The Politics of Petitioning: Parliament, Government and Subscriptional Cultures in the United Kingdom, 1780-1918

Huzzey, Richard; Miller, Henry

Abstract

Over the course of the long nineteenth century, people in the United Kingdom signed a wide variety of petitions, addresses, testimonials, and related documents. Though many forms of subscriptional culture had medieval and early modern origins, their transformations across this period reveal the shifting perceptions of the crown, parliament, the administrative state, and local government. The article draws on a dataset of more than 1 million petitions to the House of Commons and surviving data from the House of Lords, alongside qualitative evidence of signed addresses to other authorities. This reveals a pattern whereby applications and requests increasingly took new, bureaucratic forms, and petitions became more closely associated with the representation of public opinion. The study suggests the value of examining the practices and processes, alongside the languages and ideas, that shaped political culture. This emphasises the participatory and representative politics of name‐signing as a means to materialise popular opinion in a responsive ‐ but not democratic ‐ state.

Citation

Huzzey, R., & Miller, H. (2021). The Politics of Petitioning: Parliament, Government and Subscriptional Cultures in the United Kingdom, 1780-1918. History, 106(370), 221-243. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-229x.13103

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Dec 9, 2020
• Online Publication Date: Apr 5, 2021
• Publication Date: 2021-03
• Deposit Date: Jan 6, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 9, 2021
• Journal: History
• Print ISSN: 0018-2648
• Electronic ISSN: 1468-229X
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 106
• Issue: 370
• Pages: 221-243
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-229x.13103
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1254255