The Threat of (a French) Revolution in Britain:
Causes, Interpretations, and Implications, 1789-1848
Nick Chiorian
Hudson High School
Hudson, Ohio
2008 NEH Seminar for School Teachers
Interpretations of the Industrial revolution in Britain
Discussions of the Industrial Revolution in Britain generally do not include references to
the French Revolution. On the surface, the social implications of the Industrial
Revolution evokes images of oppressed workers, wealthy, innovative industrialists, and
intense class conflict between this newly created proletariat and the exploitative
bourgeoisie. Images of the Luddites, the Peterloo Massacre, the Six Acts, the
Combination Acts, and other events and legislation paint a picture of a Britain on the
verge of class revolution. But these images are not often paralleled with Jacobins or sans
culottes. Yet in the minds of the ruling classes in Britain after 1792, there was a strong
association between the two revolutions, one that accounted for the strong backlash
against various working-class reform movements in the 1790s and early decades of the
1800s.
What were the dynamics of the relationship between revolution in France and the
threat of revolution in Britain? Was Britain on the verge of revolution? And if so, what
were the underlying causes? Most importantly, to what extent did the intense
revolutionary activity on the Continent impact revolutionary ideas and the fear of
revolution in Britain?
1
This essay will explore social unrest in Britain during the period from roughly
1789-1832 in light of the work of several authors.1 In so doing, it will explore the extent
to which social unrest was due to Marxian class conflict, in addition to several related
questions: was social unrest due entirely to the development of new technologies and new
methods of organizing production? Or was it a reaction to the events and ideals of the
French Revolution2 and Napoleon? Indeed, we also have to question whether or not there
even existed a coherent movement of social unrest. Ultimately, this essay will argue that
while the social unrest of the period may have been due to various social and
technological/organizational changes brought about by industrialization, the political
response to these actions was due more to the French Revolution than to fear of a workers
revolt.
Several factors complicate this discussion. First, the question of chronology
clouds the issue. Historians have tended to place the Industrial Revolution roughly
between 1750 and 1850. But, as Maxine Berg has pointed out, the starting point can
easily be pushed back to 1700.3 This essay will explore the time period beginning in
1789 in order to allow for exploration of the influence of both industrialization and the
French Revolution. For an ending point, 1848 serves well. This timeframe situates
major social movements, such as the Luddites and the Chartists, allows for major
Parliamentary reform, ranging from the Six Acts to the Reform Bill, and in the end,
1
See J.L. and Barbara Hammond, The Town Labourer (1917); E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English
Working Class (London: Penguin Books, 1968); T.S. Ashton, The Industrial Revolution: 1760-1830
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968); and E.J. Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire (New York: The New
Press, 1968).
2
For the purposes of this essay, the term “French Revolution” will be used to refer to events in France after
the radicalization of the Revolution in 1792 until the fall of Napoleon in 1815. It will also imply the nearly
constant state of warfare that existed between France and England during that time.
3
Maxine Berg, The Age of Manufactures: 1700-1820, Second Edition (London: Routledge, 1996).
2
places Britain side-by-side with revolutions throughout the Continent.4 Second, the issue
of scope is problematic. Again, Berg has pointed out that the example historians so often
utilize—that of the mechanized textile industry—is not indicative of all, or even a
majority of people, workers, or industry in England during the aforementioned time
period. Yet, the scope, or at least the importance of the industrialization, was substantial
enough to elucidate various Parliamentary responses, both positive and negative. We
must keep this in mind when evaluating the (perceived) threat of revolution during this
time period.
“The French Revolution had transformed the minds of the ruling classes, and the
Industrial Revolution had convulsed the world of the working classes.”5 This statement,
written in 1917, effectively contextualizes the actions of the workers and the reactions of
the ruling classes during our time period. In 1917, J.L. and Barbara Hammond wrote The
Town Labourer, which became one of the most prominent articulations of the working
class oppressed by the forces of industrialization. One of the most significant aspects of
their work is the contextualization of industrialization with the revolutionary and counterrevolutionary forces of the French Revolution. Certainly, the Hammonds made no effort
to hide their sympathy for the workers, but that aspect is not useful in this discussion.
But, contrary to assertions by historians such as Ashton, this does not detract from the
significance of their work. They did not use a wide brush to paint a picture of class
conflict situated entirely around industrialization. Instead, they, and later E.P.
4
Interestingly, the authors described above paid close attention to revolutionary activity surrounding the
French Revolution and Napoleon, from roughly 1792 until the settlement at Vienna in 1815. But
interestingly, they do not give attention to the influence of the numerous revolutions that occurred across
the Continent in 1848. This could be due to the complete lack of influence of these revolutions on Britain
in 1848, but is worth closer examination.
5
The Town Labourer (1917) , 94.
3
Thompson, explained that while industrialization may have motivated working class
agitation, it was the French Revolution which primarily informed the bourgeois and
aristocratic response. Ironically, according to the Hammonds, the French Revolution
brought the Crown, the aristocracy, and the bourgeoisie together: “By the end of the
[eighteenth] century, with the panic of the Revolution, a new danger came into [the
governing classes’] minds. There was now no quarrel between the aristocracy and the
Crown…”6 Indeed, after the French Revolution, “the tone was very different. The
poorer classes no longer seemed a passive power: they were dreaded as a Leviathan that
was fast learning its strength.”7 If we are to accept the Hammonds’ argument, then it was
primarily the French Revolution, not the Industrial Revolution, which created the
perceived threat of revolution in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The
evidence they provide makes such an assertion attractive.
For the Hammonds, events in France gave renewed justification for social and
economic ideas favorable to the ruling classes. Capitalistic, laissez-faire economic and
political theories and policies found support from the reaction against the French
Revolution more so than from their own validity. As the Hammonds explained, “The
classes that possessed authority in the State and the classes that had acquired the new
wealth, landlords, churchmen, judges, manufacturers, one and all understood by
government the protection of society from the fate that had overtaken the privileged
classes in France.”8 Thus, the Hammonds set up what E.P. Thompson would later label a
“political counter-revolution from 1792-1832.” Fearing the fate of the propertied class in
France, the ruling class of Britain immediately clamped down on any dissent, labor6
Ibid., 62.
Ibid., 94.
8
Ibid., 320.
7
4
oriented or other. The Hammonds asserted that “The mass of people was liable to be
infected with Jacobin doctrines, and if the State was to be made safe from revolutionary
agitation, it was essential that the proletariat should be excluded from all opportunity of
discussion, association, education, and remonstrance.”9 This sentiment gelled with
perceived notions of Malthusian and Ricardian laissez faire capitalism. Thus, from both
a national security and an economic standpoint, repression of the lower classes found
justification in the French Revolution. Indeed, the French Revolution may have had
more impact in Britain that the Industrial Revolution. As the Hammonds concluded, “if
you turn from the language of the Declaration of the Rights of Man to the language of
magistrates’ letters, or to the speeches of Pitt and Wilberforce, you realize that the war
between England and France, which developed or degenerated into a war for power in
Europe, corresponded to a deep and vital spiritual struggle within the nation….Hence it
happened that the French Revolution has divided the people of France less than the
Industrial Revolution has divided the people of England.”10
In addition to the Hammonds, E.P. Thompson saw a strong connection between
the French and Industrial Revolutions. His monumental work The Making of the English
Working Class presented a working class on the verge of revolution and the “propertied”
class trembling in fear of one. In so doing, Thompson effectively covered both the
influence of industrialization and of the French Revolution. In both aspects, he presented
the image of an oppressed working class ready and willing to overthrow its bourgeois
masters—illustrative of his Marxist approach. He explained that, regardless of starting
point, “It is the old debate continued. The same aspirations, fears, and tensions are there:
9
Ibid., 321.
Ibid., 325.
10
5
but they arise in a new context, with new language and arguments, and a changed balance
of forces. . . . We start at 1789, and English Jacobinism appears as a byproduct of the
French Revolution. Or we start in 1819 and with Peterloo, and English Radicalism
appears to be a spontaneous generation of the Industrial Revolution.”11 This aspect is
essential, in that Thomson, like the Hammonds, overtly connected the relationship
between the French and Industrial revolutions. He praised the Hammonds, explaining,
“to the student examining the ledgers of one cotton mill, the Napoleonic Wars appear
only as an abnormal influence affecting foreign markets and fluctuating demand. The
Hammonds could never have forgotten for one moment that it was also a war against
Jacobinism.”12 But he emphasized that while most working class agitation was due to
industrialization, most governmental or bourgeois reaction to the working class was
paradoxically influenced more by the French Revolution. He clarified how “after the
French Revolution, no Whig politician would have risked, no City father condemned, the
tampering with such dangerous energies…”13
Through Thompson and the Hammonds, then, emerges a strange dichotomy.
While groups such as the Luddites, and later the Chartists and the anti-Corn Law
agitators were motivated by direct forces in their lives, the response from the government
and the bourgeoisie was cast not in light of purely domestic issues, but in light of events
in France. According to Thompson, it was the threat of workingmen demanding rights—
similar to the Third Estate in France—which “threw the propertied classes into panic.”14
It was not the Terror which scared the propertied classes, for, as Thompson explained,
11
Thompson, 27.
Ibid., 215.
13
Ibid., 79.
14
Ibid., 114.
12
6
“The panic, and the counter-revolutionary offensive, of the propertied in Britain
commenced some months before the arrest of the King and the September massacres in
France.”15 The result, for Thompson, was a galvanization of forces against the lower
classes: “Alarmed at the French example, and in the patriotic fervor of war, the
aristocracy and the manufacturers made common cause. The English ancien régime
received a new lease of life, not only in national affairs, but also in the perpetuation of the
antique corporations which misgoverned the swelling industrial towns.”16 Indeed, he
presented us with a working class up against a system mobilized to resist change: “There
is the Industrial Revolution, in its technological aspects. And there is the political
counter-revolution, from 1792-1832.”17
Clearly, through the work of Thompson and the Hammonds, we can see that
counter-revolutionary ideas and actions directed by the government and supported by the
new industrial bourgeoisie were not solely due to the social changes and discontent
caused by industrialization. Unfortunately, workers agitating for better pay, combination,
or safer working conditions found themselves in a storm of paranoia and repression
caused by actions other than their own. Of course, this is not to say that we can
completely ignore the contribution of working-class agitation toward governmental
repression. But we can see the class tension in a wider scope which includes, to a
significant degree, the French Revolution
For further support of this assertion, we can also look at the other end of the
historiographic spectrum. An historian who disagrees completely with the Hammonds
and Thompson regarding the nature of the Industrial Revolution is T.S. Ashton. Even
15
Ibid., 117.
Ibid., 216.
17
Ibid.
16
7
though Ashton barely addressed the social implications of industrialization, he deserves
mention here for his explanation of anti-union, or as Thompson and the Hammonds
would call it, “anti-working class” legislation. For Ashton, the statistics of the economy
during the period of industrialization showed unequivocal progress, both for society and
the workers. He focused on the progress that industrialization and capitalism brought to
Britain. But even he conceded a connection between the events in France and legislation
at home. He admitted that after 1792, “Britain was at war: the ruling classes feared that
unions might serve as a cloak for ‘corresponding societies’ or other, more revolutionary
bodies.”18 But his conclusion is not as scathing as the Hammonds’. For Ashton, the
French Revolution may have inspired the Combination Act of 1800, but he gave the Act
little significance. “It was rarely invoked,” he told us, “partly, no doubt, because the
penalties it imposed were relatively light.” Moreover, the Act did not sufficiently stop
the formation of unions, “some of which operated in the open, without any action being
taken to put them down.”19 But even though he downplays the significance of the
Combination Act, we can still see the influence of French Revolutionary ideas on the
actions and attitudes of the ruling classes.
Interestingly, E.J. Hobsbawm, who is generally on the same side of the spectrum
as the Hammonds and Thompson, did not make any connection between the French and
the Industrial Revolution. As a fairly orthodox Marxist, he of course gave revolution its
place. But his is more the stereotypical view of a revolution from the workers against the
repressive, capitalistic policies of the ruling classes. He explained that, “when the
mechanism of peaceful adjustment [to industrialization] worked worst, and the need for
18
19
Ashton, 108.
Ibid.
8
radical change seemed most urgent—as in the first half of the nineteenth century—the
risks of revolution were also unusually great, just because if it got out of control it looked
like turning into a revolution of the new working class.”20 His is the Marxist
interpretation of the bourgeoisie keeping the proletariat in its subservient position. He
continued: “To keep social tensions low, to prevent the dissensions among sectors of the
ruling classes from getting out of hand, was not merely advisable, but seemed
essential.”21 For Hobsbawm, it was the goal of preserving power and expanding markets
and capital which motivated the ruling classes. He argued that “both economic theory
and economic practice stressed the crucial importance of capital accumulation by the
capitalist, that is of the maximum rate of profit and the maximum diversion of income
from the (non-accumulating) workers to the employers.”22 But beyond this, his focus is
the motivation for the workers’ revolutionary sentiment, not the ruling classes’ counterrevolutionary sentiment.
Hobsbawm’s analysis falls short of recognizing larger forces motivating the ruling
classes. Certainly, there had to be an element of capitalist motivation to repress workingclass reform movements. And certainly that concern played a role in the “political
counter-revolution” of which Thompson spoke. But Hobsbawm seems to overestimate
the presence of a purely Marxist revolutionary threat. His scope is much later than the
pervious authors, generally post-1830. Yet, statements such as this seem unfounded: “As
Marx and Engels rightly pointed out, in the 1840s, the spectre of communism haunted
Europe. If it was relatively less feared in Britain, the spectre of economic breakdown
20
Hobsbawm, xv.
Ibid.
22
Ibid., 27.
21
9
was equally appalling to the middle class.”23 The latter part of the statement may have
validity, but the claim that Marxism was a genuine threat as early as the 1840s casts
doubt on Hobsbawm’s historiographical framework. In addition, he claimed that the
industrial city was “a volcano, to whose rumblings the rich and powerful listened with
fear, and whose eruptions they dreaded. But for its poor inhabitants it was not merely a
standing reminder of their exclusion from human society. It was a stony desert, which
they had to make habitable by their own efforts.”24 Again, there is certainly validity in
this assertion. But Hobsbawm does not delve into the details of why the ruling classes
were so paranoid. Instead, he explains their motivation through his larger Marxist
framework.
But this does not exclude Hobsbawm from the present discussion altogether.
From his work, we unquestionably see the threat of revolution and social unrest from the
workers’ perspective. Thompson and the Hammonds would likely agree with such a
presence. We can confidently assert that conditions of industrialization pushed various
lower- and working-class groups toward reform-minded or even revolutionary actions
and ideas. We can also confidently assert that the ruling classes feared such a revolution
and acted to keep it from happening. From the aforementioned authors, the argument that
the conservative reaction had a great deal of influence from the French Revolution is
substantiated.
But that assertion is worth applying briefly to the revolutions that shook Europe in
1848. The Hammonds, Ashton, Thompson, and to a certain extent, Hobsbawm,
completely ignored the revolutions of 1848. If indeed the ruling classes feared the spread
23
24
Ibid., 55-56.
Ibid., 65.
10
of revolutionary activity in the 1790s, it would follow that widespread revolution in 1848
might also cause counter-revolutionary action in 1848, the year of the publication of the
Communist Manifesto. But did it? Certainly, things had changed in Britain since the
early 1800s. The Six Acts no longer restricted habeas corpus. The Reform Bill of 1832
extended suffrage to the middle class. The Combination Acts were revoked in 1824, and
many pieces of legislation improved working conditions. But Chartism was alive and
well just a few years prior to 1848, and several economic slumps in the 1840s led to
much agitation. So the revolutions of 1848 occurred in the shadow of social unrest in
Britain. It is interesting that there was not, or that historians have not explored, any
counter-revolutionary backlash from the ruling classes in that year.
Works Cited
Ashton, T.S. The Industrial Revolution: 1760-1830. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1968.
Berg, Maxine. The Age of Manufactures: 1700-1820. Second Edition. London:
Routledge, 1996.
Hammond, J.L. and Barbara. The Town Labourer: The New Civilization 1760-1832, New
York: Harper & Row, 1970. First published by Longmans, Green and Company,
London, 1917.
Hobsbawm, E.J. Industry and Empire. New York: The New Press, 1968.
Thompson, E.P. The Making of the English Working Class. London: Penguin Books,
1968.