Imagining Insurrection in Seventeenth-Century England: Representations of the Midland Rising of 1607

Hindle, Steve

doi:10.1093/hwj/dbn029

Cited by 28 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 68 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Rioters at Newtonten miles to the east of Oundle and even closer to Finedonhad set up a camp in the recently enclosed fields, where they'd spent several days digging up the hedges before eventually being violently driven off by the local Justices of the Peace and their retainers. 29 Details of the camp itself are sparse, but such incidents undoubtedly registered with enclosing landlords as bodily occupations of their property, a troublesome peopling of the landscape where they must have wished to see only grass and sheep.…”

Section: Occupying One's Commonmentioning

confidence: 99%

Occupy! Historical geographies of property, protest and the commons, 1500–1850

McDonagh

Griffin

2016

Journal of Historical Geography

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper examines issues surrounding protest, trespass and occupation -brought to the fore as a result both of recent social movements including the global Occupy movement and of emerging critical discourses about so-called 'new enclosures' -through a historical lens. Wary of histories of property and protest that rely heavily on the notion of the 'closing of the commons', the authors present a different story about the solidification of property rights, the securitisation of space and the gradual emergence of the legal framework through which protest is now disciplined. They do so via an exploration of three episodes in the making of property in land and three associated moments of resistance, each enacted via the physical occupation of common land. The first examines strategies for opposing enclosure in early sixteenth-century England; the second considers the Diggers' reimagining of property and the commons in the mid seventeenth century; and the third analyses the challenge to property rights offered by squatting and small-scale encroachments in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In so doing, the paper begins to rethink the relations between past and contemporary protest, considering how a more nuanced account of the history of common rights, enclosure and property relations might nevertheless leave space for new solidarities which have the potential to challenge the exercise of arbitrary power.Suddenly, in 2011 occupations were everywhere. Student sit-ins, the symbolic gathering and occupying of prominent 'public' spaces during the so-called Arab Spring, the Indignados of Spain, the Direct Democracy Now movement in Greece, and the Occupy movement, all united by their shared use of the physical occupation of prominent and symbolic spaces by way of protest.If ultimately their aims were different, the technique of gathering together and occupying tied the protests together. The act of occupation is not a new one, though rarely has the physical and spatial act been given such symbolic prominence as in the Occupy movement. The practical and symbolic actand thus public performanceof occupying public space was not just rooted in political symbolism but also a direct critique of the 'privatization' of public space. Occupy thus reclaims and remakes space for the public against the interests of those who seek to exclude and delimit the use of space supposedly once of the public. 1 Central to this assertion is the mobilization of the idea of the 'commons' to historically and conceptually underpin its actions. Indeed, central to Occupy's declared intent is the belief in the importance of, and a desire to return to, the 'commons', to throw off private property in land and, simply put, return the land to the people. In this oft-repeated narrative, before the demonic act of enclosureon which more belowthe land was of the people, unrestricted and unregulated for all to use. Enclosure closed the commons down, the hedges and fences erected forcing the poor from their land and gifting it to the wealthy ruler...

show abstract

Section: Occupying One's Commonmentioning

confidence: 99%

Occupy! Historical geographies of property, protest and the commons, 1500–1850

McDonagh

Griffin

2016

Journal of Historical Geography

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Coriolanus opens with such a riot – but far from an irrational mob, these citizens pause to debate strategy, hear out Menenius’ embassy, and avoid violence by successfully negotiating for corn gratis and political enfranchisement. Shakespeare drew on recent food riots in the Midlands that won from the crown directives that grain be distributed, food prices lowered, and specific enclosures destroyed (though at the sacrifice of life from the revolt’s leaders) (Hindle 30–2). By integrating these weapons of the weak into his plays, Shakespeare shows his knowledge of – and I would argue sympathy with – popular political culture.…”

Section: What Are Popular Politics?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Shakespeare and Popular Politics

Doty

2013

Literature Compass

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article defines popular politics as the tactics -ranging from grumbling to rioting -used by common people to articulate and redress economic and social injustice. Early modern popular politics were not, however, exclusively radical and were rarely antimonarchical. A study of popular politics thus pressures the conservative versus progressive binary through which most critics discuss Shakespeare's politics. Furthermore, this article contests the widely held assumption that Shakespeare was hostile in his representations of 'the people' and toward his audience. An understanding of popular politics equips one to read Shakespeare's crowds not as irrational lovers of violence but rather as stewards of the commonwealth or conscious agents of their own material interests. This article poses the theater itself as a space of popular politics, insofar as it was a space where popular politics were depicted onstage and where common people were invited to think through political issues.

show abstract

“…28 According to the 1607 Inquisitions of Depopulation, more than 27,000 acres in the county had been enclosed and almost 1,500 people evicted between 1578 and 1607. 29 Much land in the western and central parts of the county was enclosed for sheep grazing and families like the Spencers, Ishams and Treshams kept huge numbers of sheep on the sites of former hamlets and villages. 30 Elsewhere 'field closes' -enclosures managed outside the communal arable system but still seasonally thrown open to common grazing -prefigured more formal enclosure arrangements, as they also did in other parts of England.…”

Section: Enclosure Landscapesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Enclosure stories: narratives from Northamptonshire

McDonagh

Daniels

2012

cultural geographies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper rethinks and revises enclosure narratives, thickening the concept of enclosure by researching a particular place and period: the English Midland county of Northamptonshire in the period between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries. It argues that while many elements of the landscape were dramatically reshaped by enclosure, the parliamentary enclosures of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were nevertheless part of a much longer process of landscape change. The paper points to the complexities within enclosure thought and experience, drawing particular attention to individuals and groups -including female landowners, ordinary villagers and animals -too often entirely written out of the 'enclosure story'.

show abstract

Imagining Insurrection in Seventeenth-Century England: Representations of the Midland Rising of 1607

Cited by 28 publications

References 68 publications

Occupy! Historical geographies of property, protest and the commons, 1500–1850

Occupy! Historical geographies of property, protest and the commons, 1500–1850

Shakespeare and Popular Politics

Enclosure stories: narratives from Northamptonshire

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About