Early British struggles won exceptional rights that later struggles re-purposed toward class and citizenship
Evidence
These political arrangements had emerged from earlier struggles, including multiple rebellions and two revolutions (Tilly 2004b, chap. 5). In 1750, the Glorious Revolution lay only six decades back, the contested settlement of Germany-based Hanoverians on the British throne was only thirty-six years old, and major rebellions against royal power had shaken Scotland or Ireland several times in the memory of living men and women. In the course of those struggles, Britain’s people had gained unusually extensive rights to assembly, association, petition, privacy, and criticism of authorities. During the ninety years following 1750, however, two monumental changes altered the everyday uses of those rights, and established new ones: (1) the formation of a new class system, more strongly marked by industrial capitalism, and (2) bargaining out of mass citizenship on a national scale. In both regards, British experience preceded that of most European neighbors. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 363
Categorization
- XREF: This is squarely the reader’s interest: constitutional rights (assembly, petition, privacy, criticism) first won by rebellion, then later repurposed — a candidate mechanism for how institutional absorption channels vs. defuses politicization. — connects to: Rights of assembly were won through struggle but then contained by new police forces. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 1327; English nationalism’s race-feeling stems from liberty conceived as inherited privilege — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 466; Germany and England objectified class struggle through different institutional routes — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 307 (+11 more)
- DEFINE: Identifies which specific rights constitute the British institutional absorption regime the reader wants to test against Tilly’s framework.
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 363
Broader Connections
- British capitalism’s distinctive trajectory shaped how ordinary people contested collectively
#expands(0.82) — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 360 - Supranationalist class identity among English workers retreated before nationalism
#complicates(0.82) - English nationalism’s race-feeling stems from liberty conceived as inherited privilege
#expands(0.80) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 466 - English nationalism displaced international class solidarity among workers after 1850.
#complicates(0.80) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 265 - English workers’ internationalist class identity retreated into nationalism before the 1840s
#complicates(0.80) - English nationalism displaced class solidarity after Chartism’s defeat.
#complicates(0.80) - Class struggle derives historically from the earlier discourse of race struggle
#corroborates(0.79) — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 96 - The English landscape encodes submerged histories of class struggle
#exemplifies(0.78) — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 541 - Racially conscious working-class nationalism emerged from English class formation
#complicates(0.78) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 234 - The Revolution’s class struggles were reinterpreted as race history
#exemplifies(0.76) — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 226 - Free-trade agitation united British working and middle classes across class lines
#exemplifies(0.75) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 444 - Early British antiracism already fused cultural and identity-politics demands.
#exemplifies(0.75) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 158 - Germany and England objectified class struggle through different institutional routes
#qualifies(0.72) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 307