'Arraying Minds against Bodies': Benthamite Radicals and Revolutionary Europe during the 1820s and 1830s

Abstract

While a good deal has been written about the contacts between British and continental reformers in 1848 and afterwards, the same cannot be said of the 1820s and 1830s. This article will investigate the involvement in European affairs of Thomas Perronet Thompson and John Bowring, two of the closest colleagues of the utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham. This article has three main purposes: first, to establish the relevance to British radicalism of a European perspective, using Thompson and Bowring as exemplars who can be taken to represent one of the most important strands in the British radicalism of their day; secondly, to improve our understanding of reform agitation and ideologies in early nineteenth-century Britain and Europe; and, thirdly, in view of the customary focus of historians on 1848 and after, to begin to redress this imbalance in the historiography by drawing attention to the 1820s and 1830s.