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Edward Thompson's Contribution to Eighteenth-Century Studies. The Patrician: PlebeianModel Re-ExaminedAuthor(s): Peter KingSource: Social History, Vol. 21, No. 2 (May, 1996), pp. 215-228Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4286341.Accessed: 18/04/2011 00:48
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DEBATE
Peter
King
dward
Thompson s
contribution
t
eighteenth century
t u d i e s
h e
patrician plebeian
o d e l
re-examined
Although
Edward
Thompson's
work'
on the periodfrom the
I790S to the
I83os has
attracted a veritable
industry
of
critical
responses,
his
eighteenth-century writing
has
yet
to receive a
thorough-going
critical review. In
part
this is
because
Making
was
published
thirty years ago
while Customs in Common s
only
three
years old,
but it also reflects the
different mode of production of Thompson's eighteenth-century writings. Unlike his
work on the
period
after
1790,
which
came to fruition largely in one
book written
in
a brief
period
and with
clear aims
in
mind, Thompson's
eighteenth-century studies were
published
sporadically over
a
twenty-five-year period
during
which
he was also
extremely
actively
engaged
in
both the
European
Disarmament Movement and in a series of
arguments
within Marxism.2
Unfortunately
for
eighteenth-century scholars, when he
finally focused his attention
on the period again
and published
his long awaited volume
Customs in Common
n
I99i,
the
energy
required
to rework
systematically
his ideas was
I
The
personal, political
and intellectual
debts
owed to
Thompson by
academics from
many
disciplines are enormous. For
evaluations see
J.
Rule and R.
Malcolmson
(eds), Protest and
Survival: The
HistoricalExperience.
Essaysfor
E. P.
Thompson
London, 1993); various
articles
in
New
Left Review,
cci
(Sept./Oct.
I993);
B.
Palmer,
E. P. Thompson,
Objections and Oppo-
sitions
(London,
1994);
G. Prins, 'Socialhis-
torian,peace
campaignerand
adult
educator.
An
appreciation
of
the
life
of
E.
P.
Thompson',
Reportback,
I
(Spring
1994),
20-2.
Z
E. P.
Thompson, The
Making of the
English
Working
Class
(London, I963); E.
P.
Thomp-
son, Customs in
Common
(London, I99I).
For
an
excellent recent
volume of
critical
essays
notably
short of
detailed critiques of
Thomp-
son's
pre-1790
work
see H.
Kaye
and
K.
McClelland, E. P.
Thompson:
Critical
Perspec-
tives
(Oxford,
I990).
This volume
alsocontains
a detailed bibliography. E. P. Thompson, The
Poverty
of Theory
(London, 1978);
Palmer,
Thompson,op.
cit.
Social History Vol. 2i
No.
2
May
1996
0307-I
022
?
Routledge
i996
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Social
History
VOL.
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NO. 2
being partly undermined
by ill-health,
but this should
not be allowed to detract
from
the
immense importance
of his writings
on the eighteenth
century.3
I
Thompson's
work on this
periodwas so
wide ranging
that commentators
have
not found it
easy to focus on
the core of
his achievements.
Articles
on subjects
as diverse
as work
discipline and
wife sale,
anonymous letter
writing and
rough music4
ensured
that his work
made an impact
on
many subdisciplines
and subject
areas. This article
cannot summarize
all these diverse elements,
but it
will
begin
by briefly
identifying
the main interrelated
topics
which emerged
in
Thompson's
writing
on what might
be called the short
eighteenth
century (a period itself partly defined by the pathbreakingwork Thompson did on the
years
after 1790)
.
These were: first, customary
rights in rural
England,
and the relationship
between
custom,
law and common
right;
second, the role
of the criminal law,
an interest
which
arose
partly
out
of his detailed
exploration
of the first theme
in
Whigs
and
Hunters -
and
partly
from his contributions
to Albion's
Fatal
Tree
5
and
third,
his
work
on the moral
economy
of the eighteenth-century
riot,
which
not
only
changed
our way of seeing
popular
disturbances, but also provided
a model that has
been
used
extensively
by
historians of
other countries and periods.6
Finally all these
studies fed off and fed
into the core
of
Thompson's
work on this
period
- his
attempts
to develop
a
general
model
of
eighteenth-century
social relations
in two
major
mid-197os
articles
'Patrician society,
plebeian
culture' and
'Eighteenth-century
English society:
class
struggle
without
class',
which were later partially
reworked
as a single chapter'The
patricians
and
the
plebs'
in
Customs
n
Common.7
That model not
only
formed the
foundationfor his own writing,
it
also informed
the
work
of
many eighteenth-century
historians. From the
publication
of
the seminal
collaborative
volume,
Albion'sFatal
Tree,
in
1975
to the recent
appearance
of
monographs
by
Peter Linebaugh
and
Jeanette
Neeson,
the
so-called
'Warwick
School',
on
which
Thompson
had
such a formative influence,
has borne
immense
fruit,
and
in
much
of
3 He had
always
intended
to
write one
or
perhaps
two completely new
studies
of the
eighteenth
century,
for which the papers
he
finallycollected
into
Customs,
op.
cit., were
bits
of raw material
a project
not fulfilled
because
of
his health
(personal
communication,
Dorothy
Thompson).
4
E. P.
Thompson,
'Time,
work-discipline
and industrial
capitalism',
Past
and
Present,
XXXVIII
(1967);
'Rough music:
le
charivari
anglais',
Annals
ESC,
XXVII
(1972)
(a
longer
versionof which appearsin Customs, 496-538);
'The
crime
of anonymity'
in
D.
Hay, P.
Linebaugh,
J.
Rule, E. P.
Thompson
and
C.
Winslow (eds),
Albion's
Fatal
Tree.
Crime and
Society in
Eighteenth-Century
England (Lon-
don,
1975),
255-344;
'The sale
of wives'
in
Customs,
404-66.
E. P. Thompson,
'The gird
of
inheritance:
a
comment'
in J.
Goody,
J. Thirsk
and
E. P. Thompson
(eds), Family
and
Inheritance.
Rural Society
in Western
Europe
120o-1800
(Cambridge,
I976);
'Custom,
law
and
common
right'
in
Customs,
97-I84.
S
E. P. Thompson,
Whigs
and
Hunters.
The
Originsof
the Black
Act
(London,
1975); Hay
et
al. (eds),
Albion's F'atal
Tree,
op. cit.
6
E. P. Thompson,
'The
moral economy
of
the
English
crowd
in the
eighteenth
century',
Past
and
Present,
L (1971);
'The
moral
economy reviewed'in Customs,
259-351.
7
E. P.
Thompson,
'Patrician
society,
plebeian
culture',
Journal of
Social History,
vii
(I974),
382-405;
'Eighteenth-century
English
society:
class
struggle
without
class?',
Social
History,
III
(1978),
133-65;
'The patricians
and
the plebs',
Customs,
I6-96.
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that work the
patrician/plebeian
model has formed a vital
point
of
reference.8
For
these
reasons it seems
appropriate
to make the
nature, strengths
and weaknesses of that model
the main initial focus here.
When
Thompson
first turned his attention to the
eighteenth century very
little work
had
been done
in
this field. Lawrence Stone's observation that 'the
historiography
of
eighteenth-century England
was a desert dominated
by
a
monopolistic corporation,
Namier,
Inc.',
which
regarded
the
only
history
worth
studying
as
political
history,
overstates the
case,
but the
range
of models was
certainly very limited.
Apart
from
Laslett's brief
discussion of
the notion of a 'one class society', Perkin's
description
of 'the
Old
Society'
in
The
Origins
ofModern
English
Society
remained
virtually
the
only
detailed
analysis
of
eighteenth-century
social relations available when
Thompson began writing.9
Perkin saw eighteenth-century society primarily as a finely graded hierarchy based on
property and patronage
in
which the lives of the poor were controlled
by a paternalistic
landed elite.
In
his model 'Power
always
came back to the
social control of the ordinary
squire
over his
tenants and
villagers',
and the
poor
had
precious little
means of
counterbalancing
that
power.
'In a
world of personal
dependency any
breach of
the great
law
of
subordination .
.
.
was',
he
wrote,
'ruthlessly suppressed.
Resentment had
therefore to
be swallowed, or sublimated into
religious dissent, or when
pressed beyond
endurance,
it
exploded
in
outbursts of
desperate
violence.' 0
This
depiction, which came
dangerously
close to
repeating
uncritically the
assumptions
and
self-image
of
the eighteenth-century
landed elite, was quickly
challenged in
Thompson's work. By
stressing the
discipline of the crowd, and the
widely accepted
legitimizing
notions
-
the moral economy
-
that lay behind such crowd
activities as
price-setting,
Thompson's
famous I97I article ensured that
bread riots would never again
be seen as
'outbursts
of
desperate violence'.
By challenging
the
uncritical use
of the term
paternalism
and the
close
personal control of the
poor
it
implied,
his
I970S articles offered
a
very
different
picture
of the
'social control' exercised
by
the
gentry.
1
Pinpointing
several
changes
including the decline of
unfree labour, the growth of
employment opportunities
outside
gentry control, the
declining psychological impact
of the church, the gentry's
retreat from face to face contact
with the
poor, and the parasitic nature of
the 'patrician
8
Hay et al.,
Albion sFatal
Tree;
J.
Rule, The
Experience of
Labour in
Eighteenth-Century
Industry
(London, I98I); R.
Malcolmson, Life
and Labour
in
England
I
700-1780
(London,
I98I)
were
important
early
books. It is
imposs-
ible here to
list the
many articles
published
by
Thompson's ex-students
and
associates at
War-
wick, P.
Linebaugh,
The
London
Hanged.
Crime and
Civil
Society
in the
Eighteenth-
Century (London,
I99I);
J. Neeson, Com-
moners. Common
Right, Enclosure and Social
Change
1700o- 820
(Cambridge,
1993) Perhaps
the most
influential of
all
Thompson's students
is
Douglas
Hay:
see, for
example,
'Property,
authority
and the
criminal law'
in
Hay et al.
(eds),
Albion's
Fatal
Tree,
17-63
and D.
Hay
and F.
Snyder,
Policing
and
Prosecution in
Bntain
*75o-185o
(Oxford, I989).
'
L.
Stone,
The Past
and the
Present
Revisited
(London, I987),
223;
P.
Laslett, The
World
We
have Lost
(London,
I965); H.
Perkin, The
Originsof
Modem
English
Society
178o-1880
(London, I969),
I7-62.
Less
de-
tailed
references
to similar
models
can be found
in
general
textbooks of
this
period such
as D.
Marshall,Industrial ,ngland
1766-851r
(Lon-
don,
1973),
6I-2.
10
Perkins,
Origins,
op.
cit., 37.
E.
P.
Thompson,
'The moral
economy', op.
cit. 'Patrician
society',
'Eighteenth-century
English
society',
'The
patricians',
form the
basis
on which the
following
summary
is founded.
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banditti', Thompson argued that the eighteenth century witnessed both 'a
crisis of
paternalism'and the emergence of a particularly
vibrant plebeian culture.
Drawing together threads from his own
and others' work on riot, on custom as a field of
contest, and on popular recreations, rituals and mentalities, Thompson drew a
new and
complex picture of eighteenth-century plebeian culture. In his portrayal this
was a
vigorous, vibrant, non-Christian culture
based on inherited customary expectations,
reproduced by example, nurtured by experience, expressed by symbolism and
ritual
-
a
rebellious yet traditional culture which
was the people's very own. In the eighteenth
century, Thompson argued, a profound
distance opened up between the cultures
of the
patriciansand
the
plebs. However,
since the authoritiesoften felt it necessaryto
handle the
poor's
demands with
delicacy
and accommodation,
a
certain reciprocity also developed
between rich and poor. This notion of gentry/crowd reciprocity, of the rulers and the
crowd needing each other, watching each other, performing theatre and counter-theatre
was central to
Thompson's analysis.
Yet, of course, it was not an equal contest. The landed
elite remained confident
in
the
eighteenth
century. The insubordinationof the poor was a
nuisance not a menace. The elite still controlled many sources of patronage on
the one
hand,
and the
majesty
and terror of the law on the other. Above all, Thompson
argued,
they possessed,
and
constantly
strove to reinforce, an overarching cultural hegemony.
That hegemony did not, however,
impose an all-embracing domination on the ruled. It
may have defined the limits of what
was possible, inhibiting the poor's horizons and
expectations, but the elite could only sustain it by skilful use of theatre and concession. It
therefore coexisted with a
vigorous, self-activating popular
culture.
Thus,
in
Thompson's
analysis,
the
basis
of
eighteenth-century
social relations was
negotiation
not subordi-
nation, conflict not consensus, structural
reciprocitynot pyramidsof status and power.
A
short
article cannot
do
justice
to the complexities of the Thompson model but it was clearly
a
major step
forward and since it remains
virtually
the
only all-embracing
analysis
of
eighteenth-century
social relations
available to
historians,
it is
important
to assess its
strength
and
weaknesses,
its
challenges
and
problems.
There is much to admire
in
Thompson's
model: its balance of action and structure,
its
analysis
of the
interrelationship
between the
ideological
and the
material,
between
the
cultural
and
the
economic,
are obvious
strengths.
So are its
awarenessof the
importance
of
the
cultural and
linguistic
inheritance of the
poor
and
of the
ways
it influenced
plebeian
culture,
balanced as that awareness
is
by
an
exploration
of the
ways
the
poor's
experience,
exploitation
and
joint
action could
reshape
as well as be
shaped by
that inheritance.
Thompson's willingness to address
theoretical issues and
to use
sociological
and
anthropologicalconcepts
was also
extremely
fruitful.
Although
his detailed
application
of
the
concept
of
hegemony
did not
necessarily
avoid
the
pitfalls
that befell other versions
of
the dominant
ideology
thesis
propounded
by
his
contemporaries,
his use of Gramsci
considerably
enhanced our
understanding
of the nature of
authority
n
eighteenth-century
England.12
The pathbreakingnature of Thompson's work in this respect should not be
12
For
critiques of the dominant
ideology
thesis see, for example,
W.
Abercrombie,
S.
Hill
and B. Turner, The Dominant Ideology
Thesis
(London,
I980); S. Hill, 'Britain:
the dominant
ideology
thesis after a decade'
in N. Abercrom-
bie, S.
Hill
and
B. Turner (eds), Dominant
Ideologies
(London, I990); R. Collins,
Tele-
vision:
Policy and Culture (London,
1990), 3-7
suggests
that the
1970s
'paradigm
of the
dominant
ideology
thesis' is still
a dominant one.
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1996
The patrician-plebeian
model re-examined
219
underestimated. British
historians
instinctively
avoid
general
models and
theorizing,
and
(as Geoff
Eley
has
pointed
out),
the
consequence
of this is that
key questions
such as
the
balance of
coercion and consent
in
the
governing
system,
the
potentials
for
conformity
and
opposition, and
the bases of cohesion within
the social order are
rarely
analysed.'3
Thompson's
work on the
eighteenth
century stands
out,
therefore,
because of his
powerful
capacity
to
generalize, and his
ability
to
provide
a
structured
yet
deeply
contextualized
and
delicately
nuanced
analysis of the basis of
authority.
14
In
any given
society',
he
wrote,
'we
cannot
understand the
parts
unless we
understand their
function and roles
in
relation
to
each other.' In
the
context of a
historiographical
tradition
dominated
by
the
opposite
tendencies
-
by specialist monographs
and
detailed
empirical
work
-
Thompson's
courageous
attempt
at a
general
model is
immensely
valuable,
all the
more so because
he
tackled a century in which it is particularly difficult to construct a history of popular
attitudes. In the
seventeenth and the
nineteenth centuries
articulate
resistance to
ruling
institutions and
ideas
is highly visible. In
the
eighteenth
there is
considerable
evidence of
direct
specific
action
by the
poor,
but the
extent of
opposition
to
ruling
ideas
and
authority
structures is difficult to
unravel.
15
Any
critique of
Thompson's
model must
thereforestart
by
recognizing
his
immense
achievement
in
reaching beyond
the bland
rhetoric of the
eighteenth-century
elite and in
constructing
a
model of social
relations that is
immensely
challenging
and
fruitful.
II
What
are the
weaknesses and
problems of
Thompson's
model?
One
obvious
area of
contention,
the
bipolar
nature of his
model and
its
tendency to
marginalize 'the
middling
sort',
clearly
requires
discussion.
However, he has
also
been
criticized
for leaving
undiscussed, or
giving
too
little
weight
to, a number of
other key
elements of
eighteenth-century
society.
A
brief
review of the
most
important
of these
elements is
therefore
necessary.
Thompson's
nineteenth-century
work
has been
criticized
for its lack
of
engagement
13
G.
Eley,
'Edward
Thompson, social
history
and
political
culture,
the
making
of a
working-
class
public,
I
780-i
850'
in
Kaye and
McClelland
(eds),
E.
P.
Thompson,op.
cit., I2.
14
Few
of the
substantial
works
published
on
the
eighteenth
century
develop
an
alternative
model.
Porter
mentions and
implicitly
uses,
but
never
systematically
reworks,
Thompson's
model in
R.
Porter,
English
Society in
the
EighteenthCentury (London,
I982)
63-112;
J.
Cannon,
Aristocratic
Century.
The
Peerage
of
Eighteenth
Century
England
(Cambridge,
1984)
partly
confirms
Thompson's views on
the
middling
sort's
failure to
challenge
aristocratic
rule
(I78)
but
offers
no
model
of
aristocratic/
elite
relations
with
the rest
of
society.
Paul
Langford's A
Polite
and
Commercial
People,
England
I
727-1
783
(Oxford, I989)
and
Public
Life
and the
Propertied
Englishman
'
689-1
798
(Oxford,
I99I) opens
up important new
per-
spectives on
the
propertied,
but refuses
to
discuss
Thompson's model
except
in
the
odd
aside
(A
Polite,
6i)
as D.
Wahrman
has
already
pointed out
(Social
History,
xvii
(I992),
5oo, a
review
of
Public
Life).
The
same
author's
'National society, communal culture: an argu-
ment about
the
recent
historiography of
eight-
eenth-century
Britain', Social
History,
xvii
(1992),
43
is a
rare
exception
and
does
begin
from
Thompson's
work.
15
Thompson,
Customs,
71-2.
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220 Social History
VOL. 21: NO. 2
with
gender issues,16
but
his eighteenth-century
writings
have featured much
less
prominently
in such
critiques. The
history
of women in the
eighteenth century
is
still in its
infancy, but Thompson's work on wife sale, on rough music, on women's involvement in
food riots and
on other issues
has
made important
contributions.
His analysisof
wife sale
went beyond
the obvious
fact that these
rituals
were deeply
patriarchal and
highly
degrading
to women,
and argued
that wife
sale needed to
be seen primarily
as a plebeian
form of divorce with
consent.
It was
one of many strategies
in
the politics
of the
personal
among working people
and,
while the rules of
those politics
were
'male dominative',
women had the skill
to turn
these customary
practices to
their own advantage.18
Thompson's
views have been
criticized as over-optimistic
or
as
wrongly contextualized,
but
in
stressing
that while there were
'certainly
victims among
sold wives . . . more
often
the reports suggest their independence',he has rightlyremindedus thatmanywomen had
the capacity
to
subvert,
or at least find
their own
strategies
within,
the
legal
and
cultural
limitations
of patriarchy.
19
He fruitfully
follows a parallel
theme
in his defence of
the vital
role
played by women
in
eighteenth-century
bread
riots.20
Thompson's
discussion
of
'female
consciousness'
in
this
context,
his model
of
cross-gender partnership
n manyriots,
and his reminder that
food riots were 'visible
and
public
expressions
of working
women's
lack of deference' are
an
essential counterbalance
o historians such
as
Bohstedt,
who have
minimized
women's impact on
popular protest.21
There are
parallels here with
the
patrician/plebeian
model. Just as
Thompson
stressed
the extensive room
for
manoeuvre
enjoyed by
the
poor
within the
overall cultural hegemony
of the
elite,
so his work on
women
has
emphasized
that they
were not simply
the helpless
victims
of
patriarchy.
Gender
relations
had their
own,
if
equally
unbalanced,
version
of
gentry-crowd
reciprocity.
Thompson's discussion
of the ways
women made their own cultural spaces,
enforced their
own norms and
ensured that
they
received what
they
saw as their
own
'dues'
has,
for
example,
helped to
make sense of the
eighteenth-century
gleaners'
assertiveness,
successful collective actions
and
self-regulation.22
The massive
debate about
Thompson's general
'moral
economy'
model
cannot be
adequately
reviewed here.
Too much has been
expected
of this
pathbreaking
piece.
One
article could
not
present
a
detailed
analysis
of the
geography,
chronology,
incidence
or
16
For example,
C. Hall, 'The
tale of Samuel
and Jemima:
gender
and working-class
culture
in nineteenth-century
England'
in Kaye
and
McClelland (eds),
E. P. Thompson,
78-102;
J.
Epstein, 'Understanding
the cap of
liberty:
symbolic practice
and social
conflict
in early
nineteenth-century
England',
Past and Present,
CXXII,
105-6; J. Scott,
Genderand the
Politics
of
History
(New York,
I988),
68-z;
J.
Scott,
'Experience'
in J.
Butler and J.
Scott, Feminists
Theorize the Political (London,
199
2),
30.
17
Some general
texts on eighteenth-century
women's history
are available,
notably
B.
Hill,
Women,Work
and Sexual
Politics in Eighteenth-
Century England
(London,
I989) but
most
early modern
work has focused
on
pre-1700
sources, e.g.
M. Prior
(ed.),
Women
n
English
Society
iSoo-i8oo
(London,
I985);
A.
Laurence,
Women
in
England
1500-I
760.
A
Social
Histoty (London,
1994).
18
Thompson,
Customs,
404-62.
19
Hill, Women,
Work,
215-20;
see also
the
debate
between
Thompson
and
R. Samuel
in
History
Workshop
Journal,
XXXV, 274-6;
Thompson,
Customs,
458-6I.
20
Thompson,
Customs,
305-36.
21
J.
Bohstedt,
'Gender,
household
and com-
munity politics: women in English riots
1790-
I8xo', Past
and Present, cxx
(1988),
88-I
22.
22
Thompson,
Customs,
460; P.
King,
'Gleaners,
farmers
and the failure
of legal
sanctions
in England 1750-I850',
Past and
Present,
cxxv
(1
989), I
xI6-44.
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communal
context
of
all food
riots,
and later
historians
who
have
studied these
dimensions
in detail
have
been
critical
of a number
of
Thompson's
generalizations.
The
resulting
extensive historiography,including his lengthy counter-critiquein Customs n Common, s
still
mushrooming
but until
the
papers given
at the
recent
'Moral
Economy
Twenty-one
Years After'
conference are
published a full
reappraisal s
impossible and
will
not
therefore
be
attempted
here.23
If
Thompson
did not
neglect
the
'moral', some
have accused
him of
neglecting
religion.
His
conclusion that
'the church
lost
command . .
.
over
a
large
area
of
plebeian
culture',
that
it had
lost its
'psychic'
sway
over the
poor,
led
him
to
stress
other
forces.
'The
controlling instruments and
images
of
hegemony',
he
wrote
'are those of the
law and
not
those of
the church
or of
monarchical
charisma.'24
Jonathan
Clark's
controversial
mid-ig8os books directly challenged this view, arguing that 'Gentlemen, the Church of
England and the
Crown
commanded
an intellectual
and social
hegemony' until
the
I820S.
However,
while Clark
may
have
been
right to
castigate
social
historians
for
ignoring
theology,
his assertion
that
'a
Christian faith
and
moral code
was a
common
possession of
all
social
strata' was
not
supported by any
substantial discussion
of popular
religion or of
nonconformity.
By
failing,
for
example,
to
discuss
the ways
in
which,
to quote
Deborah
Valenze,
'popular
evangelicalism
struggled
against the
confinements of
conventional
institutional
religion', he
neglected an
importantfield and
left his
sharpest potential
thrust
against
Thompson's
model
undeveloped.25
Ironically,
given his
highly
critical stance
towards
Thompson,
Clark's
English
Society relied
heavily on
the
patrician/plebeian
model. In his desire to marginalize
the rising
non-aristocratic
propertied classes,
Clark
embraced
a view of
the
old society
as 'dominated still
by the
common people,
by the
aristocracy and
by the
relations
between the
two'.
Moreover, far
from
challenging
Thompson's use
of the
concept of
hegemony, he
attempted to
extend the power
of 'the
cultural
hegemony
of the old
elite' well into
the
nineteenth
century,26 hus
coming close to
'3
E. P.
Thompson, 'The
moral
economy
reviewed',
Customs,
259-351
lists,
and
responds
to,
many
of
the
contributors.
Among the most
important
are J.
Bohstedt,
Riots
and
Com-
munity
Politics in
England and
Wales
1790-
i8,o
(Cambridge,
Mass., I983);
D.
Williams,
'Morals,
markets
and
the
English
crowd
in
1766',
Past
and
Present,
civ
(1984).
A.
Charlesworth
and
A.
Randall, 'Comment.
Morals,
markets
and the
English
crowd in
1766',
Past and
Present,
cxIv
(1987),
200-13.
Work
that has
come out
since
Thompson's
riposte
includes J.
Bohstedt,
'The
moral
economy and
the
discipline of
historical
context',
Youmnal
f
Social History, xxvi
(I%92),
265-8i; A.
Charlesworth, 'From the
moral
economy
of
Devon to
the
political
economy
of
Manchester,
1790-i8I2',
Social
History,
xviii
(1993),
205-17.
Twenty-one
years
after
the
publication
of
the
original
piece,
a
conference
was held at
Birmingham
University
in
which
scholars
from
all over
the
world
reviewed the
model
and its
impact.
The
resulting
volume
of
essays is to
be
edited
by
A.
Randall and
A.
Charlesworth.
24
Thompson,
Customs, 50 and
9.
2
J.
Clark,
English
Society
i688-i832 (Cam-
bridge,
I985),
especially
7,
87-9;
J.
Clark,
Revolution
and
Rebellion:
State
and
Society in
England in
the
Seventeenth
and
Eighteenth
Centuries
(Cambridge,
I986),
I6. On
Clark's
failure
to
recognize the
problems of his
con-
fessional state
model see
P.
Corfield,
'Georgian
England: one
state,
many
faiths',
History
Today
(April
1995).
D.
Valenze,
Prophetic
Sons
and
Daughters
(Princetown,
I985),
I9.
'
Clark, English, 43 and go- on which page
he
comes
close to
embracing
Laslett's
one class
view.
For
acknowledgement of
his
agreement
with
Thompson
on
patricians
and
plebeians,
see
J.
Clark, 'On
hitting
the
buffers:
the
historiogra-
phy of
England's
ancien
regime', Past
and
Present,
cxvii
(I987),
I98.
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using Thompson
on
the short eighteenth century to undermine Thompson
on the
pOst-1790period. Thompson's own reassessment of the potential power of religion
in his
later work on Blake, which stressed the anti-hegemonic potential of the doctrine of
justification by faith, not only raises
questions about aspects of Clark'swork but also about
his
own model of eighteenth-century social relations. Perhaps the main
impact of
antinomianism was on tradesmen
and artisansratherthan on the rural abouring poor, but
it remains unclear to what degree
elements of the same doctrines were present in the
grass-roots evangelism of the later
eighteenth century, and there is clearly much
work to be
done before
Thompson's dismissal
of
the psychic force of religion can be fully
evaluated.27
Thompson's reliance on the law as a central pillar of the gentry's hegemony,
while it is
not as
problematic as Clark's
reliance on state religion, also requires further research. His
argument, based partly on Douglas Hay's work, that hegemony 'wasexpressedabove all,
not in
military force, not
in
the mystifications of the priesthood or of the press, not
even in
economic
coercion,
but
in
the rituals of the
study
of the
justices
of the
peace,
in
the
quarter
sessions,
in
the pomp of the Assizes
and
in
the theatre of Tyburn' raises a number of issues
which
I will
address
in
detail
elsewhere. To what extent, for example, did the robust
self-activating plebeian
culture
Thompson
so
brilliantly
describes also
invade,
and subvert
or
influence,
the theatre of the
assizes,
not to mention the rituals of
Tyburn. Equally
the
JP's study may be better seen as an arbitrationcentre, while the main body that ruled
many
labouring lives, the vestry, receives
no mention. Thompson's brilliant conclusion on the
nature of the rule of law remains
the best starting point for any student of
eighteenth-
century justice.
'We
reach',
he wrote 'not a
single
conclusion
(law
=
class
power)
but
a
complex
and
contradictory
one. On the one
hand,
it is true that the law did
mediate
existent class
relations to the
advantage
of the rulers.
. . .
On the other
hand,
the law
mediated these class relations
through legal
forms which
imposed, again
and
again,
inhibitions upon the actions of the
rulers.'28However, his reliance
on
the theatre
of law
as
a
central instrument of
hegemony overestimates, perhaps,
the
power
of
the
state to control
its own public judicial rituals.
Paradoxically,
one of
Thompson's
other central conclusions
-
that 'the
price
which
aristocracy
and
gentry paid
for a limited
monarchy
and a weak state
was,
perforce,
the
licence of the crowd' - has been criticized for underestimating the strength of the
eighteenth-
and
nineteenth-century
state.
In
Customs in
Common, however,
Thompson
integrates recent
work on the rise of the
fiscal-military
state
by arguing
that there is
no
inconsistency
between Brewer's view of the
state
from without
-
as an
efficient
military,
27
E. P. Thompson,
Witness
against the
Beast. William
Blake and the
Moral
Law
(Cambridge,
1993);
E. P. Thompson, 'Anti-
hegemony:
the legacy
of William
Blake',
New
Left
Review,
ccI
(I993),
26-33;
for
the
problems of seeing through Clark's religious
prism,
see
J. Innes, 'Jonathan
Clark,
social
history and
England's
Ancien Regime ',
Past
and Present,
cxv (1987),
'93; for the
vital role
of religion
in one context, see R. McGowen,
'The changing face
of God's justice:
the
debates
over divine
and human
punishment
in
eight-
eenth-century England',
Criminal
7ustice
His-
tory,
Ix
(X988),
63-98;
R. McGowen,
'He
beareth not
the Sword in Vain :religion
and the
criminal law
in
eighteenth-century
England',
,Eighteenth
Century Studies,
xxI
(1I987), 192-
211.
22
Thompson,
Whigs,62-4;
Hay, Property'.
For a fuller
discussion,
see chap. 7
of P. King,
Crime,
Justice
and Discretion.
Law and Society
in Essex and
Southern
England
1740-1820
(forthcoming).
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The
patrician-plebeian model re-examined
223
fiscal and
imperial
presence
-
and
his view
of it from within
-
as
offering
ever
increasing
licence to agrarian, mercantile
and
manufacturing capitalismbecause
of the
'desuetude of
its paternal, bureaucratic and protectionist powers'.29To some extent he attempted a
parallel assimilation
of
Linda
Colley's
work
on
popular patriotism,
concluding
that
her
analysis of
the
making of one British nation
need not contradict his
own
views about
the
two nations of class.
However,
while
Colley never
fully
discussed
the
patrician/plebeian
model, and
while
Thompson may have
limited her book's impact
by contesting her
selection of
sources
and
by arguing
that the
early nineteenth
century
was the
key
moment
in the growth of
popular loyalism, some
of her insights do
challenge his
views.30
In
particular
Colley's observation
that
'historians
have written
so
extensively and
so well
on
various
manifestations of class
conflict
in
eighteenth-century Britain,
that it cansometimes
appearthat protest of some kind made up the whole sum of popular political behaviour'
touches on
an
important
problem
also raised
by
other
recent
work.3'
Does
Thompson give
sufficient
weight
to
those
elements
of
plebeian culture and
collective behaviour that do
not
fit
into a patrician/plebeian
polarity?
Was
he 'too
ready to see
opposition and rebellion
in
popular traditions and
customs'?
Did he
leave too
little room
for
the
regressive
impulses
in
popular
consciousness
or for its frequent
penetration by ruling
class ideas? Colley, in
stressing
the
growing tendency of
many working people to
be involved more in
expressing
their support
for
the nation
state
than
in
opposing
the men
who governed
it, certainly
suggests
as much.32
Thompson's
eighteenth-century
essays contain little
sustained analysis of
the clerical
orchestration of
anti-dissenter
mobs,
of
anti-Catholic or
anti-Jewish riots, or of the
numerous
electoral riots
that were, in part at
least, manipulated by
elite political
factions
for
their own ends.
Moreover,
his
tendency to focus
in his
eighteenth-century
work on
rural and
small town
England may
have reinforced an
implicit bias towards the
study of
crowds
acting
on
their own behalf in
defence of
custom, food
supplies or communal
norms. In the
larger towns and
cities, as Rogers has
pointed out, crowd
behaviour,
organization and
mobilization
in
local political
conflict was so
complex that it does not fall
easily into the
patrician/plebeian model.33
Clearly, before we
can evaluate
whether
Thompson
painted too optimistic a
picture of
eighteenth-century
social relations and of
the plebeian role in making them, we need amore complex model which encompasses both
29
See, for
example, L.
Colley,'The
politics
of
eighteenth-century
British
history',
Journal
of
British
Studies, xxv
(I986),
373.
Thompson,
Customs,
30
and
79;
J.
Brewer,
The
Sinews
of
Power:
War,
Money and
the
English State
i688-1783
(London,
I989); L.
Stone,
An
Imperial State
at War.
Britainfrom
1689
to
i8s5
(London,
1994),
3,
argues
that Thompson
underestimated
the role
of
the state as
a
semi-autonomous
agency.
30
E.
P.
Thompson,
'Which
Britons',
reprin-
ted
in
his
Persons
and
Polemics.
Historical
Essays
(London,
1994), L.
Colley,
Britons,
Forging
the
Nation r
707-i
837
(London,
1992).
3'
Colley,
Britons, 371-2;
M.
Harrison,
Crowds and
History. Mass Phenomena in
English
Towns,
179o-1835
(Cambridge, I988).
32
E.
Wood,
'Falling
through the cracks:
E. P.
Thompson
and the
debate on
base and
super-
structure'
in
Kaye and
McClelland
(eds), E. P.
Thompson,
145;
Colley,
Britons, 372.
33
N. Rogers, Whigs and Cities. Popular
Politics
in the
Age of
Walpole
and Pitt
(Oxford,
1989),
35'-2.
Thompson
acknowledges the
force
of
Rogers's
argument
while
maintaining
his faithin
the basic
patrician/plebeian
polarity-
Customs,
94-5
and
26o
for
his less
gracious
response to
Harrison.
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the self-activating and overtly riotous crowds explored
by Thompson and the many other
forms of crowd behaviour
observable in the eighteenth
century.
By approaching plebeian culture primarily via the analysis of conflict, and by
concentrating on relationsbetween classes rather than
within them, Thompson
may also
have been partly responsible for the fact that despite
the work of Malcolmson, Rule,
Neeson and various historians
of crime,34 there are many methods of constructing
a
'history
from
below'
for the eighteenth century which remained argely unexplored.
As yet
we know very little, for example, about the material
lives of the poor, their conviviality,
their internal disputes or the strategies they used
to gain assistance from the authorities
in
time of need, although sources exist that could be
used to illuminate all these areas.35
Thompson's contribution
should not be underestimated. His exploration of custom
as'a
whole vocabulary of discourse, of legitimation andof expectation'in Customs n Common
should,
for
example,
be a foundation text
for all students of the
eighteenth
century.
Yet
even this work focuses primarily
on
conflict,36
and
given
the recent
tendency
for other
eighteenth-century
historians to focus on the propertied,
a
detailed
history
of the
individual and family
lives of the eighteenth-century labouring poor has still
to be
constructed.
As Thompson himself
recognized, both the term 'labouringpoor' and the term
'gentry'
were
vague
and tended to evolve
in
meaning.
The use of the title
'gentleman',
for
example,
expanded
to include an increasing proportion
of
'polite
and commercial
people'
as the
century progressed.37
More
problematic, however,
than
Thompson's
use of these terms
was his
assumption
that the
gentry elite,
and
the
propertied middling
sort he
broadly
assumed
to be their
dependents,
were
relatively culturally homogeneous.
This has
recently
been
challenged
by Wahrman's
work on the divisions within the
propertied,
and
particularly
within the urban
middling sort,
between those who were
nationally
orientated
and London-centred,
and those who
identified
with a
local/provincial
communal
culture.38 This work
in
turn feeds
off,
and contributes
to,
the most
widespread
set
of
critiques
of
Thompson's
bipolar model,
i.e. those which
focus on its
marginalization
of the
middling sort. Thompson
never
substantially
altered the
views he
expressed
in
his
original
1974
article in which the
middling
sort
('the professional
and middle
classes and the
substantial yeomanry') were portrayed as so strongly tied to the elite by relations of
14
See
n.
8 and
other work inspired partly by
Thompson
such as J. Beattie,
Crime
and the
Courts
n
England
i
66o-i 8oo
(Oxford,
I986).
35
Some work
has
been
done, mostly
at a
quantitative
level.
See K. Snell, Annals of
the
Labouring
Poor. Social
Change and
Agrarian
England
600*-goo (Cambridge,
I985); J. S.
Taylor, Poverty,
Migration and
Settlement in
the Industrial Revolution. Sojourner's Nar-
ratives
(Chapel
Hill, I989);
T. Sokoll,
House-
hold
and Family among
the Poor
(Bochum,
1993).
These issuesarediscussed
n moredetail
in T. Hitchcock,
P.
Sharpe and
P. King
(Chronicling
Poverty.
The Voicesand Strategies
of
the English
Poor
1640-I
840 (1996));
J.
Styles,
'Clothing the north:
the supply
of non-elite
clothing
in the eighteenth-century
north of
England',
Textile History
(
994).
36
Thompson,
Customs,
97-I84;
to some
extent
the
same can be said of another
mportant
contribution, B. Bushaway,
By Rite,
Custom,
Ceremony
and
Community
in
England
1700-
l88o (London, 982)
.
37
Thompson, Customs,
I6-v7;
P. Corfield,
'Class by
name
and number in eighteenth-
century
Britain',History, LXXII
(I987),
38-61;
Langford,
A Polite, 65-6.
For a
discussion
of the
equally problematic
terms
plebeian
or plebs
see
Eley,
'Edward Thompson',
op.
cit.,
I9-20.
38
D.
Wahrman,
National', op.
cit.
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The patrician-plebeian
model re-examined
225
clientage and dependency
that
they
offered 'little deflection of the essential
polarities'.39
Although
his final I99I
version made
a series of tactical
retreats, acknowledging
that
Langford, Borsay et al. had charted the emergence of the middling ordersas an important
cultural presence
who were creating
their
own
'shadowy
civil
society',
it
continued
to
argue
that the growth
in numbers and wealth of the 'middling
orders' had not fundamentally
modified or softened class
polarization. The middle
class were not yet 'autonomous
self-motivated
political
actors' able to modify
in
any
serious
way the patrician-pleb
equilibrium.
It wasnot until the end of the century
that the notion of
'middle class'
began
to
emerge, becoming
in
itself
part
of
political debate
and
of the conflicts
between different
interest groups.40
The
relatively
brief nature of
Thompson's responses
in Customs in
Common
to the
implications of recent workon the middling sort werepartlyrelatedto the fact that key texts,
such as Langford's second book,
were
not yet
available
when he
was
writing,
but more
important
perhaps was Langford'sfailure
to situate fully his work
within a broader
context.
Although
he attacked unnamed 'twentieth-century
historians' for neglecting the
middle
class
and for
'somewhatfanciful
accounts' that
'fasten on
the colourful but
often theatrical
conflicts
of
plebeiansand patricians ',41
Langford
failed
to
produce
an alternativegeneral
model.
If
Thompson had
lived to respond to
the continued mushrooming of historical
work
on the middling sort, the urban renaissance
and
the world of consumption in the eighteenth
century,
he might
have
further modified
his model. Even his apparently
imited reworkings
in
I99I suggested
important problems.
In responding, for example,
to criticisms that by
marginalizing the middling
sort he made it difficult
to explain the
emergence of a new
self-conscious
urban
middle-class presence from the 1790S
onwards, Thompson
admitted
that
his bipolar
model
has more relevance
to ruralor proto-industrial
areas than to
London
and
the larger corporate
towns.
In
doing
so he both highlighted the
extent to which his
eighteenth-century
model was essentially rural
rather than urban,
and also signalled the
possibility
that his
model works better for the period before I760 than
for the period after
it.42Moreover,
by choosing
ruralEngland as his last bastion
he focuses attention on
another
question. Does Thompson's
bipolar model work
for rural England, and in particular
for
southern
and eastern England,
where the urban
villages produced by proto-industria-
lization were declining rather than growing in number during the eighteenth century?43
39
Thompson,
'Patrician
society',
395;
Thompson,
'Eighteenth-century', 143 and
151.
40
Thompson,
Customs, 31-2 and
go;
Wahrman, 'National', 64; D.
Wahrman,
'Vir-
tual
representation:
parliamentary reporting
and
languages of class
in
the
1790S',
Past
and
Present, cxxxvi
(1992); Langford, A
Polite;
Langford, Public
Life;
P. Borsay The
English
Urban
Renaissance
(Oxford, I989). Additions
to the
literature
on
'the
middling
sort' since
i99i
include J. Seed, 'From middling sort to middle
class
in late eighteenth and
early
nineteenth-
century England'
in
M.
Bush
(ed.),
Social
Orders
and Social Classes
in
Europe
since
Isoo
(London, I992); J. Barry and C.
Brooks, The
Middling Sort of
People.
Culture, Society and
Politics in England 155o-1800
(London, 1994).
The latter contains a detailed bibliography.
41
Langford, A Polite, 6i. Thompson
is not
even footnoted here, raising once again
the
question of why so many eighteenth-century
historians use or abuse Thompson's model
without directly acknowledging that they are
doing so. N. Rogers, 'Paul Langford's Age of
Improvement ', Past and Present,
cxxx
(1992), 201-9.
42
Thompson, Customs, 33 and 88.
43
For interesting thoughts on Thompson's
extensive
use of
examples
from the cottaging
population of Yorkshire and a broader
dis-
cussion of his work
in
relation to work on
proto-industrialization see D. Levine,
'Proto-
nothing', Social History, XVIII
(1993),
38x-go.
7/26/2019 Edward Thompsons Contributions
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226 Social History
VOL. 21: NO. 2
III
The more work that is done on the nature of social conflict and social relations in the
eighteenth-century countryside, the more
it seems that the most appropriatemodel is, at
the
very least, triangular.
In
many fields
of activity it is difficult to avoid the conclusion
that the labouring poor, the middling sort and the ever-more distanced or absent gentry
were developing as increasingly separate
interest groups. There are many problems, of
course, with
the
use of a triangular
model
-
the continued existence of what some
historians have termed an English peasantry,45 or example, or the many fractures
and
factions among the middling sort of most communities. However, time and time again
alliances
on
the
ground tended
to
take
a
triangular form, although the make-up of those
allianceswould differaccordingto circumstances. The game laws brought the farmers nto
overt
conflict
with the gentry and
into an
uneasy alliance with the poor. Vestries
might
mobilize the local JP to punish the disorderly poor, but equally paupers often appealed
successfully to gentry or pseudo-gentry magistrates to obtain relief refused them
by
farmer-dominated vestries.
Disputes
over
unpaid wages might produce
a
similar
temporary alliance
much
to the
employers'
annoyance.46Equally, farmers'attacks on the
poor's right
to
glean often
foundered when the
magistracy
refused
to
support
them.
Triangular tendencies can also be found
in Thompson's own work. His moral economy
model suggests
that
similar configurations
occurred during food
riots
which
witnessed 'the
culturally-constructed alliance
between patricians and plebs against the middling orders'
as
the crowd
and
the authoritiescombined to scapegoat hoarding
farmers
and
profiteering
dealers.47
Thompson's
work
on
customary usages
as an
arena
of
struggle
also
implies
the
existence
of
three
separate
interest
groups.
'The
rich employed
their
riches,
and all the
institutions
and
awe of local authority,'
he
wrote.
'The middling
farmers
or
yeomen
sort
influenced local courts and sought
to write stricter by-laws
. . .
could
also
employ
the
discipline of
the
poor laws against
those beneath
them,
and on
occasion
. . . defended
their
rights against
the rich
and
powerful
at
law.
The
peasantry
and the
poor employed stealth,
a
knowledge
of
every
bush
and by-way
and
the
force of
numbers.48
Of
course,
if
property
or
the ultimate
authority
of
either the
magistracy
or the
vestry
were threatenedby popular unrest, the gentry and the middling sortusually joined forces
promptly
and
effectively
to
counter
the
threat.
But
within
these
outer
limits,
defined
as
much
by
the
power
of
penal
sanctions
as
by any hegemonic
closure
of
popular perceptions
These are
explored in more detail
in a
paper
on the
middling
sort of eighteenth-century
rural
England
I
have
given at various
seminars and
which will soon,
I hope, take its final
form under
the (provisional)
title of 'Property, power
and
the parish
state
in
eighteenth-century
England'.
I
have
not footnoted
the argument
outlined
brieflybelow as this will be done in detail in the
above
article.
45
M. Reed,
'The
peasantry
in
nineteenth-
century England:
a neglected
class?', History
Workshopyournal,
XVIII
(1984)
for the starting
point
of
the debate.
More recently
a helpful
and
questioning piece
is
J. Neeson,
'An
eighteenth-
century
peasantry'
in Rule
and
Malcolmson
(eds),
Protest,
24-59.
46
I
have
not footnoted
in detail
the argument
outlined briefly
here
as this will
be developed
and fully
footnoted
in
my
paper
referredto
in
n.
44.
For some early work,
mainly on the
Essex
evidence
in relationto
these issues,
see P.
King,
'Crime, Law and Society in Essex
1740-i820'
(Cambridge
Ph.D.,
I984), especially
282-90.
47
King,
'Gleaners'; Thompson,
'The moral
economy' and
'The
moral economy
reviewed',
300.
48Thompson,
Customs,
102-3.
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The patrician-plebeian
model re-examined 227
of the possible, the
poor had
room
for manoeuvre not
only
because
of
their
vigorous
and
separate culture,
but also because the propertied were
often divided
-
having separate
interests and separate policy priorities. The complex subject of the power and relative
autonomy of
'the
parish state', as
John
Clare called
it,
finds
virtually
no
place in
Thompson's
analysis,49
yet
through
it
the
middling
sort
held
a
vast
array
of
discretionary
powers.50
If
the vestry
minute
books and the
diaries
of
middling vestry
members
like
Thomas Turner and John Carrington
are any guide, they exercised
those powers
with
precious little reference
to,
or
deference
towards,
the
landowning elite.51 Important
though
the
concept
of
cultural
hegemony may
be
in
explaining
the
unhindered
continuance
of
gentry
rule
until
the
1790s,
'the
dull
compulsion'52
f
economic and labour
relations and of parish politics, which
gave the farmers such power over
the employment
opportunities, wages, poor relief and charitable resources availableto labouringfamilies
may
have
been
a
vital
stabilizing
factor
which
Thompson's
model
fails
to allow room
for.
There are other problems with
Thompson's use
of
the notion of
hegemony.
He
offers
little discussion, for example, of the
means
of
mental
production
in
the eighteenth century
and of how
plebeian attitudes and
culture
were
influenced
by
them.
At
times
the gentry's
hegemony
seems to leave
such
a
wide arena of struggle
that one wonders whether the
implied forms of mental
closure had much purchase.
The
only way
we
could
test
its
role
would
be
to remove
gentry unity and hegemony and watch
events. Would
the
naked
power
of
the
employing, vestry-ruling
middling
sort
have
held? This
may
well
have
been what
happened at
the
height
of
the English
Revolution when, some historians have
suggested, it
was
the
middling
sort, not the gentry, who ensured the
maintenance of order at the local
level.53
However, matters were
different a century
later and, problematic though it is,
Thompson's notion
of cultural
hegemony still holds considerable
explanatorypower
in
the
eighteenth-century context. Indeed,
his reworking of Gramsci in the
introduction to
Customs
in
Common,
in
order to refute what he calls the
fashionable assumption 'that the
plebs were
in
a sense
spoken by their linguistic
inheritance' is both
thought-provoking
49
Thompson was
not alone
in
his
neglect of
this field. On the lack of a history of the often
powerful tenant
farmers
in
particularsee Innes,
'Jonathan
Clark', i82;
Barry
and
Brooks (eds),
The
Middling, 213.
Thompson
tried
unsuccess-
fully
to
get
a
student to
work
on
the
vestry
(personal
communication
from
Dorothy
Thompson).
s J.
North, 'State
of the poor in
the parish of
Ashdon,
Essex', Annals of
Agriculture, xxxv
(I8oo),
468-9. For a
debate
which has
touched
interestingly
on
these
issues
and on the
potential
of
social
control by
poor
relief, see R.
Wells,
'The development of the English rural pro-
letariat and
social
protest, i700-i
850',
ournal
of
Peasant
Studies,
vi
(I979)
and
A.
Charlesworth,
'Comment' on
that article
in
Journal
of
Peasant
Studies,
viii
(i 980-I).
J. Clare,
The
Parish.
A
Satire
(London,
I985);
D. Vaisey
(ed.), The
Diary of Thomas
Turner
1754-65
(Oxford, I985);
W.
Branch-
Johnson (ed.), Memorandums for The Diary
between
1798
and
r8io
of 7ohn
Carrington,
Fanner,
Chief
Constable, Tax
Assessor, Sur-
veyor
of
Highways
and
Overseer
of
the
Poor
of
Bramfield
in
Hertfordshire
(London,
1973).
S2
The
importanceof the
'dull
compulsion
of
the economic
relations
of
everyday life'
rather
than the
role
of a
dominant
ideology
which
incorporates
subordinates is
stressed in Aber-
crombie et
al. (eds),
Dominant
Ideologies,
2-3.
See
Thompson,
Customs, 22, for
a very brief
mention of the
overseers of
the
poor and their
importance.
53
J. Morrill
and
J.
Walter,
'Order and
disorder in the
English
Revolution'
in
A.
Fletcher
and J.
Stevenson
(eds),
Order and
Disorder
in Early
Modern England
(Cam-
bridge, I985),
153.
7/26/2019 Edward Thompsons Contributions
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228
Social
History VOL.
21:
NO.
2
and persuasive.
Those who see the plebs 'as
captives within a linguistic prison' are,
he
argues,
underestimating the
importance Gramsci ascribed to
praxis, to the shared
experiences
of
fellow-workers and neighbours. It
was those
experiences of hardship,
exploitation and
repression
which
continually exposed the text of
paternalist theatre to
ironic criticism
and, less
frequently, to revolt.54The temptation to
enter into a praxis
versus
post-modernism debate will be resisted here.
It would have
been marvellousto have
seen
Thompson
at
his best
grappling with
arguments such
as
those
of Joan Scott in her
recent attackon
'experience'as historical category.
Sadly we have only
fragmentsof such a
response in his later
letters.5sHe
was not afraidof the 'linguistic turn'
and its gyrationswill
be much the poorer for the lack of
his critical input,56but for all
those
who
want to
write
and
to make
histories
that
are
more than
mere
fragments,
and
that are committed to
the
excluded and the apparently powerless, Thompson's work will continue to provide a
beacon.
His
legacy
is
partly
a
personal,
even
(dare
we
whisper it)
a
moral
one.
When
again
will
we have the company of such a
brilliant
historian, committed not only to know and
to
theorize,
but also
to
do so
in
order
to act.
For
eighteenth-century
historians
that
legacy
is
also a
very concrete one.57
With
its nuanced
understanding
of
the
relationship
between
cultural and
linguistic
inheritances and
of the
lived
experiences
of
those
who bore
the
weight
of
those inheritances, his
work on
custom,
riot
and time
discipline
will
remain
a
vital starting point for all students of
the period,
as will
his
all too brieftourdeforce
on
the
rule
of
law
in
Whigs
and
Hunters.
Eighteenth-century
studies
may
need to
go beyond
his
bipolar
model
and to construct a new, general model of social relationsthat incorporates
more
fully the polite and commercial
people
of
the towns
and
the robust
local
rule of
the
profit-hungry farmers, but its debt
to
Thompson is,
and always
will
be,
immense.
Nene College
of Higher Education
5'
Thompson,
Customs, I
o-I I.
J
. Scott, 'Experience'
in
J. Butler and J.
Scott, Feminists Theorize the Political (Lon-
don,
1992),
22-40;
Palmer, E. P. Thompson,
I85.
56
There is no need to footnote the debate in
detail here,
but
for
recent
pieces
which owe
something
to
Thompson's inheritance see, for
example,
J.
Hoff, 'Gender as a postmodern
category of paralysis', Women's
History
Review,
III
(I994),
149-68;
N. Kirk,
History,
anguage,
ideas and post-modernism: a materialist view',
SocialHistory,xIx
(1994)
221-40.
For a
piece
that, by contrast,
refers to Marx,
Thompson and
Stedman-Jones
asfounding fathers
and to 'a rich
valley
of Thompsonian Orthodoxy'
see
J.
Vernon,
'Who's afraid of the
linguistic
turn ?
The politicsof social
history and its discontents',
Social History,
XIX
(I994),
81-97.
57 The legacy of
his eighteenth-century
work
is also especially
important
to non-European
historians.
See, for example, F. Cooper, 'Work,
class and empire: an African
historian'sretro-
spective
on E. P. Thompson',
Social History,
xx
('995),
237-8.