A Nation of Petitioners
Petitions and Petitioning in the United Kingdom, 1780–1918

Explores the central role of petitions in reshaping the political culture of the United Kingdom in their nineteenth-century heyday.

Henry J. Miller (Author)

9781009054522, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 27 February 2025

314 pages
22.9 x 15.1 x 1.7 cm, 0.47 kg

'This is a book of the first importance. While the nineteenth century's great petitioning movements … have been well-studied, the scale, regularity, geographic distribution, diversity of issues, and meanings associated with the act of petitioning have largely eluded historical analysis. … Much of the raw data for Miller's study derives from the documenting of nearly one million public petitions submitted to the House of Commons between 1833 and 1918. Organized in three thematic parts, dealing with petitions, petitioners, and petitioning, the book displays organizational rigor and clarity of purpose as some of its defining strengths.' James Epstein, Victorian Studies

Between 1780 and 1918, over one million petitions from across the four nations were sent to the House of Commons. A Nation of Petitioners is the first study of this nineteenth-century heyday of petitioning in the United Kingdom. It explores how ordinary men and women engaged with politics in an era of democratisation, but not democracy, and restores their voices and actions to the story of UK political culture. Drawing on more than a million petitions, as well as archives of leading politicians, institutions, and pressure groups, Henry J. Miller demonstrates the centrality of petitions and petitioning to mass campaigning, representation, collective action, and forging collective identities at the local and national level. From the early nineteenth century, the massive growth of petitions underpinned and reshaped the popular authority of the UK state, including Parliament, the monarchy, and government. Challenging accounts that have stressed disciplinary or exclusionary processes in the evolution of popular politics, A Nation of Petitioners conclusively establishes the importance of the mass participation of ordinary people through petitions.

Introduction
Part I. Petitions: 1. Petitions to the House of Commons I: scale and trends
2. Petitions to the House of Commons II: issues
3. Subscriptional cultures and petitionary documents
Part II. Petitioners: 4. The right to petition
5. Petitioners I: collective identities
6. Petitioners II: petitioning communities
Part III. Petitioning: 7. The practice of petitioning
8. Mass petitioning
9. Petitioning and representation
10. Petitioning and political culture in an age of democratisation
Conclusion
Select bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: British & Irish history [HBJD1]