LAND, LEADERSHIP, CULTURE, AND EMIGRATION: SOME PROBLEMS IN CHARTIST HISTORIOGRAPHY

Abstract

In 1996 Miles Taylor published an historiographical review of Chartism in which he argued that our understanding of the movement has stagnated since the publication of important research by Gareth Stedman Jones and Dorothy Thompson in 1983–4. Taylor suggests that the new cultural history of politics (or the ‘linguistic turn’) is to blame for this ‘impasse’, and argues that scholars should consolidate the work of Stedman Jones and Thompson. I argue that Chartist historians should continue to engage with contemporary approaches. The new political history sheds light on some persistent problems of interpretation which Taylor passes over. It also raises the possibility of extending the study of Chartism into the colonial realm, an area historians have not yet seriously broached. In conclusion, a sketch is given of the significance of Chartist political culture in one episode of protest in the Australian colony of Victoria in 1853.