Journal Article

‘We care not a fig, who is Lord Mayor of London, or Tory or Whig’: Popular political culture in the City of London, c.1725–1746

Abstract

This article provides a fresh perspective on the popular political culture of the City of London between approximately 1725 and 1746. While many scholars have recognized that the City was a vital and vibrant arena for popular political engagement throughout the long eighteenth century, they have mostly chosen to emphasize the role that London citizens played in national political narratives. Instead, this article takes as its starting point elections to the Common Council of the City Corporation. These reveal powerful internal dialogues, which emerged from the lowest levels of City government in the 1720s and 30s. Householders raised concerns about corruption in government, and about the accountability of elected representatives; these ideas were forged and sharpened in the neighbourhoods of the City. This article reveals the vitality of popular political activism in the streets and alleys of the City of London.

Attached files

Authors

Bland, Eleanor

Oxford Brookes departments

Department of History, Philosophy and Culture

Dates

Year of publication: 2016
Date of RADAR deposit: 2021-05-14

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

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Related resources

This RADAR resource is the Accepted Manuscript of ‘We care not a fig, who is Lord Mayor of London, or Tory or Whig’: Popular political culture in the City of London, c.1725–1746