BARRICADES PROJECT

From 1837, the word 'bullanga' was used repeatedly to portray uproar, mutiny, or revolt in a pejorative sense. Joaquín del Castillo y Mayone, journalist and Romantic liberal writer, in his work Las bullangas de Barcelona (1837), was the first to use it to describe the seven revolts that took place in Barcelona between 25 July 1835 and 4 May 1837. In using this word, the liberal reform process was dissociated from popular violence. The success of the term was unprecedented and it was quickly used disparagingly to describe the popular riots as a violent and uncontrolled action of the populace, in which there were no traces of liberalism. In the following decades the concept was popularised through different literary genres (theatre, novel, poetry, and history) and to a lesser extent journalistic genres (press or brochures). The decade from the 1840s to the early 1850s was marked by the hostility of moderates to any sign of a liberal revolutionary spirit, multiplying the propaganda against the revolution that turned the revolutions into 'bullangas'. This popularity caused the words 'bullanga' and 'bullanguero' to appear in the dictionaries of the Catalan and Castilian languages. In the Diccionari de la llengua catalana ab la correspondencia castellana i llatina of Pere Labérnia of 1839 it appears for the first time as a synonym of mutiny, uproar, or tumult, while in the Diccionario de la Real Academia de la Lengua Española it appears in 1843 as synonymous with 'Bullaje' which meant 'the contest and confusion of many people’, while the bullanguero was identified as a ‘troublemaker and friend of the mutinies’. Thus, 'bullanga' served to denigrate popular revolts as violent and as without purpose or clear leadership. Orderly liberalism or non-revolutionary liberalism (moderantism and parts of progressivism) had invented the concept of the bullanga to limit the access of the popular classes to the radical policies and practices of the revolutionary and radical liberalism of the 1820s and 1830s.

Between 1815 and 1830 King William I ruled over the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, which roughly covered present-day Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. In 1830, the Belgian Revolution broke out, which led to Belgian independence. It started on 25 August 1830 with the performance of La Muette di Portici in the Royal Theatre of the Mint in Brussels. The opera, composed by Daniel Auber to a libretto of Eugène Scribe and Geramin Delavigne, was about the Neapolitan fisherman Masaniello, who led the revolt against the Spanish regime in 1647. The second act contained a duet, entitled 'Mieux vaut mourir' with the aria 'Amour sacré de la patrie'. The lyrics appealed to the growing discomfort with the regime of King William I and aroused strong national sentiments: 'Amour sacré de la patrie, / Rends-nous l’audace et la fierté; / A mon pays je dois la vie. / Il me devra sa liberté' (Holy love for the fatherland / Give us courage and pride / To my country I owe my life / It will owe its liberty to me). Before the opera had even finished, people stormed the streets, screaming 'A bas les Hollandois' (Away with the Dutch!). Riots broke out and buildings were destroyed. It was the beginning of a series of armed conflicts, which ended in 1832, but it was not until 1839 that the Dutch king officially recognised the new Belgian state.

The images are taken from two magistrates reports of the Otmoor Riot of 6 September 1830 and the subsequent arrest and detention of some forty or more of those involved. The roots of the riots lay in the enclosure, hedging, ditching, dredging, and drainage of land on Otmoor which had previously been held and used in common. Following a series of floods in 1829, blamed on the ditching and dredging of parts of the moor, an increasingly hostile population began to break down hedges, fences, and ditches so as to return the land to common use. On 6 September, some 400 people congregated on the moor, and some began to damage the signs of enclosure. Magistrates, coupled with support from the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Yeomanry Cavalry, and the arrival of four troops of Dragoon Guards arrested some 60-70 persons and took them to Islip for a preliminary examination. Some 40 or more were subsequently dispatched to Oxford Gaol to await trial. The events of 6 September are only one part of a longer running confrontation between workers in and around Otmoor and the political and social elites who were the principal intended beneficiaries of the enclosures (although, in fact, there was a poor return on the investment). Signs of the continuing struggles can be seen in the poster from 1 March 1833 - and there is documentation from the local authorities writing to the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, asking for the stationing of troops more permanently in the area in the first half of the 1830s. In 1830 September 6 was a Monday. Indeed, it was the first Monday in September, and thus was the first day of St Giles's Fair in Oxford. As the prisoners were carried in wagons toward the gaol in Oxford Castle, the revelers in the fair set upon the accompanying escort, with stones and cudgels, and forced them to flee towards the castle, whereupon the prisoners were set free by the crowds. Concern at events is registered in the two newspaper accounts: The short account in Freeman's Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser (Dublin, Ireland), Friday, September 10, 1830, taken from the Globe (London); and the lengthy local account given in Jackson's Oxford Journal (Oxford, England), Saturday, September 11, 1830.

The French Insurrection of 19-20 August 1820. The most detailed account of the 19-20 August 1820 insurrection against the Bourbon King Louis XVIII and his ministers is Joseph Rey’s (1779-1855) unpublished description of it [Bibliothèque Municipale de Grenoble, Mss. T8938]. Following the second White Terror (1815-16) and the repressive policies that followed the assassination on 13 February 1820 of the Duc de Berry, the son of the Comte d’Artois and heir to the throne, Rey established a secret society called the Union whose aim was to overthrow the Bourbons. Modeled on the Italian Carbonari, the Union counted among its supporters leading liberals such as General Lafayette, the Duc d’Argenson, the political economist Charles Dunoyer, and the philosopher Victor Cousin. The planned insurrection had widespread support in the military and among students. It was over a month in planning and was to be launched on 19 August with various military regiments seizing power in cities throughout France and marching under the tricolor on Paris where they were to be joined by armed students. Disputes over what kind of government would replace the Bourbons led to some young soldiers betraying the conspirators’ plans. The plot’s leaders became aware of these leaks and lost their nerve. At the moment when 600 troops under the future Saint-Simonian leader Saint-Amand Bazard were to storm the fortress at Vincennes, no order was given. The authorities were more decisive, and the plot failed. Rey evaded arrest. Supported by a network of sympathisers throughout Europe he found refuge in 1821 in London.

Reports of the Revolution of 1854 by F. Pi y Margall and by the British Ambassador Otway to Clarendon. Also, a copy of a play about the revolt produced in 1854. From the beginnings of the 1850s, the Spanish government became increasingly unstable due to friction between the different conservative families jostling for power and due to corruption scandals related to railroad concessions. A broad conservative faction finally joined opposition groups aiming at a slight liberalisation of the political system. In 1852, dissident conservatives and progressives formed an electoral coalition, which brought in a minority of representatives at the Cortes. But in early 1854, a heavy-handed conservative was appointed president of the Council of Ministers. He started his mandate with a series of repressive measures, which included extensive censorship and the arrests of journalists and activists. The economic situation was also deteriorating because of wheat exportation and rise of unemployment. A range of diverse groups conspired separately: dissident conservative militaries, progressives, republicans, and democrats. Finally, a sector of the army commanded by General O’Donnel started a pronunciamiento (uprising) on 28 June, with the objective of provoking a change of government. On 30 June, rebels and governmental troops faced each other without a clear result. It became clear that it was necessary to approach other dissident groups, especially progressives, with whom a Manifesto was written promising reforms on electoral and press laws, decentralisation, and the reorganisation of the National Guard. Progressives and democrats joined the insurrectionist project and on 14 July an uprising took place in Barcelona; the next day it spread to Valladolid and, on 17 July, it broke out in Zaragoza and Madrid. On 31 July, the Queen was forced to change the government. The Revolution had succeeded. Scholars are still debating if it was clearly led by conservatives, or if progressives and democrats carried out an uprising that upended and extended the conservative plan. In any case, there were several centres of conspiracy with relatively open boundaries, enabling progressive liberals, democrats, and republicans to lead the unfolding events in the major cities.

Three documents concerning the uprising in Madrid in March 1848, protesting against the imperfect constitutional regime established in 1845. The 1848 French Revolution had a major impact across Europe even if some regions (Germany, Italy, the Habsburg Empire) were more affected than others. In Spain, restlessness started to spread from the very moment the news from Paris arrived. Conservative liberals in power immediately feared subversion, violence, and anarchy, and on 27 February they presented a draft bill to suspend habeas corpus. Progressive liberals were divided between those who supported the government and those who shared with the democrats a positive view of the events, which were seen as an inevitable consequence of the practices of a reactionary government. Some republicans even traveled to Paris to ask the Gouvernement provisoire for support. But the mission was unsuccessful. The French capital also witnessed the creation of a Comité démocratique espagnol which apparently sent instructions to revolutionary activists in several Spanish towns. On 13 March, the draft bill to suspend habeas corpus was approved, and a few days later parliamentary sessions were suspended. Revolutionary groups composed of progressive liberals, democrats, and republicans merged for a common conspiracy and planned an insurrection on 26 March. Things did not go as planned, as authorities were aware of the plot and had mobilised the army. Some conspirators decided to abort the plan, but others stuck to it and rushed to the streets. They were easily repressed. Two hundred were killed and there were more than one hundred arrests.

18 March 1848 Coraggio dimostrato dai Veneziani pella libertà e prime vittime del 18 Marzo 1848 The courage shown by the Venetians struggling for liberty and the first victims of March, 18, 1848 The Venice Revolution began on 17 March 1848, as soon as news from Vienna of the Hungarian Revolution and of Metternich's fall reached the city in the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia, which had been under Austrian rule since 1814. When the news arrived, the crowd claimed and obtained freedom for Daniele Manin, Nicolò Tommaseo, and other political prisoners. On Saturday 18 March, there was an escalation of urban violence and the joyful atmosphere evaporated when late in the morning a crowd of bourgeois, among them students from Padua University, and workers gathered in St. Mark Square. As soon as the Austrian soldiers arrived, people started breaking stones from the pavement to use as weapons against the troops. Officers ordered the latter to fire and eight Venetians were killed (among them two teenager artisans) and nine wounded. The image shows the socially mixed profile of the participants (including young boys), as well as the impressive gesture of a man breaking up stones, in a kind of iconoclastic ritual recalling that captured by H. Vernet in his painting of the barricades in Paris, Rue Soufflot, on 25 June 1848. 18 March 1848 was a turning point on the road toward the Venetian Republic and it was to nurture the myth of Venice's bravery in the revolutionary wave that swept Europe.

Tract distributed to the Lords by the Spitalfields silk weavers the 9 July 1823 This tract was given to the Lords by a committee of silk weavers before they entered the Houses of Parliament to vote on the repeal of the Spitalfields Acts, on 9 July 1823. Passed in 1773, the main clause of those laws empowered the justices of the peace of London to enforce lists of prices negotiated between the silk manufactures' Masters and Men. The parliamentary debates over their repeal were opened on 9 May by the violent critiques of David Ricardo, who said that they served to 'cramp the freedom of labour itself.' He easily convinced the Chamber of Commons to do away with those old regulations that he believed contradicted the principles of political economy. The bill thus passed to the House of Lords, who were much more sceptical about these arguments, and inclined to recognise the beneficial effects of the Spitalfields Acts in terms of political stability. That is why the weavers displayed on the front of their tract, on either side of the traditional emblem and motto of the trade, a soldier and a sailor, to underline their patriotism during the Seven Years War. Their loyalty to the King is then directly related to the prosperity produced by the Spitalfields Acts, as opposed to the 'speculative measure' prescribed by political economy. In doing so, the weavers summoned the traditional agreement on which the acts rested, that consisted in granting industrial regulations in return for a promise from the workers not to engage in any political activity. This attitude was harshly criticised by most of radical political leaders, such as Francis Place or William Cobbett, who depicted the Spitalfields weavers as 'base dogs.' However, a large majority of the Lords approved the weavers’ arguments and adopted amendments which led its proponents to drop the bill. It was nonetheless reintroduced the following year, in May 1824, and finally passed 17 June. The repeal caused terrible industrial damage to the London silk industry, but also disoriented politically the silk weavers’ community. Indeed, the repeal of the Combination Laws, passed just a few days before, meant that the workers’ movement would now rally around the large politicised associations that were emerging in the northern industries and towns. Many weavers were reluctant to join this movement, as it implied abandoning their traditional repertoire of collective action, but the repeal of the act made that repertoire increasingly ineffectual.

In his Political Alphabet, William Hone (with 31 drawings by George Cruikshank) was developing his use of new models for children's reading, into new tools to challenge the status quo.. Each letter has a rhyming couplet accompanied by an image and by a series of quotations from poets, writers and authorities that underlines the point Hone is making. Hone's use of parody of the Book of Common Prayer, and the Order of Service had landed him in court for three trials of seditious libel and blasphemy, in which he had successfully defended himeslf in 1817. He subsequently expanded and developed his parodic and satiric methods, with the Political Alphabet being a bitter attack on the members and the repressive measures of the government - which repurposes various images from other publications and which was published in 1829/1830. The use of the 'alphabet' proved a popular form of protest - as is evident in the 1855 version shown here and in C. J. Grant's published around the same time (with its own entry here)

In the age of revolutions, the eighteenth century pioneered a movement of female intellectuals. The movement was respected for its learned women and female authorship, and was led by figures Elizabeth Montagu and Elizabeth Verna. The Bluestockings salon as a literary institution, was an environment that enabled enlightened conversation amongst women. In the words of Hannah More in ‘Bas Blue- or conversation’ the exchange of tastes and education was meaningless without conversation.'  The literary salon became a quasi social project and a mean of entering the public sphere. However, by the start of the nineteenth century literary women faced increasing mockery and criticism. Depicting them as parading under the guise of learning, they were seen as encroaching on male spaces, and their hosting of salons and readings clubs became a major cause for concern and as far too revolutionary by the 1800s. Thomas Rowlandson’s 1815 caricature ‘The breaking up of the bluestockings club’ encapsulates the fear of female spaces, with the lack of male guardianship resulting in a descent into chaos. Its publication coincided with the announcement of the publication of Hannah More’s Essay on the Character and Practical Writings of St Paul (1815), and this may have instigated Rowlandson onto create the piece as a reactionary critique of female intellectuals. The male figure in the print epitomises the trope of a moralistic guide to the immoral women who reject their female duties. The representation signifies the fear that  gender boundaries will be transgressed and women will invade the physical, intellectual, but above all moral and political space of male intellectuals.

Honoré Daumier’s ‘Les Bas Bleu’s’ collection focused on a scathing critique of the Bluestockings in France, compiling of forty-four satirical prints. Demonstrating the extent of trans-national movement of female literary groups, the satire symbolises two female blue stocking authors, addressing another caricature of them which has been published in ‘Le Charivari’, a prominent French newspaper in the nineteenth century which published satirical political cartoons. The degrading of female figures as spinsters, was a common theme in Daumier’s portrayal of female intellectuals, and was reflective of popular attitudes towards educated women. The patriarchal anxiety surrounding the female intellectuals can be seen to emerge in the trends amongst the print culture of the nineteenth century and ultimately reflects the ever increasing presence of women in the public sphere.

The occasion for the print was the emergence of a number of Female Reform Societies in several towns in the North and Midlands in the summer of 1819. These societies were certainly novel and nothing similar had been seen before. At the same time, as Paul Custer points out, their rhetoric –  replete with references to home, hearth, loom, cottage and children –  was not so distinctive. There were groups and meetings of ‘Female Reformers’ organised in Blackburn, Stockport, Manchester, and Leigh. In the latter case, the reformers held a meeting five days before Peterloo at which those on the platform took turns to don a cap of liberty. The reaction of elite observers was uniformly hostile, but the presence of women in Northern communities and their involvement in the industries hit hard by the end of the war meant that they were regarded as a natural component of the protest scene. For example, they appeared alongside Henry Hunt on the platform in Manchester in January 1819, and caps of liberty (included in the image here, though satirised by the inuendo associated with the pole on which it is displayed) became a common feature of meetings. J Lewis Mark’s 1819 satire ‘Much wanted a Reform among females!!!’, depicts female reformists as hyper-feminised and hyper-sexualised. It is demonstrative of the popular attitudes towards female emancipation and the undermining of their visibility in popular politics. Depicting both an elderly husband’s abusive attitude towards his wife, and a younger man’s sexual advances towards one of the women in the audience, it intends to undercut the aims of the reformers to use their ideas of reforms to aid both themselves and their husbands. By 1817 Parliament had passed the Habaeus Corpus Act to counter the rising tide of the radical working class movements. Those imprisoned were predominantly from industrialised towns in the Midlands and the North. The emergence of women as leaders in the radical working class movements between 1817 and 1818, as male leaders were imprisoned, is illustrative of their entry into the public sphere and popular politics.Demonstrating the intersections between class and gender that became apparent in the radical class working class movement, the 'political domesticity' amongst working class women’s activism, is apparent as they used their positions as wives and mothers to support the patriarchs of their family. In manoeuvring between the domestic sphere of their home and the public sphere in their political activism, they could appeal to the wider political field with far less scrutiny. NOnetheless, Marks attempts to subvert their claims throug none too subtle innuendo:   ‘Though we should be start [sic] naked, we could make the whole Army Stand!—It is our duty as Wives to assist our Husbands in every Push and Turn, by that means we shall Increase, and Multiply, in our under takings’. And, as in the elderly man abusing his wife in "Come home and get Dinner ready you Old Baggage I'll Reform you.", there is a consistent reduction of women to sexual objects and undermining of their political activism. The context of the print was based in a period of summer 1819, where there was an emergence of a number of Female Reform Societies in several towns in the North and Midlands.

1820-21 The Spanish Constitution of 1812 reappears in Naples and Turin Pictures of title pages from Naples 1820 and Turin 1821. Enacted in 1812 by a reformist assembly, the Cortes, during the absence of King Fernando VII in captivity in France, the Constitución política de la monarquía española came to furnish a totemic model for constitutionalist opponents of absolutism outside of Spain. Rapidly translated into other European languages, in Italian-speaking states it circulated in several different translations, some unattributed, others purporting to have been printed outside Italy, and there was no single 'authorised version'. Successive editions pirated earlier translations, occasionally combined parts from more than one, or printed entirely fresh ones. In Naples in 1820, the government adopted the Spanish Constitution and itself issued an approved translation; the Constitution roused great popular enthusiasm and other independent translations were also printed locally by unnamed printers. Two cheap editions of one of these are illustrated here. Curiously, one of these independent translations, not the one issued by the Neapolitan Government, was used the following year to provide the text of the officially-commissioned Stamperia Reale edition printed in Turin when the Constitution was adopted there with some local modifications. The 1821 Turin edition, with a page-size of 226 x 141 mm in an untrimmed copy, was a much larger print than its unattributed Naples predecessors, different editions of which may measure between 169 x 97 mm and 179 x 110 mm, an economical format which lends itself to cheap production, ready portability, and easy concealment.

By 1819, there was a growing dissatisfaction amongst female radicals towards the apathy of male reformers and their political advocacy. Building upon the political domesticity of 1817 and 1818, by 1819 there was a rise in female radical led movements. There was a greater demand for women’s inclusion in working class radical movements, and thus an increased visibility in the public sphere and popular politics. The growing collectivism of women's activism in 1819 is marked. In George Cruikshank’s 1819 ‘The Belle-alliance, or the female reformers of Blackburn!!!’ print, one of the females on the platforms claims "we swear to instil into the minds of our children, a deep rooted abhorrence of all civil or religious government like the present!!" represented a fear of female tyranny. In June 1819, The Blackburn Female Reforms announced a public statement that drew upon the legacy of the radical female reformers of 1817. In their claims of ‘the feelings of a mother, when she beholds her naked children and hears their inoffensive cries of hunger and approaching death’, they embodied the ideas of political domesticity. In rooting their political activism in their positions as mothers, they were attempting to navigate between emphasising their archetypal duties, but also protests against existing hierarchal structures. They were critiqued for their vocalised speech, which is quite literally apparent in the 'mass platform' they employed. Though they attempted to assert their submissiveness in the roles as wives and mothers, the politicisation of their campaigns ultimately continued to be attacked. In the 12th July 1819 edition of the Leeds intelligencer, The Blackburn Female Reformers were attacked following a mass reform meeting at Blackburn. The female reformers asked the chairman, Mr J.Knight to read their address. It contained a passage declaring 'the avowed determination, of instilling into the minds of their offspring a deep-rooted abhorrence of Tyranny, come in what shape it may; whether under the mask of civil or religious government ...' in a demand for universal suffrage. Cruikshank’s satire depicts them in a burlesque line-up towards the chairman, as they mount the stage, to present the cap of liberty, and an address to the meeting, “pledged themselves to instil into the of their children, a hatred of (what they are pleased to call) civil and religious tyranny!”. The fear of how women would be educating their children to challenge existing patriarchal structures garnered significant anxiety, as the future of the role of women in society came under speculation. What is more striking, however, is that the cartoon is reacting to an emerging phenomenon of women's political organisations. While there were women associated with the movement for the Reformation of Manners and in the Anti-Slavery campaigns, participation in these was largely restricted to well-off members of society. What was new to the late 1810s, was the emergence of more popular and working class movements among women.,

In breaching the norms of patriarchal structures of the nineteenth century, a common trope used against female intellectuals was the de-feminised women. Disputing women’s aims to be involved in the political and public sphere through an educated presence, they were seen to lack womanly virtue. These women were critiqued for ignoring their duties as daughters, wives and mothers, and often played on the idea of the subordinate husband, forced to take up the role of the woman of the house. We can see this in the theme of neglect that is apparent in both prints. In the 1848 French satire ‘Women leaving their husbands to look after children while they go to their club’, the print captures the emerging salon culture and female literary spaces that were seen to distract women from their duties. A wife, holding a text on a discourse of women is in conversation with her husband. She instructs ‘Take care of the pot to the fire and my daughter to bed early. If she screams, give her to suckle… With what, missus? With the bottle, you idiot!’. In confronting and challenging their expected duties, the representations offers an insight into the subversion of traditional roles that was becoming more apparent in the nineteenth century.

A depiction of a women's right meeting

The chaotic 'Manifestation Des Femmes', represents a critique of the women's emancipation movements of the era, depicting their demonstrations as the workings of hysterical women. Organised movements of women in France were mooted amongst St-Simonians in the 1830s, but the flourishing of such movements, and their independence from masculine guidance was more a feature of 1848 then at any time previously.