Political Trials in an Age of Revolutions: Britain and the North Atlantic, 1793—1848

Description

This collection provides new insights into the ’Age of Revolutions’, focussing on state trials for treason and sedition, and expands the sophisticated discussion that has marked the historiography of that period by examining political trials in Britain and the north Atlantic world from the 1790s and into the nineteenth century. In the current turbulent period, when Western governments are once again grappling with how to balance security and civil liberty against the threat of inflammatory ideas and actions during a period of international political and religious tension, it is timely to re-examine the motives, dilemmas, thinking and actions of governments facing similar problems during the ‘Age of Revolutions’. The volume begins with a number of essays exploring the cases tried in England and Scotland in 1793-94 and examining those political trials from fresh angles (including their implications for legal developments, their representation in the press, and the emotion and the performances they generated in court). Subsequent sections widen the scope of the collection both chronologically (through the period up to the Reform Act of 1832 and extending as far as the end of the nineteenth century) and geographically (to Revolutionary France, republican Ireland, the United States and Canada). These comparative and longue durée approaches will stimulate new debate on the political trials of Georgian Britain and of the north Atlantic world more generally as well as a reassessment of their significance. This book deliberately incorporates essays by scholars working within and across a number of different disciplines including Law, Literary Studies and Political Science. Front Matter ....Pages i-xix Introduction: Political Trials in an Age of Revolutions: Britain and the North Atlantic, 1793–1848 (Michael T. Davis, Emma Macleod, Gordon Pentland)....Pages 1-15 Front Matter ....Pages 17-17 “Subverting the Settled Order of Things”: The Crime of Sedition in Scotland, 1793–1849 (Lindsay Farmer)....Pages 19-46 The Newspaper Press, Sedition and the High Court of Justiciary in Late Eighteenth-Century Edinburgh (David G. Barrie, Joanne McEwan)....Pages 47-77 The English and Scottish State Trials of the 1790s Compared (Emma Macleod)....Pages 79-107 Sermons of Sedition: The Trials of William Winterbotham (James Epstein)....Pages 109-135 The Noise and Emotions of Political Trials in Britain During the 1790s (Michael T. Davis)....Pages 137-162 Literary Justice: Representing the London Treason Trials of 1794 (Nancy E. Johnson)....Pages 163-184 Political Trials and the Suppression of Popular Radicalism in England, 1799–1820 (Katrina Navickas)....Pages 185-212 State Trials, Whig Lawyers and the Press in Early Nineteenth-Century Scotland (Gordon Pentland)....Pages 213-236 “Some Examples Should Be Made”: Prosecuting Reform Bill Rioters in 1831–32 (Steve Poole)....Pages 237-263 Front Matter ....Pages 265-265 Political Trials, Terror and Civil Society: The Case of the Revolutionary Tribunal in Paris, 1793–94 (Mike Rapport)....Pages 267-295 Hero or Villain? The Treason Trial of Aaron Burr (1807) (Jack Fruchtman)....Pages 297-319 Irish Political Trials, 1793–1848: Associationalism, Emotion and Memory (Martyn Powell)....Pages 321-355 State Trials in Post-revolution British North America (Barry Wright)....Pages 357-383 Back Matter ....Pages 385-398