From Rifle Club to Reading Room: Sydney's Democratic Vistas, 1848-1856

Abstract

The history of Chartism outside Britain remains one of the most neglected aspects of scholarship devoted to the movement. This article explores the story of two loosely connected organizations in Sydney, New South Wales, that were established by former radicals and Chartists and inspired by ideas and aspirations best understood under the rubric ‘Chartism and Something More’. Sydney's democrats, like many others throughout the Anglophone world, helped to make Chartism one of Britain's most successful, if unheralded, exports.