This book offers insights into the complicated dynamics between radicalism, loyalism, and patriotism during the later part of the French Revolution and during the Napoleonic wars. It provides an account of popular politics in Lancashire from 1798 to 1815. Using a variety of sources from letters and diaries to broadside ballads, this book emphasizes Lancashire's distinctive political culture and its status at the heart of the industrial revolution. This region witnessed some of the most intense, disruptive, and violent popular politics in this period and beyond. Particularly active groups emerg ... More

This book offers insights into the complicated dynamics between radicalism, loyalism, and patriotism during the later part of the French Revolution and during the Napoleonic wars. It provides an account of popular politics in Lancashire from 1798 to 1815. Using a variety of sources from letters and diaries to broadside ballads, this book emphasizes Lancashire's distinctive political culture and its status at the heart of the industrial revolution. This region witnessed some of the most intense, disruptive, and violent popular politics in this period and beyond. Particularly active groups emerged, from extreme republicans, more moderate radicals, Luddites, and early trade unions, to strong networks of ‘Church-and-King’ loyalists and Orange lodges. This book explains how this heady mix combined to produce such a politically charged region during the French and Napoleonic wars. It argues for a distinct sense of regional identity that shaped not only local politics but also patriotism. Lancastrians felt British in the face of the French, but it was a particularly Lancastrian type of Britishness.