LAND, LEADERSHIP, CULTURE, AND EMIGRATION: SOME PROBLEMS IN CHARTIST HISTORIOGRAPHY
In I996 Miles Taylor published an historiographical review of Chartism in which he argued that our understanding of the movement has stagnated since the publication of important research by Gareth Stedman Jones and Dorothy Thompson in I983-4. Taylor suggests that the new cultural history of politics (or the 'linguistic turn') is to blame for this 'impasse', and argues that scholars should consolidate the work of Stedman Jones and Thompson. I argue that Chartist historians should continue to engage with contemporary approaches. The new political history sheds light on some persistent problems of interpretation which Taylor passes over. It also raises the possibility of extending the study of Chartism into the colonial realm, an area historians have notyet seriously broached. In conclusion, a sketch is given of the significance of Chartist political culture in one episode of protest in the Australian colony of Victoria in I853. Recently in these pages Miles Taylor published a detailed overview of Chartist historiography.1 Whilst he gives a rather pessimistic account of the field over the past decade or so, Taylor also makes a number of constructive suggestions regarding themes that warrant future research. Our understanding of Chartism has not really progressed, he suggests, since the publication of well-known work by Gareth Stedman Jones and Dorothy Thompson in the early-to-mid 198os.2 Stedman Jones's reinterpretation of Chartism is now widely credited as the progenitor of the much discussed 'linguistic turn' in social history.3 Dorothy 1 Miles Taylor, 'Rethinking the Chartists: searching for synthesis in the historiography of Chartism', Historical journal, 39 (I996), pp. 479-95. 2 Gareth Stedman Jones, Languages of class: studies in English working class history, i832-1982 (Cambridge, I983); Dorothy Thompson, The Chartists: popular politics in the industrial revolution (Aldershot, I986). 3 David Mayfield and Susan Thorne, 'Social history and its discontents: Gareth StedmanJones and the politics of language', Social History, I7 (I992), pp. i65-88; Jon Lawrence and Miles Taylor, 'The poverty of protest: Gareth Stedman Jones and the politics of language a reply', Social History, i8 (I993), pp. I-I5; James Vernon, 'Who's afraid of the "linguistic turn"? The politics of social history and its discontents', Social History, I9 (I994), pp. 8I-97; Neville Kirk, 'History, language, ideas and post-modernism: a materialist view', Social History, I9 (I994), pp. 22I-40; PatrickJoyce, 'The end of social history?', Social History, 20 (I995), pp. 73-9I; Marc W. Steinberg, 'Culturally speaking: finding a commons between post-structuralism and the Thompsonian perspective', Social History, 2 I (i 996), pp. I 93-2 I 4; Gareth Stedman Jones, 'The determinist fix: some obstacles to the further development of the linguistic approach to history in the I 990s', History Workshop journal, 42 (1 996), pp. I 9-35.