Term Paper on "Skimmington Riots"

Term Paper 25 pages (8558 words) Sources: 1+ Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Music & Skimmington Riots

An Analysis of the Skimmington and Rough Music Riots in England and Colonial North America

The winds of revolution were already in the air and there was still clear evidence in the late 18th and early 19th century that when enough people believe they are being treated unfairly, they will react with a vengeance to set things right. Indeed, this is just what happened during the Skimmington Riots and the so-called rough music accompaniments that took place in England and Colonial North America, which events were largely crowd phenomena that were highly influenced by the tradition of charivaris in France in the late Middle Ages (Mccullagh 1998:194). To determine precisely what happened during these social conflict events and why, this study provides a critical analysis of recent historic writings on concerning the history of crowd violence, the effect of colonial laws, or the lack of laws on such incidents, the role of women and society and culture's effect in the colonies. A summary of the research will be provided in the conclusion.

Review and Discussion

Crowd Violence in the Late 18th and Early 19th Centuries. According to Kouzmin and Rosenthal (1997), there are distinct similarities between various categories of exceptional circumstances that can be used to consider disasters, riots, and terrorist actions, for example, as social crises. "If it is accepted also that crises may be viewed usefully as 'occasions for decision,'" they suggest, "then an approach especially designed to deal with the decision-making and management aspects of crisis situations would seem to be quite appropriate" (277). The classic definition for crises appears to be particularly appropriate in this regard: "A crisis is a situation that, threatens high-priority goals of the decision-making unit, restricts the amount of time available for response before the decision is transformed and surprises the members of the decision-making unit by its occurrence" (Kouzim and Rosenthal 277). Indeed, the relationship between a crisis and the events that took place during the Skimmington and Rough Music Riots certainly satisfied this definition, as discussed further below.

The desire to protect the community, ritual misrule, and antiauthoritarianism modified notions of popular resistance during the late 17th century (Gilje 15). Opposition to intrusions upon a community, whether in the form of enclosures, market conditions, or whatever, helped to bind the village together and could thus reinforce the bonds of hierarchy within the community. Ritual misrule on festive holidays often served a cathartic function, channeling disruptive urges into socially accepted paths; however, some elements of antiauthoritarianism persisted even in the most benign of customary riots and the most innocuous of popular festivities (Gilje 15). For example, during the dynamic and turbulent social conditions of the 16th and 17th centuries, these same elements emerged time and again and served to intensify any existing levels of social animosity (Gilje 15). According to this author:

The domination of those elements was always short lived. During the 1640s and 1650s, rioting and misrule helped to topple the Stuart dynasty and contributed to the call for a new order. The confused world that emerged so disrupted the older notions of hierarchy and community that almost all England welcomed the restoration of the Stuarts. Despite the joy of a return to a "merry England," the tradition of resistance did not lie far under the surface as the popular support for Monmouth's Rebellion in 1685 and the success of the Glorious Revolution attest. (Gilje 15)

According to Tiederman (1997), "Unlike British politicians of the previous generation, the men who had come to power in the 1760s were legalistic in outlook and dedicated to 'the consistent enforcement of law as an end in itself.' In 1766, for example, when high prices caused food riots in England, the government suppressed them harshly with military force" (99). Despite these harsh measures, rioting continued its importance in England during the 18th century, even if these social upheavals were no longer regarded as a serious threat to the established order (Gilje 15). Nevertheless, in London especially, riotous crowds remains politically relevant from the early to the closing decades of the 18th century; therefore, the Sacheverell riots, which targeted dissenter churches and whig institutions, were manifestations of popular support for tory policies in 1710 (Gilje 15). Likewise, protests against an excise bill in 1730 caused Sir Robert Walpole to cancel the initiative, and in 1733, anti-Gin Act riots resulted in an initiative designed to limit alcoholic consumption becoming untenable (Gilje 15). According to this author, "In 1753 riots convinced officials not to pass a law designed to make naturalization easier for Jews. Most significant, starting in the 1760s there was a series of disturbances, first celebrating John Wilkes and then turning to general issues of reform, that signaled an awakening of greater political consciousness among Londoners" (Gilje 15).

The types of rioting that took place throughout the rest of Britain, though, were characterized as being much more traditional in its purposes and context; for example, numerous riots took place in opposition to the transport of grain and bread outside of a region simply because it might find a higher price somewhere else (Gilje 15). Nevertheless, such rituals of communal regulation, however, served a wide range of social purposes: "For instance, the charivari or rough music -- ranging from banging on pots and pans to rail riding, effigy burning, and mock murder -- practiced against newlyweds when there were great discrepancies of age, might also be utilized against sexual deviants, wife beaters, or someone who violated an agreement with fellow laborers" (Gilje 15). Likewise, riots took place in rural parts of England concerning labor issues: "Collective bargaining by riot" first emerged early in English history and continued throughout the 18th century (Thompson 50).

While the sorts of English rioting that took place in the 18th century were an extension of the same forms as in the past, the intensity of overt challenge to political authority, and even the level of violence, diminished; this was attributed in part to the emergence of the so-called "political stability of Georgian England" as well as being a function of the acceptance of social hierarchy and a deferential world view (Plumb 67). Nevertheless, Gilje emphasizes that, "Repeated cases of rioting, however, indicated that conflicts recurred. Within the villages and across the countryside some men pursued new notions of market economics and others, often resorting to popular disorder, reasserted older values" (15). According to Gilje, the process of crowd action intended to defend traditional rights and practices provided these social conflicts with a more robust form and attributed more clearly defined values than had existed in the tumultuous world of the past; furthermore, the more recent rioting confirmed the legacy of rebellion and social disorder as a legitimate means to a worthwhile end. In this regard, Gilje suggests that, "Modified in the eighteenth century as it may have been, that tradition was evident in the contrasts between plebeian and patrician culture, especially in the counter-theater of the plebs" (Gilje 16).

The traditions of using a collective social action to thwart the status quo was not uniquely "American," per se, but was rather the inherited tradition of the Old World; for instance, Gilje cites Thompson's findings that during this period in history, whenever a group of people "parodied the gentry, celebrated a mock election, or riotously assumed the power of the courts and humiliated an offender of local custom, it asserted an antiauthoritarianism that had deep roots in the social soil of England. In some areas antiauthoritarianism was pervasive. The Kingswood colliers near Bristol sustained a reputation for lawlessness throughout the eighteenth century, and certain areas of the coastline were infamous for the aplomb with which the locals, in defiance of authority, pursued the plundering of wrecked ships" (Thompson 382 cited in Gilje at 16).

English rioting combined nonviolent and violent traditions. There was, however, a shift from seventeenth-century tumult, which included many examples of both types, to the eighteenth century when more limited activity was likely. In both centuries there remained a strain of antiauthoritarianism in rioting (Gilje 16). There was much going on during this period in history, though, and many poor people apparently believed that some type of violent action was called for given the dire circumstances of their plight. According to Daunton (1995), "Food riots have been interpreted as an outbreak of popular frustration when high food prices coincided with high unemployment. The actions of the crowd must be understood in terms of the beliefs which provided legitimization. The 'moral economy' of the poor was based upon 'a consistent traditional view of social norms and obligations, of the proper economic functions of several parties within the community'" (Thompson 79 cited in Daunton at 327).

During the 19th century, for example, social conflict typically emerged over issues such as wages through the action of striking; by contrast, in the 18th century, such social conflict generally assumed these forms over issues such as the increasing prices food through the medium of the food 'riot',… READ MORE

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