‘The people’ is an ever present feature of modern politics. This essay offers a historico-sociological assessment of that political identity as fundamental for bourgeois hegemony. English populism is crucially important because the meaning of ‘the people’ was shaped during the English Revolution to allow the bourgeoisie to challenge the old ruling class while achieving hegemony over the masses. This 17th-century populism is the original model on which the basic structure of populist mobilization (the undifferentiated ‘people’ against the ‘elite’) has been patterned subsequently; and, in the 19th century, it thoroughly shaped the political outlook of the first proletariat in the first industrial nation, thus setting an example of immense historical relevance.
AllenR (1997) The battle for the common: politics and populism in mid-Victorian Kentish London. Social History22(1): 61–77.
2.
BehaggC (1986) Myths of cohesion: capital and compromise in the historiography of 19th-century Birmingham. Social History11(3): 375–384.
3.
BelchemJ (1990) Industrialization and the Working Class: The English Experience, 1750–1900. Aldershot: Scholar Press.
4.
BendixR (1978) Kings or People: Power and the Mandate to Rule. Berkeley, CA and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.
5.
BendixR (1996 [1964]) Nation-building and Citizenship: Studies of Our Changing Social Order. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
6.
BrennerR (2001) Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict and London Overseas Traders 1550–1653. London: Verso.
7.
BriggsA (1983) The languages of class in early 19th-century England. In: NealeRS (ed.) History and Class. Oxford: Blackwell, 2–29.
8.
BurrisV (1986) The discovery of the new middle class. Theory and Society15: 317–349.
9.
CalhounCJ (1988) The radicalism of tradition and the question of class struggle. In: TaylorM (ed.) Rationality and Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 129–175.
10.
CharltonJ (1997) The Chartists: The First National Workers’ Movement. London and Chicago, IL: Pluto.
11.
CohenR (1988) Introduction. In: CohenRTolandJD (eds) State Formation and Political Legitimacy. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1–22.
12.
ColleyL (1986) Whose nation? Class and national consciousness in Britain, 1750–1830. Past and Present113(1): 97–117.
13.
ColleyL (1992) Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press.
14.
CrossickG (1991) From gentlemen to the residuum: languages of social description in Victorian Britain. In: CorfieldPJ (ed.) Language, History and Class. Oxford: Blackwell, 150–178.
15.
CrossickGHauptH-G (1995) The Petit Bourgeoisie in Europe 1780–1914. London: Routledge.
16.
DuttonHIKingJE (1982) The limits of paternalism: the cotton tyrants of North Lancashire, 1836–54. Social History7(1): 59–74.
17.
EngelsF (n.d. [1891]) A Contribution to the Critique of the Social Democratic Draft Programme of 1891. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House.
18.
EpsteinJ (1989) Understanding the cap of liberty: symbolic practice and social conflict in early 19th-century England. Past and Present122(1): 75–118.
19.
FinnMC (1993) After Chartism: Class and Nation in English Radical Politics, 1848–1874. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
20.
GloverSD (1999) The Putney debates: popular versus elite republicanism. Past and Present164(August): 47–80.
21.
GramsciA (1975) Quaderni del Carcere. Torino: Einaudi.
22.
GreenfeldL (1992) Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
23.
GunnJAW (1989) Public interest. In BallT. (eds) Political Innovation and Conceptual Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 194–210.
24.
HallJA (1994) Coercion and Consent: Studies on the Modern State. Cambridge: Polity/Blackwell.
25.
HillC (1981) Parliament and people in seventeeth-century England. Past and Present92(1): 100–124.
26.
HillC (1983 [1972]) El mundo trastornado: el ideario popular extremista en la revolución inglesa del siglo diecisiete. Madrid: Siglo XXI.
27.
HobsbawmE (1993) The example of the English middle class. In: KockaJMitchellA (eds) Bourgeois Society in 19th-century Europe. Oxford and Providence, RI: Berg, 127–150.
28.
JonesGS (1989 [1983]) Reconsideración del cartismo. In:Lenguajes de clase: estudios sobre la historia de la clase obrera inglesa, 1832–1982. Madrid: Siglo XXI, 86–174.
29.
JoyceP (1991) Visions of the People: Industrial England and the Question of Class, 1840–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
30.
KatznelsonI (1992) Marxism and the City. Oxford: Oxford University Clarendon Press.
31.
KirkN (1987) In defense of class: a critique of recent revisionist writings upon the 19th-century English working class. International Review of Social History32(1): 2–47.
32.
LaclauE (1978 [1977]) Política e ideología en la teoría marxista: capitalismo, fascismo, populismo. Madrid: Siglo XXI.
33.
McWilliamR (1998) Popular Politics in 19th-century England. London: Routledge.
34.
ManicasPT (1988) The legitimation of the modern state: a historical and structural account. In CohenRTolandJD (eds) State Formation and Political Legitimacy. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 173–197.
35.
MannM (1999) The dark side of democracy: the modern tradition of ethnic and political cleansing. New Left Review235: 18–45.
36.
ManningB (1978) The English People and the English Revolution. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
37.
MayerAJ (1975) The lower middle class as historical problem. Journal of Modern History47(3): 409–436.
38.
MorganES (1988) Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America. New York, NY: Norton.
39.
MouzelisN (1978) Ideology and Class Politics: A Critique of Ernesto Laclau. New Left Review11: 45–61.
40.
NealeRS (1972) Class and Ideology in the 19th Century. London and Boston, MA: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
41.
NealeRS (1983) Afterword. In: NealeRS (ed.) History and Class. Oxford: Blackwell, 271–309.
42.
O’SheaA (1984) Trusting the people: how does Thatcherism work? In: BennettT. (eds) Formations of Nation and People. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 19–41.
43.
PerelmanM (2000) The Invention of Capitalism: Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press.
44.
PerkinH (1969) The Origins of Modern English Society. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
45.
PickeringPA (1986) Class without words: symbolic communication in the Chartist movement. Past and Present112(1): 144–162.
46.
PitkinHF (1989) Representation. In: BallT. (eds) Political Innovation and Conceptual Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 132–154.
47.
PozoLM (2006) The mechanisms of class accommodation in pre-capitalist Europe: a study in hegemony. Review29(3): 227–269.
48.
PozoLM (2007) The roots of hegemony: the mechanisms of class accommodation and the emergence of the nation-people. Capital and Class31(1): 55–88.
49.
PriceR (1984) Conflict and cooperation: a reply to Patrick Joyce. Social History9(2): 217–224.
50.
SavilleJ (1987) 1848: The British State and the Chartist Movement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
51.
SeedJ (1982) Unitarianism, political economy, and the antinomies of liberal culture in Manchester, 1830–50. Social History7(1): 1–25.
52.
SmithP (1967) Disraelian Conservatism and Social Reform. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
53.
SteinbergMW (1995) ‘The great end of all government…’: working people’s construction of citizenship claims in early 19th-century England and the matter of class. International Review of Social History40, Supplement 3: 19–50.
54.
SternhellZ (1979) Fascist Ideology. In: LaqueurW (ed.) Fascism: A Readers’ Guide. New York, NY: Pelican Books.
55.
SykesR (1985) Physical force Chartism: the cotton district and the Chartist crisis of 1839. International Review of Social History30(2): 207–236.
56.
ThomisMIHoltP (1977) Threats of Revolution in Britain, 1789–1848. Hamden, CT: Archon Books.
57.
ThompsonEP (1963) The Making of the English Working Class. London: Victor Gollancz.
58.
ThompsonN (1984) The People’s Science: The Popular Political Economy of Exploitation and Crisis, 1816–1834. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
59.
VernonJ (1993) Politics and the People: A Study in English Political Culture, c. 1815–1867. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
60.
WilsonK (1995) The Sense of the People: Politics, Culture and Imperialism in England, 1715–1785. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
61.
WolochI (1993) The New Regime: Transformations of the French Civic Order. New York, NY: Norton.
