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1 Lighting the Torch of Liberty The French Revolution and Chartist Political Culture, 1838-1852 Jacob Dengate A thesis submitted for the degree of PhD Supervisors: Professor Paul O’Leary Dr Peter Lambert The Department of History and Welsh History Aberystwyth University September 2017 2 Declaration/Statements Word Count of thesis: 95,132 DECLARATION This work has not previously been accepted in substance for any degree and is not being concurrently submitted in candidature for any degree. Candidate name Jacob Dengate Signature: Date 19 June 2018 STATEMENT 1 This thesis is the result of my own investigations, except where otherwise stated. Where *correction services have been used, the extent and nature of the correction is clearly marked in a footnote(s). Other sources are acknowledged by footnotes giving explicit references. A bibliography is appended. Signature: Date 19 June 2018 [*this refers to the extent to which the text has been corrected by others] STATEMENT 2 I hereby give consent for my thesis, if accepted, to be available for photocopying and for inter-library loan, and for the title and summary to be made available to outside organisations. Signature: Date 19 June 2018 3 Summary From 1838 until the end of the European Revolutions in 1852, the French Revolution provided Chartists with a repertoire of symbolism that Chartists would deploy in their activism, histories, and literature to foster a sense of collective consciousness, define a democratic world-view, and encourage internationalist sentiment. Challenging conservative notions of the revolution as a bloody and anarchic affair, Chartists constructed histories of 1789 that posed the era as a romantic struggle for freedom and nationhood analogous to their own, and one that was deeply entwined with British history and national identity. During the 1830s, Chartist opposition to the New Poor Law drew from the gothic repertoire of the Bastille to frame inequality in Britain. The workhouse ‘bastile’ was not viewed simply as an illegitimate imposition upon Britain, but came to symbolise the character of class rule. Meanwhile, Chartist newspapers also printed fictions based on the French Revolution, inserting Chartist concerns into the narratives, and their histories of 1789 stressed the similarity between France on the eve of revolution and Britain on the eve of the Charter. During the 1840s Chartist internationalism was contextualised by a framework of thinking about international politics constructed around the Revolutions of 1789 and 1830, while the convulsions of Continental Europe during 1848 were interpreted as both a confirmation of Chartist historical discourse and as the opening of a new era of international struggle. In the Democratic Review (1849-1850), the Red Republican (1850), and The Friend of the People (1850-1852), Chartists like George Julian Harney, Helen Macfarlane, William James Linton, and Gerald Massey, along with leading figures of the radical émigrés of 1848, characterised ‘democracy’ as a spirit of action and a system of belief. For them, the democratic heritage was populated by a diverse array of figures, including the Apostles of Jesus, Martin Luther, the romantic poets, and the Jacobins of 1793. The ‘Red Republicanism’ that flourished during 1848-1852 was sustained by the historical viewpoints arrived at during the Chartist period generally. Attempts to define a ‘science’ of socialism was as much about correcting the misadventures of past ages as it was a means to realise the promise announced by the ‘Springtime of the Peoples’. 4 Acknowledgements The last four years have literally been life-changing. With having embarked on this thesis, the arrival of my son James in 2015, and a number of personal tragedies and successes, along the way, it is difficult not to view this moment as the beginning of a new phase in my life. I have accumulated so many debts over the years to so many people that to list them all would be exhausting. Nevertheless, I would like to take a moment to thank some of the key people who have made this journey the momentous experience it has become. I am indebted to the Department of History and Welsh History at Aberystwyth University, not only for having enabled my research these last four years, but for the ten years or more that I have studied here. Having gone through the entirety of my academic career at Aberystwyth, I owe a huge thanks to all the staff over the years for their patience, professionalism, and unbound kindness. The wonderful atmosphere fostered by the Department has infected the postgraduate community. The band of researchers are a kind and welcoming group, and I have been fortunate enough to have made many lasting friends. Three in particular have provided an endless source of companionship and help: the newly minted Drs, Caroline Dale, Kris Lovell, and Zuzana Podracka. I would not have been able to do this without your friendship, help, and forbearance. My supervisors Paul O’Leary and Peter Lambert have been amazing sources of inspiration and knowledge. Their pointed questioning and interrogations have challenged me continually to better my work. If not for Peter’s consistent encouragement over the last decade, I would certainly have never countenanced any kind of postgraduate study. It was Roger Price who first set me on this course, by way of an infectious enthusiasm for French history and the Revolutions of 1848. Peter helped to shape this into a viable direction of study. It was left to Paul to challenge and help me mature in my thinking. For your consistent support, friendly advice, and timely interventions, you have my thanks. Finally, I must thank my family. My wife Jenny and my son James are rays of sunshine in my life. To my parents, Ken and Carol, and my sister Philippa: thank you for your warm wishes and enthusiastic support. I dedicate this to you. 5 Table of Contents Introduction 1 Part One The Insurgent Gothic: Chartism, Genre, and the Fall of the Bastille Introduction: The Gothic Frontier 21 1 The ‘English’ Bastille, 1789-1838 28 2 The ‘Whig Bastile’, 1838-1842 47 3 An Insurgent Consciousness 66 Part Two The International Context of Chartist History and Thought, 1838-1848 4 The French Revolution as Cultural and Historical Terrain 85 5 The European Struggle: The Revolutions of 1848 in the Northern Star 120 Part Three France: The Heart of European Democracy, 1849-1852 6 Taking the Part Fully and Fearlessly: The Democratic Review, 1849-1850 134 7 ‘The Tree of Life and of Liberty’: Helen Macfarlane, Universal History, and the Frightful Hobgoblin 153 8 The Red Republican and the Friend of The People, June 1850 – July 1851 174 9 ‘Cossack Supremacy’ 208 10 Martyrdom and ‘the Men of Forty-Eight’ 215 Conclusion 233 Bibliography 250 6 1 Introduction The ‘three glorious days’ of February 1848 dominated Chartist attention in the crucial months leading up to the presentation of the third, and final, petition to Parliament on 10 April that year. Focussing primarily on the insurgency of the working class, the National Guard, and the political demands of republican groups, the main Chartist newspaper The Northern Star chronicled the popular uprising and presented the Revolutions of 1848 as an emblem of victory for British radicalism.1 In seeking to invoke the Parisian rising as a means to mobilise Chartism’s activists, the newspaper described reform in Britain as linked to the victories of republican and democratic movements in continental Europe as a component of a singular, universal Democracy. Chartism, in this narrative, existed as a single arm of a momentous historical movement that transcended national borders and whose opponents were tyrants, despots, and the enemies of the people the world over. Articulated most ably by the indefatigable Helen Macfarlane, a revolutionary feminist who was the first to translate Marx’s Communist Manifesto into English, this democratic ‘Spirit of the Age’ drew its power from a bewildering body of historical sources from every stage of world history. The Democratic spirit, she wrote, had passed from the Ancients and Apostles, through the renaissance and the reformation, to be articulated in political form during the European Enlightenment.2 However, one part of this chronicle stood apart in terms of its relevance to the followers of Democracy, and that was the French Revolution of 1789- 1793. In an arresting article praising the Parisian insurgents for their heroism, the Northern Star announced the dawning of democracy’s final triumph. ‘The beginning of the end has arrived’, the article ran, ‘the French Revolution has kindled the torch, and by its light the British People are reading the Charter of their liberties.’3 Read one way, this statement spoke to the rapid influx of support Chartists had witnessed immediately 1 See chapter 5. 2 ‘Democracy’, Democratic Review, April 1850, 424-25; Red Republican, 20 July 1850, 34. 3 Northern Star, 4 March 1848, 4. 2 following the declaration of the Second French Republic; but read another way, it also suggested Chartism’s abiding relationship to the principles and symbolism of 1789. That Chartism following the 1848 revolutions had imbibed the spirit of revolutionary fervour from the Continent is undeniable. Between 1849 and 1852 George Julian Harney, an enthusiastic internationalist with a reputation amongst scholars as the ‘Marat of Chartism’, expounded the principles of democratic socialism in a series of new journals and newspapers.4 As well as extolling the virtues of Continental socialism, the Red Republicanism
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