The political demonstration and the military show date from the same early-modern moment

Evidence

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) nicely juxtaposes two meanings of the word “demonstration,” with their first reported uses of the word in these two different senses, both dating from the late 1830s: … A show of military force or of offensive movement, especially in the course of active hostilities to engage the enemy’s attention while other operations are going on elsewhere, or in time of peace to indicate readiness for active hostilities. … A public manifestation, by a number of persons, of interest in some public question, or sympathy with some political or other cause; usually taking the form of a procession and mass-meeting. … Both definitions imply a synthesis between a campaign and displays of unity, numbers, and commitment, if not necessarily of worthiness. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 1183

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: what political conditions in the late 1830s generated these two senses simultaneously? Does the timing itself point to the regime changes Tilly maps?
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s prior claim noted in the reading purpose on military vs. civilian repertoires borrowing moves from each other.
• DEFINE: Demonstration is defined by its 1830s double origin — military feint and public political assembly — which is the load-bearing definitional fact for this chapter.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 1183