The Crowd In History, 1730-1848
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
At the crossroads of history and sociology stands a radical question: who were the men and women who filled the streets, stormed the bastilles, and shook the foundations of the old order? George Rudé's landmark work, The Crowd in History, 1730-1848, answers that question with forensic precision, chronicling the role of popular protest and mass action across England and France during one of the most turbulent centuries in Western civilization. Drawing on criminal records, parish registers, and court documents, Rudé reconstructs the faces behind the mob — artisans, labourers, and the urban poor — dismantling the elite-driven narrative that dismissed collective action as mere riot and chaos, and instead presenting it as a rational, politically conscious force for change. A foundational text of social history, this work sits alongside the scholarship of E.P. Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm in redefining how historians understand class, power, and resistance from below. Rudé's methodology is meticulous yet his prose remains accessible, grounding grand historical movements — the Gordon Riots, the French Revolution, the Swing Riots — in the lived realities of ordinary people. For anyone seeking to understand how history is not merely made by kings and parliaments but by the surging, purposeful energy of the crowd, this essential volume will permanently alter the way you read the past.
Author: George Rudé
Format: Paperback
Genre: History
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
At the crossroads of history and sociology stands a radical question: who were the men and women who filled the streets, stormed the bastilles, and shook the foundations of the old order? George Rudé's landmark work, The Crowd in History, 1730-1848, answers that question with forensic precision, chronicling the role of popular protest and mass action across England and France during one of the most turbulent centuries in Western civilization. Drawing on criminal records, parish registers, and court documents, Rudé reconstructs the faces behind the mob — artisans, labourers, and the urban poor — dismantling the elite-driven narrative that dismissed collective action as mere riot and chaos, and instead presenting it as a rational, politically conscious force for change. A foundational text of social history, this work sits alongside the scholarship of E.P. Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm in redefining how historians understand class, power, and resistance from below. Rudé's methodology is meticulous yet his prose remains accessible, grounding grand historical movements — the Gordon Riots, the French Revolution, the Swing Riots — in the lived realities of ordinary people. For anyone seeking to understand how history is not merely made by kings and parliaments but by the surging, purposeful energy of the crowd, this essential volume will permanently alter the way you read the past.