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Patterns of popular protest
Journal of Historical Geography, 1,4 (1975) 383-387
Review article Patterns of popular protest Alan R. H. Baker J. P. D. DUNBABIN, Rural Discontent in Nineteenth-Century Britain (London: Faber and Faber, 1974. Pp. 320. E6.50) LEO A. LOUBBRE, Radicalism in Mediterranean France: Its Rise and Decline, 1848-1914 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1974. Pp. xvii+258; $20.00) EDWARD SHORTER and CHARLES TILLY, Strikes in France 1830-1968 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974. Pp. xxiv+428. E9.50) Steam engines, schools, shops and strikes encapsulate much of the historical geography of nineteenth-century Western Europe. Why they have not equally received the attention of British historical geographers is not entirely clear. The answer must lie in part both in the traditionally close linkage established between historical geography and economic history, with the latter’s paramount concern with the more obviously economic characteristics of the first industrial nation, and in the development of historical geography itself predominantly within the landscape school of geography. Studies of the impact of technological innovations upon landscapes have been more prominent than have studies of the influence of changing forms of social control upon the spatial structure of economies and societies. While there has been general acceptance by historical geographers of the aphorism of Clifford Darby-that all geography is historical geography, either actual or potential-there has been scant recognition of the adage of Karl Marx-that all history is the history of class struggle. Even though Marx’s doctrine may be partial, ignoring as it does external struggles with “nature” and internal struggles with “conscience”, it contains sufficient truth to establish the logical necessity of relating Darby’s view to it. It is refreshing, therefore, now to detect coming to the fore within the work of both geographers and historians the elements of an historical geography of the class struggle.rrl Tension and violence were both likely to increase as Western societies modernised and industrialised during the nineteenth century, and an examination of protest has come to be seen as the most obvious means of evaluating the key issue of adaptation or resistance to industrial change.Ql Furthermore, social protest itself underwent a process of modernisation during the nineteenth century and many historians now find it useful to distinguish between pre-industrial (or early industrial) and industrial forms of protest. The former were characteristically localised, ill-organised and small-scale riots, often triggered off by immediate economic crises, such as food shortages and unemployment, but whose long-term aim was essentially to prevent change. By contrast, the strikes which came to replace the riots were increasingly highly organised, large-scale and [l] See,
for examples: K. Cox and G. Demko, Agrarian structure and peasant discontent in the Russian revolution of 1905 The East Lakes Geographer 3 (1967) 3-20; D. Harvey, Social justice and the city (London 1973) 195-284; P. Ban-al, Aspects regionaux de l’agrarisme francais avant 1930 Le Mouvement Social 67 (1969) 3-16; E. J. Hobsbawm and G. Rude Captain Swing (Harmondsworth 1973) 140-87 [2] E. A. Wrigley, The process of modernisation and the industrial revolution in England Journal of Inter-disciplinary History3 (1972) 235-6; P. N. Stearns, The impact of the industrial revolution (Englewood Cliffs 1972) 6
384
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intended to promote change of a pohtical as well as of an economic kind.rrl In France by the end of the nineteenth century there had emerged a syndicalist movement which believed in direct action, especially strikes, as the only effective means of securing changes within existing society. Reflecting a developing solidarity and class-consciousness of the workers, strikes became powerful weapons in the class struggle. Over the years, an increasing proportion of strikes were not spontaneous reactions to economic pressures but politically calculated acts of collective violence.rzl By May 1968 in France, the historical lesson-that violent protest pays-had been well-learned and by many more than the militant theorists: nineteenth-century syndicalism had come alive, imagination had seized power.r31 The intoxication of hunger experienced by strikers in the coalfields of north-eastern France in the late 186Os-so vividly re-created in one of the masterpieces of French realist fiction of the nineteenth century, Emile Zola’s Germinal, published in 1885-had been replaced by the intoxication of power experienced by the workers and students in many parts of France in the late 1960s. While strikes would, therefore, have to take pride of place in any historical geography of the class struggle during the nineteenth century, the pattern of popular protest was richly complicated, offering a number of potentially fertile but relatively uncultivated fields for research. Apart from the more obvious forms of protest, like the development of the radical and left-wing vote and the rural exodus (which may be seen either as a section of the peasantry voting with its feet or as going on a permanent agricultural strike), there also extended a spectrum of popular protest which ranged from such explicitly violent activities as arson, machine-breaking and sit-ins to such less obviously aggressive activities as the organisation of political parties, trades unions and a variety of mutual aid societies and cooperatives. Some aspects of the changing patterns and processes involved in the modernisation of popular protest are clarified by a comparison of the three books under review, although the differences in approach adopted by the respective authors tend to obscure the underlying similarity of many of their findings. Mr Dunbabin offers a dozen essentially discrete essays on rural discontent in nineteenth-century Britain, covering such themes as agricultural trades unionism in England in general and in Oxfordshire in particular (this latter essay is by Dr P. R. L. Horn), village radicalism in East Anglia during the first half of the nineteenth century (this essay is by Mr A. J. Peacock), the crofters’ “Land War” and the Welsh farmers’ “Tithe War”. Common threads are pulled together in usefully comparative introductory and concluding chapters, which add considerably to the intrinsic interest of the individual essays sandwiched between them. Dunbabin’s basic thesis is that the early nineteenth-century protests-riots (such as those associated with Captain Swing in 1830), nocturnal raids (such as the Rebecca riots in south-west Wales in the 1830s) and the “deforcements” in Scotland (involving the mobbing of sheriffs’ officers to prevent their serving the formal legal writs of removal which underpinned the clearances)-were generally rear-guard actions, essentially conservative protests. Dunbabin outlines the maturation of rural unrest from local and spontaneous demonstrations to organised and articulated movements drawing on external assistance, deliberately appealing to public opinion at large, participating in national politics and agitating for State intervention. By the 1860s it is argued, the chief periods of protest among agricultural workers were years when work was plentiful and wages were rising, so that rural unrest had become a matter less of desperation than of aspiration. The picture remains no more than an outline, with only hesitantly drawn indications of the particular roles of the spread of the railways and of literacy, of the extension of the franchise and [l] Stearns, op. cit. 10-13 and 52-5 [21 D. Thompson, Democracy in France since 1870 (5th edn. London 1969) 173-9; F. F. Ridley, Revolutionary syndicalism in France: the direct action of its time (Cambridge 1970) 99-l 19 [3] Thompson, op. cit. 291-8; A. Quattrochi and T. Nairn, TClebeginning of the end: France, May 1968 (London 1968)
REVIEW
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385
of political activity in a national rather than a local context, in the general modernisation -even urbanisation-of rural discontent. Some of these themes are also pursued by Professor LouMre in his study of the weakening of conservative forces and the emergence of a distinct left-wing political movement in six dkpartements of Mediterranean France during the nineteenth century. Dominance passed from the legitimists and OrlCanists to the Radicals by mid-century and from them to socialists as the century ended. This political bouleversement is shown by Loutire to have taken place symbiotically with the fundamental changes experienced during the century by viticulture and by the wine trade in general, with each crisis in these spheres seeing a growth in the popularity of left-wing ideas. Important elements of his argument are that local rather than national issues were fundamental to this ideological transformation, that the left-wing movement derived most of its strength from small and medium-sized cities whence it spread into the countryside as a populist agrarian movement, and that as wine production became a political issue requiring State intervention so those forces advocating such action gained increasing popular support. Loubi?re’s approach is avowedly interdisciplinary, regional and behavioural : he draws upon work in history, geography, electoral sociology and on quantitative methods; he believes that the character and result of historical movements can best be examined and explained within the framework of the region; and, explicitly following recent advocacy of a behavioural approach to historical analysis,[ll he seeks to explain the rise and decline of the Radical movement by looking behind the external actions of Radicals and by expressing concern with both the commonly shared responses and the exceptional acts. The methodological underpinnings of Loubbre’s study thus make it of interest even to those who might choose to disregard its substantive findings. For different reasons, a similar comment could be applied to the work by Professors Edward Shorter and Charles Tilly on strikes in France between 1830 and 1968. With considerable help over a decade, they have compiled a record of the characteristics of the 110,000 separate strikes in France during this period. But the bulk of the book consists of an analysis of the detailed data culled from the annual statistique des gr2ves compiled by the Ministry of Labour for the 36,000 strikes between 1890 and 1935, providing information on the location of each strike, how long it lasted, the occupation and number of the strikers, the size of the plant in which they were employed and sometimes whether or not a union was involved. General notions about industrial conflict, politics and social change are then, in the authors’ words, “hurled against this giant rock of strike statistics”. Shorter and Tilly are not concerned with sensitive reconstructions of particular strikes but with statistical representations of broad patterns of strike activity through time, over space and by type of economic activity and degree of unionisation. The method is deductive, the analytical techniques predominantly statistical and the conclusions generalised into a significance which extends beyond France between 1830 and 1968. Strike activity is shown to have been most intense in the heavily industrialised areas, and in industries in which the work-force was essentially homogenous, concentrated into large plants and applied to semi-skilled tasks; strike waves are shown as spreading outwards from this nucleus, progressively involving firms, industries and regions which were not normally militant, and having most impact where there existed a nascent workers’ organisation able to sustain concerted action; and strike activity is observed to have reached peaks in periods of political rather than of economic crisis, strikes being seen as a politically organised weapon in the class war. If many of the conclusions which Shorter and Tilly reach are, on their own admission, little more than common-sense statements and often amount to no more than a rediscovery of some Marxist truths, then at least the empirical ore on which they are based has been subjected to a massive statistical re-working. Collectively, these three studies raise a number of issues worth further exploration by [I] R. F. Berkhofer, A behaviourul approach lo historical unnlysis (Toronto 1969)
386
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those contemplating the historical geography of class struggle. Firstly, strikes need to be seen as only one form of social protest, however important they came to be in the course of time. Strikes constitute the dramatic tip of a vast iceberg of protest. Peacock’s essay on village radicalism in early-nineteenth century East Anglia, for example, shows protest to have been a continuing and widespread phenomenon, embracing arson, sheep-stealing and cattle-maiming as forms of private and individual as well as public and collective protest. Shorter and Tilly exclude from their study forms of collective action other than strikes because they are much harder to pin down than are strikes, and are consequently not amenable to the type of systematic analysis which these authors espouse. Their study is focused on a wide problem but founded on a narrow (though very deep) source. Secondly, the limitations of both an unduly rigorous and an unduly casual approach to historical problems are clearly illustrated in these studies. Shorter and Tilly specifically eschew the anecdotal technique, arguing that while it might suffice to make a point about a commonplace state of mind, it is inadequate as a measure of change over time. They prefer instead to use time-series and cross-sectional multivariate analyses, which result in sanitised history and necessitate a heavy reliance on inference to interpret the spatial, temporal and other patterns detected in the data. On the other hand, Dunbabin and his two contributors rely predominantly on anecdotal evidence, with all of the inherent problems of the “instance/counter-instance” method of historical enquiry. While Shorter and Tilly offer their readers mainly bone and little flesh, Dunbabin’s book offers mainly flesh and little bone. It is instructive to realise that it is Loub6re’s historico-regional synthesis-with all that this implies in terms of a balanced approach to problems, sources and techniques-that makes the most convincing reading. Thirdly, these three studies indicate that, while some progress is being made in communicating to historians the merits of a geographical approach, there remains much to be done in order to modernise their perception of the benefits to be derived from a closer awareness of current work in the fields of historical geography. The tendency of many historians still to equate geography either with the physical background, the stage for the historical drama, or with simple description of the distribution of the phenomenon which interests them, is reflected in these three studies. The wider relevance of work in historical geography, as outlined in specifically historical journals by, inter alia, A. H. Clark and J. A. Jakle, has yet to permeate the sub-soil of the field of history.{11 Dunbabin comments briefly upon the “geographical incidence” of crime, yet fails to develop the spatial implications of the reference-which he quotes-made by the historian R. C. K. Ensor in 1936 to the “epidemic of strikes” in England in 1872. Loub&re considers at some length “the geography of radicalism” in Mediterranean France at different periods in the nineteenth century, employing informally and unwittingly notions of hierarchical and contagious spatial diffusion which might profitably have been employed more formally and consciously. Likewise, Shorter and Tilly “shower the reader with maps”, as part of an examination of “the geography of strikes” but again fail to incorporate any diffusionist or locational concepts into their analysis. Yet some aspects of popular protest seem to have been innovations which diffused spatially in ways not entirely dissimilar from those observedin relation to gas-works, building societies and telephoneexchanges in nineteenthcentury England and Wales.Ql While closer acquaintance on the part of some historians with the field of geographical research would clearly enhance their own work, it is clearly also the case that there is much to be learned by historical geographers from a reading of works such as those reviewed here. The historical development and geographical spread of left-wing ideas in general and of strikes in particular were clearly significant parts of the process of [l] A, H. Clark, Geographical change: a theme for economic history Journal of Economic History 20 (1960) 607-16; J. A. Jakle, Time, space and the geographic past: a prospectus for historical geography Amerlcun Historical Review 76 (1971) 1084-l 103 [2] B. T. Robson, Urban growth: un approach (London 1973) 131-85
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387
spatio-temporal transformation and integration during the nineteenth century. Perhaps both the reality and the concept of the pays were casualties of class conflict as much as invalids of industrialisation. University of Cambridge
Review article Patterns of popular protest Alan R. H. Baker J. P. D. DUNBABIN, Rural Discontent in Nineteenth-Century Britain (London: Faber and Faber, 1974. Pp. 320. E6.50) LEO A. LOUBBRE, Radicalism in Mediterranean France: Its Rise and Decline, 1848-1914 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1974. Pp. xvii+258; $20.00) EDWARD SHORTER and CHARLES TILLY, Strikes in France 1830-1968 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974. Pp. xxiv+428. E9.50) Steam engines, schools, shops and strikes encapsulate much of the historical geography of nineteenth-century Western Europe. Why they have not equally received the attention of British historical geographers is not entirely clear. The answer must lie in part both in the traditionally close linkage established between historical geography and economic history, with the latter’s paramount concern with the more obviously economic characteristics of the first industrial nation, and in the development of historical geography itself predominantly within the landscape school of geography. Studies of the impact of technological innovations upon landscapes have been more prominent than have studies of the influence of changing forms of social control upon the spatial structure of economies and societies. While there has been general acceptance by historical geographers of the aphorism of Clifford Darby-that all geography is historical geography, either actual or potential-there has been scant recognition of the adage of Karl Marx-that all history is the history of class struggle. Even though Marx’s doctrine may be partial, ignoring as it does external struggles with “nature” and internal struggles with “conscience”, it contains sufficient truth to establish the logical necessity of relating Darby’s view to it. It is refreshing, therefore, now to detect coming to the fore within the work of both geographers and historians the elements of an historical geography of the class struggle.rrl Tension and violence were both likely to increase as Western societies modernised and industrialised during the nineteenth century, and an examination of protest has come to be seen as the most obvious means of evaluating the key issue of adaptation or resistance to industrial change.Ql Furthermore, social protest itself underwent a process of modernisation during the nineteenth century and many historians now find it useful to distinguish between pre-industrial (or early industrial) and industrial forms of protest. The former were characteristically localised, ill-organised and small-scale riots, often triggered off by immediate economic crises, such as food shortages and unemployment, but whose long-term aim was essentially to prevent change. By contrast, the strikes which came to replace the riots were increasingly highly organised, large-scale and [l] See,
for examples: K. Cox and G. Demko, Agrarian structure and peasant discontent in the Russian revolution of 1905 The East Lakes Geographer 3 (1967) 3-20; D. Harvey, Social justice and the city (London 1973) 195-284; P. Ban-al, Aspects regionaux de l’agrarisme francais avant 1930 Le Mouvement Social 67 (1969) 3-16; E. J. Hobsbawm and G. Rude Captain Swing (Harmondsworth 1973) 140-87 [2] E. A. Wrigley, The process of modernisation and the industrial revolution in England Journal of Inter-disciplinary History3 (1972) 235-6; P. N. Stearns, The impact of the industrial revolution (Englewood Cliffs 1972) 6
384
REVIEW ARTICLE
intended to promote change of a pohtical as well as of an economic kind.rrl In France by the end of the nineteenth century there had emerged a syndicalist movement which believed in direct action, especially strikes, as the only effective means of securing changes within existing society. Reflecting a developing solidarity and class-consciousness of the workers, strikes became powerful weapons in the class struggle. Over the years, an increasing proportion of strikes were not spontaneous reactions to economic pressures but politically calculated acts of collective violence.rzl By May 1968 in France, the historical lesson-that violent protest pays-had been well-learned and by many more than the militant theorists: nineteenth-century syndicalism had come alive, imagination had seized power.r31 The intoxication of hunger experienced by strikers in the coalfields of north-eastern France in the late 186Os-so vividly re-created in one of the masterpieces of French realist fiction of the nineteenth century, Emile Zola’s Germinal, published in 1885-had been replaced by the intoxication of power experienced by the workers and students in many parts of France in the late 1960s. While strikes would, therefore, have to take pride of place in any historical geography of the class struggle during the nineteenth century, the pattern of popular protest was richly complicated, offering a number of potentially fertile but relatively uncultivated fields for research. Apart from the more obvious forms of protest, like the development of the radical and left-wing vote and the rural exodus (which may be seen either as a section of the peasantry voting with its feet or as going on a permanent agricultural strike), there also extended a spectrum of popular protest which ranged from such explicitly violent activities as arson, machine-breaking and sit-ins to such less obviously aggressive activities as the organisation of political parties, trades unions and a variety of mutual aid societies and cooperatives. Some aspects of the changing patterns and processes involved in the modernisation of popular protest are clarified by a comparison of the three books under review, although the differences in approach adopted by the respective authors tend to obscure the underlying similarity of many of their findings. Mr Dunbabin offers a dozen essentially discrete essays on rural discontent in nineteenth-century Britain, covering such themes as agricultural trades unionism in England in general and in Oxfordshire in particular (this latter essay is by Dr P. R. L. Horn), village radicalism in East Anglia during the first half of the nineteenth century (this essay is by Mr A. J. Peacock), the crofters’ “Land War” and the Welsh farmers’ “Tithe War”. Common threads are pulled together in usefully comparative introductory and concluding chapters, which add considerably to the intrinsic interest of the individual essays sandwiched between them. Dunbabin’s basic thesis is that the early nineteenth-century protests-riots (such as those associated with Captain Swing in 1830), nocturnal raids (such as the Rebecca riots in south-west Wales in the 1830s) and the “deforcements” in Scotland (involving the mobbing of sheriffs’ officers to prevent their serving the formal legal writs of removal which underpinned the clearances)-were generally rear-guard actions, essentially conservative protests. Dunbabin outlines the maturation of rural unrest from local and spontaneous demonstrations to organised and articulated movements drawing on external assistance, deliberately appealing to public opinion at large, participating in national politics and agitating for State intervention. By the 1860s it is argued, the chief periods of protest among agricultural workers were years when work was plentiful and wages were rising, so that rural unrest had become a matter less of desperation than of aspiration. The picture remains no more than an outline, with only hesitantly drawn indications of the particular roles of the spread of the railways and of literacy, of the extension of the franchise and [l] Stearns, op. cit. 10-13 and 52-5 [21 D. Thompson, Democracy in France since 1870 (5th edn. London 1969) 173-9; F. F. Ridley, Revolutionary syndicalism in France: the direct action of its time (Cambridge 1970) 99-l 19 [3] Thompson, op. cit. 291-8; A. Quattrochi and T. Nairn, TClebeginning of the end: France, May 1968 (London 1968)
REVIEW
ARTICLE
385
of political activity in a national rather than a local context, in the general modernisation -even urbanisation-of rural discontent. Some of these themes are also pursued by Professor LouMre in his study of the weakening of conservative forces and the emergence of a distinct left-wing political movement in six dkpartements of Mediterranean France during the nineteenth century. Dominance passed from the legitimists and OrlCanists to the Radicals by mid-century and from them to socialists as the century ended. This political bouleversement is shown by Loutire to have taken place symbiotically with the fundamental changes experienced during the century by viticulture and by the wine trade in general, with each crisis in these spheres seeing a growth in the popularity of left-wing ideas. Important elements of his argument are that local rather than national issues were fundamental to this ideological transformation, that the left-wing movement derived most of its strength from small and medium-sized cities whence it spread into the countryside as a populist agrarian movement, and that as wine production became a political issue requiring State intervention so those forces advocating such action gained increasing popular support. Loubi?re’s approach is avowedly interdisciplinary, regional and behavioural : he draws upon work in history, geography, electoral sociology and on quantitative methods; he believes that the character and result of historical movements can best be examined and explained within the framework of the region; and, explicitly following recent advocacy of a behavioural approach to historical analysis,[ll he seeks to explain the rise and decline of the Radical movement by looking behind the external actions of Radicals and by expressing concern with both the commonly shared responses and the exceptional acts. The methodological underpinnings of Loubbre’s study thus make it of interest even to those who might choose to disregard its substantive findings. For different reasons, a similar comment could be applied to the work by Professors Edward Shorter and Charles Tilly on strikes in France between 1830 and 1968. With considerable help over a decade, they have compiled a record of the characteristics of the 110,000 separate strikes in France during this period. But the bulk of the book consists of an analysis of the detailed data culled from the annual statistique des gr2ves compiled by the Ministry of Labour for the 36,000 strikes between 1890 and 1935, providing information on the location of each strike, how long it lasted, the occupation and number of the strikers, the size of the plant in which they were employed and sometimes whether or not a union was involved. General notions about industrial conflict, politics and social change are then, in the authors’ words, “hurled against this giant rock of strike statistics”. Shorter and Tilly are not concerned with sensitive reconstructions of particular strikes but with statistical representations of broad patterns of strike activity through time, over space and by type of economic activity and degree of unionisation. The method is deductive, the analytical techniques predominantly statistical and the conclusions generalised into a significance which extends beyond France between 1830 and 1968. Strike activity is shown to have been most intense in the heavily industrialised areas, and in industries in which the work-force was essentially homogenous, concentrated into large plants and applied to semi-skilled tasks; strike waves are shown as spreading outwards from this nucleus, progressively involving firms, industries and regions which were not normally militant, and having most impact where there existed a nascent workers’ organisation able to sustain concerted action; and strike activity is observed to have reached peaks in periods of political rather than of economic crisis, strikes being seen as a politically organised weapon in the class war. If many of the conclusions which Shorter and Tilly reach are, on their own admission, little more than common-sense statements and often amount to no more than a rediscovery of some Marxist truths, then at least the empirical ore on which they are based has been subjected to a massive statistical re-working. Collectively, these three studies raise a number of issues worth further exploration by [I] R. F. Berkhofer, A behaviourul approach lo historical unnlysis (Toronto 1969)
386
REVIEW ARTICLE
those contemplating the historical geography of class struggle. Firstly, strikes need to be seen as only one form of social protest, however important they came to be in the course of time. Strikes constitute the dramatic tip of a vast iceberg of protest. Peacock’s essay on village radicalism in early-nineteenth century East Anglia, for example, shows protest to have been a continuing and widespread phenomenon, embracing arson, sheep-stealing and cattle-maiming as forms of private and individual as well as public and collective protest. Shorter and Tilly exclude from their study forms of collective action other than strikes because they are much harder to pin down than are strikes, and are consequently not amenable to the type of systematic analysis which these authors espouse. Their study is focused on a wide problem but founded on a narrow (though very deep) source. Secondly, the limitations of both an unduly rigorous and an unduly casual approach to historical problems are clearly illustrated in these studies. Shorter and Tilly specifically eschew the anecdotal technique, arguing that while it might suffice to make a point about a commonplace state of mind, it is inadequate as a measure of change over time. They prefer instead to use time-series and cross-sectional multivariate analyses, which result in sanitised history and necessitate a heavy reliance on inference to interpret the spatial, temporal and other patterns detected in the data. On the other hand, Dunbabin and his two contributors rely predominantly on anecdotal evidence, with all of the inherent problems of the “instance/counter-instance” method of historical enquiry. While Shorter and Tilly offer their readers mainly bone and little flesh, Dunbabin’s book offers mainly flesh and little bone. It is instructive to realise that it is Loub6re’s historico-regional synthesis-with all that this implies in terms of a balanced approach to problems, sources and techniques-that makes the most convincing reading. Thirdly, these three studies indicate that, while some progress is being made in communicating to historians the merits of a geographical approach, there remains much to be done in order to modernise their perception of the benefits to be derived from a closer awareness of current work in the fields of historical geography. The tendency of many historians still to equate geography either with the physical background, the stage for the historical drama, or with simple description of the distribution of the phenomenon which interests them, is reflected in these three studies. The wider relevance of work in historical geography, as outlined in specifically historical journals by, inter alia, A. H. Clark and J. A. Jakle, has yet to permeate the sub-soil of the field of history.{11 Dunbabin comments briefly upon the “geographical incidence” of crime, yet fails to develop the spatial implications of the reference-which he quotes-made by the historian R. C. K. Ensor in 1936 to the “epidemic of strikes” in England in 1872. Loub&re considers at some length “the geography of radicalism” in Mediterranean France at different periods in the nineteenth century, employing informally and unwittingly notions of hierarchical and contagious spatial diffusion which might profitably have been employed more formally and consciously. Likewise, Shorter and Tilly “shower the reader with maps”, as part of an examination of “the geography of strikes” but again fail to incorporate any diffusionist or locational concepts into their analysis. Yet some aspects of popular protest seem to have been innovations which diffused spatially in ways not entirely dissimilar from those observedin relation to gas-works, building societies and telephoneexchanges in nineteenthcentury England and Wales.Ql While closer acquaintance on the part of some historians with the field of geographical research would clearly enhance their own work, it is clearly also the case that there is much to be learned by historical geographers from a reading of works such as those reviewed here. The historical development and geographical spread of left-wing ideas in general and of strikes in particular were clearly significant parts of the process of [l] A, H. Clark, Geographical change: a theme for economic history Journal of Economic History 20 (1960) 607-16; J. A. Jakle, Time, space and the geographic past: a prospectus for historical geography Amerlcun Historical Review 76 (1971) 1084-l 103 [2] B. T. Robson, Urban growth: un approach (London 1973) 131-85
REVIEW
ARTICLE
387
spatio-temporal transformation and integration during the nineteenth century. Perhaps both the reality and the concept of the pays were casualties of class conflict as much as invalids of industrialisation. University of Cambridge