Date of Award

2002

Document Type

Thesis

Publisher

Edith Cowan University

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Faculty

Faculty of Community Services, Education and Social Sciences

First Supervisor

Ed Jaggard

Abstract

The thesis analyses mid-nineteenth century electoral violence in England and Wales in order to contribute to our understanding of the character of Victorian electoral politics, and to assess the pace of political modernization as it has recently been defined. Historians have long acknowledged the presence of physical violence, rioting and intimidation during British elections from at least the Middle Ages to the turn of the twentieth-century, and yet the precise nature, frequency and scale of this phenomenon has remained somewhat obscured by a lack of statistical data on the subject. Therefore, by compiling a numerical sample of violence, based on strict definitional parameters, this research corrects the quantitative void in which discussions of English and Welsh election violence have largely been conducted.

Share

 
COinS