| Accesso online: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Riassunto: | If the eighteenth century in England was the age of the riot, the early decades of the nineteenth century might usefully be labelled as the age of machine breaking. Between 1811 and 1830, several extraordinarily intensive waves of machine breaking swept both rural and urban England alike. Against popular misconceptions, such protests – including the Luddite movement of 1811-12, the Bread or Blood riots of 1816, and the Swing quasi-insurrection of 1830 – tended not to oppose technological innovation but rather challenged the ways in which machinery impacted upon labour and wider social relations. Further, the paper shows that machine breaking, especially in the countryside, had a deeper history going back into the late seventeenth century. It also argues that the history of machine breaking in Wales and Scotland has received remarkably little scholarly attention, something the paper begins to address. |
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