Protest and the Politics of Space and Place, 17891848

(Paperback)

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An accessible and innovative analysis of how political groups used and contested spaces and places in protest. It uses a wide range of interesting sources, from Home Office correspondence to local magistrates, diaries and autobiographies, local newspapers, together with spatial analysis of sites of political protest plotted on historical maps. -- .

Reviews

'... a well-written and thoroughly researched addition to the scholarship on historical protest. Katrina Navickas makes a strong case for the significance of space and place to the historical study of protest, and the book will, therefore, be of value to any historian, geographer, or social scientist interested in protest and political movements.'
Hannah Awcock, Journal of Historical Geography, May 2016

'...a very impressive study, thoughtful and persuasive, laced with insights and interesting detail'
Adrian Randall, University of Birmingham, Social History Journal, Issue 4, May 2016

Navickas not only examines the ways in which local elites organised carefully choreographed and highly ritualised public displays of loyalty, but also traces their systematic attempts to exclude radicals and their ideas from the civic body politic. Her thick descriptions of the loyalist violence and intimidationare not only chilling in their detail, but are redolent of E. P. Thompsons classic The Making of the English Working Class in the way in which local detail is tellingly deployed both to illustrate and add nuance to a more general argument.
Reviews in History, Dr Mike Sanders, University of Manchester, September 2016

The book remains interesting and informative throughout, and on the whole it is both well-organized and well-written. The research basis is better than solid. This book has merits that outweigh its weaknesses, and for anyone wishing to know more about British popular politics between 1789 and 1848 it will be essential reading.
Michael Turner, Appalachian State University, Labour/Le Travail 78 Volume 78, Fall 2016

Readable and fascinating, Katrina Navickas book might be particularly of interest to modern day activists and historians in the North (particularly Manchester) but I expect it will also become a much studied book for social historians trying to understand the historic struggles that have shaped, quite literally, the world we live and struggle in today.
Resolute Reader

Navickas is to be congratulated for producing a work of prodigious scholarship, the conclusions of which repay close attention by any scholar of modern popular protest and politics.
Matthew Roberts, Sheffield Hallam University, Parliamentary History

Anyone interested in the long eighteenth century will welcome this fine monograph on a subject at the heart of debates on the popular history of the period. The topics of space and place have been around for some time, from the work of Mark Harrison (1988), James Vernon (1993), Paul Halliday (1998), Steve Poole (1999) and James Epstein (2003), but they have never been treated with the depth of research and the generosity of scope that are provided here. Katrina Navickas drills more deeply into the world of protest than any of her predecessors and her perceptive research is presented in a lively and readable narrative.
Frank OGorman, University of Manchester, English Historical Review

This is an impressive volume that brings together recent research and insights aboutthe uses of space to provide a convincing analysis of the importance of theconcept to patterns of radical continuity between the late eighteenth andmid-nineteenth-century.
Anthony Taylor, Sheffield Hallam University, Journalof Social History

Protest and the Politics of Space and Place offers a fresh look at the struggles that swept across England from the time of the French Revolution to the heydays of Chartism. The book combines recent theoretical debates on the construction and restriction of public space with a rich and very detailed study of past movements fighting for democratic participation and civil rights in northern England. The sheer amount and breadth of archival evidence presented here is astonishing. From small town records to collections held at the British Library, Katrina Navickas draws on a variety of materials that make the book empirically rich without getting lost in detail.
Philipp Reick, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, H-Soz-Kult

What Katrina Navickas has achieved in The Protest and Politics of Space and Place, 17891848 is to argue cogently and clearly for historians to consider the importance of geographic conceptions of space and place. [] Navickas work demonstrates the continued fruitfulness of historical research that draws inspiration from sister disciplines. It is a worthwhile read for scholars and students, alongside those fascinated in understanding the radical history of now stable and peaceful communities.
Dr Marc Collinson, University of Bangor, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire & Cheshire

'Navickas admirably employs space as a conceptual category for understanding British reform movements, showing how protesters creatively reimagined space and their place in it as they reimagined government. Conversely, the governments restricting their ability to meet and to speak in public space kept it an active category of contestation for both sides (p. 311). This book is effective as a close-to-the-ground history of how Britons found ways to resist an unequal and repressive governing system. [] Navickas offers a rich and well-researched study of six decades of public protest, impressively integrating primary source work (including citations from twenty-six archives) alongside syntheses of many historians studies. This work will remain useful for future scholars studying protest in industrializing England for both its focus and erudition.'
H-Net Reviews

Author Bio

Katrina Navickas is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Hertfordshire