Download or read book The Political Thought of Thomas Spence written by Matilde Cazzola and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-18 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book is an intellectual analysis of the political ideas of English radical thinker Thomas Spence (1750–1814), who was renowned for his "Plan", a proposal for the abolition of private landownership and the replacement of state institutions with a decentralized parochial organization. This system would be realized by means of the revolution of the "swinish multitude", the poor labouring class despised by Edmund Burke and adopted by Spence as his privileged political interlocutor. While he has long been considered an eccentric and anachronistic figure, the book sets out to demonstrate that Spence was a deeply original, thoroughly modern thinker, who translated his themes into a popular language addressing the multitude and publicized his Plan through chapbooks, tokens, and songs. The book is therefore a history of Spence's political thought "from below", designed to decode the subtle complexity of his Plan. It also shows that the Plan featured an excoriating critique of colonialism and slavery as well as a project of global emancipation. By virtue of its transnational scope, the Plan made landfall in the British West Indies a few years after Spence's death. Indeed, Spencean ideas were intellectually implicated in the largest slave revolt in the history of Barbados.
Download or read book Thomas Spence written by Alastair Bonnett and published by . This book was released on 2014-09 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2014 marks the 200th anniversary of the death of an important and original voice in the history of radicalism: Thomas Spence. Spence described himself as 'the poor man's advocate' but he may equally be described as 'the poor man's revolutionary', for what he advocated was a dramatic over-turning of the existing social order. Spence wasn't interested in compromise, with reforms and half-freedoms. Spence's story is a rags to rags tale of defiance and ingenuity. Today Spence's name is little known but this in no way reflects his significance. In the first two decades of the nineteenth century it was synonymous with ultra-radical opinion. Thomas Spence was the subject of four contemporary biographical memoirs. Moreover, three years after his death an Act of Parliament was passed prohibiting 'All societies or clubs calling themselves Spencean or Spencean Philanthropists'. Spenceanism appears to be unique: it has a good claim to be the only political ideology to have ever been outlawed by the British Parliament. Spence's scheme for local and democratic ownership of the land found a receptive audience within sections of the labouring poor. In 1817 Thomas Malthus observed that, 'an idea has lately prevailed among the lower classes of society that the land is the people's farm, the rent of which ought to be divided equally among them'. This, in a nutshell, is 'Spence's Plan'. It sounds simple but it carried profound economic claims. It was a message spread more by way of tavern meetings, chalked graffiti and ballads than by published treatise. In 1787 Spence moved to London, setting up a bookshop on Chancery Lane. He plunged himself into the capital's turbulent radical sub-culture. He sold Thomas Paine's The Rights of Man and went to prison for doing so. But he disagreed with Paine on a number of fundamental issues. Paine had no qualms about private property in land. Spence began issuing a penny weekly, Pigs' Meat or, Lessons for the Swinish Multitude, which could hardly have been more inflammatory. Spence was taking considerable risks in a dangerous city: spies, threats and conspiracy swirled around him. Spence's wish for 'perfect freedom' often took him one step further than his peers. He accorded women equal democratic rights. For the time it was a daring idea but Spence went even further. For what about the rights of children? Spence's The Rights of Infants no doubt provoked more than a few incredulous smiles when it was published in 1796. Yet cruelty towards children was a topic Spence returned to time and again and it is fitting that today he is cited as one of the world's first champions of children's rights. He was an angry man, a revolutionary and an insurrectionist but he was anchored by humanitarian concerns and a wide-ranging, omnivorous, interest in the betterment of his fellows. In this book we hope to go some way in retrieving Spence, of bringing him before a new generation. This book contains works by Spence, including Property in Land Every One's Right, which has not been in print since it first appeared over 230 years ago, and contributions from Alastair Bonnett, Malcolm Chase, Gregory Claeys, Rachel Hammersley, Jon Mee, John Marangos, Robert W. Rix, Joan C. Beal, Michael T. Davis, and Keith Armstrong.
Download or read book The Important Trial of Thomas Spence for a Political Pamphlet Intitled The Restorer of Society to Its Natural State on May 27th 1801 at Westminster Hall Before Lord Kenyon and a Special Jury written by and published by . This book was released on 1801 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A False Tree of Liberty written by Susan Marks and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019-11-21 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is concerned with the history of the idea of human rights. It offers a fresh approach that puts aside familiar questions such as 'Where do human rights come from?' and 'When did human rights begin?' for the sake of looking into connections between debates about the rights of man and developments within the history of capitalism. The focus is on England, where, at the end of the eighteenth century, a heated controversy over the rights of man coincided with the final enclosure of common lands and the momentous changes associated with early industrialisation. Tracking back still further to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writing about dispossession, resistance and rights, the book reveals a forgotten tradition of thought about central issues in human rights, with profound implications for their prospects in the world today.
Download or read book The Political Works of Thomas Spence written by Thomas Spence and published by Newcastle Upon Tyne : Avero (Eighteenth-Century) Publications. This book was released on 1982 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Thomas Spence and His Connections written by Olive Durant Rudkin and published by . This book was released on 1927 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Cato Street Conspiracy written by Jason McElligott and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2019-12-17 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If the Cato Street Conspiracy had been successful, Britain would have been proclaimed a republic by tradesmen of English, Scots, Irish and black Jamaican backgrounds. This book explains the conspiracy, and why you have never heard of it.
Download or read book English Pronunciation in the Eighteenth Century written by Joan C. Beal and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2002 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thomas Spence (1750-1814) was a native of Newcastle upon Tyne who is best known for his political writings, and more particularly for his radical 'Plan' for social reform involving common ownership of the land. One hitherto neglected aspect of Spence's Plan was his proposal to extend thebenefits of reading and of 'correct' pronunciation to the lower classes by means of a phonetic script of his own devising, first set out and used in Spence's Grand Repository of the English Language (1775).The Grand Repository was one of many English pronouncing dictionaries produced in the late eighteenth-century to satisfy the growing demands for a clear guide to 'correct' pronunciation. It differs from its contemporaries firstly in that it was intended primarily for the lower classes, and secondlyin that it is the only eighteenth-century pronouncing dictionary of English to use a truly 'phonetic' script in the sense of one sound being represented by one symbol.In this fascinating and unique account, Beal pays particular attention to the actual pronunciations advocated by Spence and his contemporaries with a view to reconstructing what was felt to be 'correct' pronunciation in eighteenth-century Britain. With broad appeal to linguists and historians alike,this study highlights the importance of pronouncing dictionaries as a resource for the historical phonologist, and provides a valuable addition to the limited body of knowledge on eighteenth-century pronunciation.
Download or read book Western Political Thought written by Robert Eccleshall and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a guide to the vast amount of literature on the history of political thought which has appeared in English since 1945. The editors provide an annotation of the content of many entries and, where appropriate, indicate their significance, controversial nature and readability.
Download or read book The Utopia Reader Second Edition written by Gregory Claeys and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2017-02-14 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Utopia Reader compiles primary texts from a variety of authors and movements in the history of theorizing utopias. Utopianism is defined as the various ways of imagining, creating, or analyzing the ways and means of creating an ideal or alternative society. Prominent writers and scholars across history have long explored how or why to envision different ways of life. The volume includes texts from classical Greek literature, the Old Testament, and Plato’s Republic, to Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and beyond. By balancing well-known and obscure examples, the text provides a comprehensive and definitive collection of the various ways Utopias have been conceived throughout history and how Utopian ideals have served as criticisms of existing sociocultural conditions. This new edition includes many historically well-known works, little known but influential texts, and contemporary writings, providing an even more expansive coverage of the varieties of approaches and responses to the concept of utopia in the past, present, and even the future. In particular, the volume now includes feminist writings and work by authors of color, and contends with current concerns, such as the exploration of the ecological ideals of Utopia. Furthermore, Claeys and Sargent highlight twenty-first century trends and popular narrative explorations of Utopias through the genres of young adult dystopias, survivalist dystopias, and non-print utopias. Covering a range of original theories of utopianism and revealing the nuances and concerns of writers across history as they attempt to envision different, ideal societies, The Utopia Reader is an essential resource for anyone who envisions a better future.
Download or read book The Political Philosophy of Thomas Paine written by Jack Fruchtman Jr. and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2009-07-30 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This concise, insightful study explores the sources and impact of one of the early republic's most influential minds. An Englishman by birth, an American by choice and necessity, Thomas Paine advocated ideas about rights, equality, democracy, and liberty that were far advanced beyond those of his American compatriots. His seminal works, Common Sense and the Rights of Man, were rallying cries for the American and French Revolutions. More than any other eighteenth-century political writer and activist, Paine defies easy categorization. A man of contrasts and contradictions, Paine was as much a believer in the power of reason as he was in a benevolent deity. He was at once liberal and conservative, a Quaker who was not a pacifist, and an inherently gifted writer who was convinced he was always right. Jack Fruchtman Jr. analyzes Paine's radical thought both in the context of his time and as a blueprint for the future development of republican government. His systematic approach identifies the themes of signal importance to Paine's political thought, demonstrating especially how crucial religion and God were to the development and expression of his political ideals.
Download or read book Left in the Past written by Alastair Bonnett and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2010-05-06 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book looks at the role nostalgia plays in the radical imagination to offer a new guide to the history and politics of the left. In "Left in the Past", Bonnett re-assesses the place of nostalgia within radical politics and, in doing so, provides a new introduction to the history and politics of the left. Bonnett argues that nostalgia has been a chronic, but repressed, aspect of the socialist imagination. "Left in the Past" is premised on the idea that, in our 'post-socialist era', the relationship between radicalism and a sense of loss, and the ambivalent position of socialism in and against modernity, can be viewed with greater clarity. In Section One of the book, Bonnett shows the centrality and repression of nostalgia in both 19th-century radicalism and anti-colonial radicalism. In Section Two, he explores the consequences of this inheritance by way of 20th century and contemporary studies of revolutionary intellectuals and intellectual culture. Bonnett's unique approach in how to understand the left in an age of post-socialism will make book a needed resource for anyone interested in the history and politics of the left and radicalism.
Download or read book Debating England s Aristocracy in the 1790s written by Amanda Goodrich and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd. This book was released on 2005 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 1790s saw a lively `French Revolution Debate' in England, with much space and intellectual energy, in classic texts by men such as Burke and Paine, and ensuing pamphlet literature, devoted characterisations and representations of the aristocracy; yet this is the first full-scale survey of the subject. Dr Goodrich takes a fresh approach to the topic, illustrating the complexities of the bitter battle fought out in such texts between radicals and loyalists, and highlighting the persistent viciousness and vitriol of a radical anti-aristocratic rhetoric. However, she demonstrates that the loyalist response contained the more innovative campaign, bringing out in particular the development of a commercial loyalism which promoted a new model of society with a modern aristocracy and an open elite; what emerges are English defences of aristocracy which are not simply reducible to ideas of an ancien régime or a Gothic institution.
Download or read book Liberty Property and Popular Politics written by Pentland Gordon Pentland and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2015-12-11 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few scholars can claim to have shaped the historical study of the long eighteenth century more profoundly than Professor H. T. Dickinson, who, until his retirement in 2006, held the Sir Richard Lodge Chair of British History at the University of Edinburgh. This volume, based on contributions from Professor Dickinson's students, friends and colleagues from around the world, offers a range of perspectives on eighteenth-century Britain and provides a tribute to a remarkable scholarly career.Professor Dickinson's work and career provides the ideal lens through which to take a detailed snapshot of current research in a number of areas. The volume includes contributions from scholars working in intellectual history, political and parliamentary history, ecclesiastical and naval history; discussions of major themes such as Jacobitism, the French Revolution, popular radicalism and conservatism; and essays on prominent individuals in English and Scottish history, including Edmund Burke, Thomas Muir, Thomas Paine and Thomas Spence. The result is a uniquely rich and detailed collection with an impressive breadth of coverage.
Download or read book How to Argue Win Every Time written by Gerry Spence and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 1996-04-15 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A noted attorney gives detailed instructions on winning arguments, emphasizing such points as learning to speak with the body, avoiding being blinding by brilliance, and recognizing the power of words as a weapon.
Download or read book Politics in Commercial Society written by Istvan Hont and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2015-06-09 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars normally emphasize the contrast between the two great eighteenth-century thinkers Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith. Rousseau is seen as a critic of modernity; Smith as an apologist. However, Istvan Hont finds significant commonalities in their work, arguing that both were theorists of commercial society but from different perspectives.
Download or read book Pigs Meat written by Thomas Spence and published by Spokesman Press. This book was released on 1982-12-01 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the emergence of British radicalism and socialism in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the works of Spence are an indispensable element. He produced a comprehensive argument for political and social revolution based on what he liked to call the 'real' rights of man. Decentralization, common ownership, participation, and mutuality were central features of his ideas. He is referred to as Britain's 'first modern socialist'.
